We offer evidence in this paper that US interest rate policy has an important influence in the determination of credit spreads on emerging market bonds over US benchmark treasuries, and therefore on their cost of capital. Our analysis improves upon the existing literature and understanding, by...

The empirical distinction between de facto and de jure exchange rate regimes raises a number of interesting questions. Which factors may induce a de facto peg? Why do countries enforce a peg but do not announce it? Why do countries 'break their promises'? In this paper we show that a stable...

The paper develops a simple stochastic new open economy macroeconomic model based on sticky nominal wages. Explicit solution of the wage-setting problem under uncertainty allows one to analyze the effects of the monetary regime on welfare, expected output, and the expected terms of trade....

We apply a comprehensive set of survey data, on forecasts for 24 currencies against the dollar, to four topics. (1) We find some predictive power in the survey data (and in the right direction!). As in past tests, the forecasts are nevertheless biased: variability of expected depreciation is...

Exchange rate forecasts are generated using some popular monetary models of exchange rates, in conjunction with several estimation techniques. We propose an alternative set of criteria for evaluating forecast rationality, which entails the following requirements: the forecast and the actual...

This paper investigates the relationship between the U.S. current account deficit and a number of macroeconomic variables including government spending, budget balance, productivity, domestic and foreign income, real interest rates, and terms of trade. Implications of the conventional "twin...

This short note shows that there exists a simple relation between the private ECU, its theoretical value and the associated interest rates. From this relation, one can estimate the time to EMU as expected by financial markets and see whether this time is consistent with a monetary union taking...

Real exchange rate (RER) misalignment refers to a situation in which a country's actual RER deviates from some notion of an implicit "ideal" RER. An exchange rate is labeled "undervalued" when it is more depreciated than this ideal, and "overvalued" when it is more appreciated than this ideal....