The effects of trade openness on macroeconomic volatility are theoretically ambiguous, so the issue must be resolved empirically. Most of the empirical evidence, however, has been mixed and inconclusive. This paper investigates the question using two data sets: one of 56 countries over...

How does the potency of fiscal policy depend on a country’s exchange-rate regime? The Mundell-Fleming theoretical model predicts that fiscal policy can affect output under both fixed and flexible exchange rates, but that the effect is larger when the exchange rate is fixed. Using a panel data...

This paper examines the macroeconomic costs and benefits of dollarization. Economic theory suggests that the main benefit is enhanced price stability, while the main cost is higher business-cycle volatility if the dollarizing country’s output is not sufficiently correlated with that of the...

This paper examines whether economic integration facilitates convergence in per capita income by investigating the post-war convergence experience within three regional economic areas: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European Union (EU), and the Latin American Free Trade...

This paper studies whether trade openness reduces the domestic fiscal multiplier, but increases the impacts of foreign fiscal shocks, i.e., the spillover effect, as suggested by theory. Using annual data from the period of 1970 to 2011, for 179 developed and developing economies, we show that...