Motivated by the long-standing debate on the pros and cons of competitive devaluation, we propose a new perspective on how monetary and exchange rate policies can contribute to a country's international competitiveness. We refocus the analysis on the implications of monetary stabilization for a...

A salient characteristic of sovereign defaults is that they are typically accompanied by large devaluations. This paper presents new evidence of this empirical regularity known as the Twin Ds and proposes a model that rationalizes it as an optimal policy outcome. The model combines limited...

The collapse of a fixed exchange rate is typically marked by a sudden balance-of-payments crisis in which"speculators" fleeing from the domestic currency acquire a large portion of the central bank's foreign exchange holdings.Faced with such an attack, the central bank often withdraws...

The central hypothesis of this paper is that both the extent and speed of adjustment of the real exchange rate is affected by the way the central bank manages the nominal exchange rate. Specifically, a large discrete adjustment of the nominal exchange rate is more likely to result in fast...

This paper shows that the risk of devaluation can be an important factor accounting for the stylized facts of exchange-rate-based stabilizations. This conclusion follows from studying the quantitative implications of a two-sector equilibrium business cycle model of a small open economy...

Most analyses of the macroeconomic adjustment required to correct global imbalances ignore net exports of new varieties of goods and services and do not account for firms' entry in the product market. In this paper we revisit the macroeconomics of trade adjustment in the context of the classic...

This paper studies the behavior of inflation after nine large post-1990 contractionary devaluations. A salient feature of the data is that inflation is low relative to the rate of devaluation. We argue that distribution costs and substitution away from imports to lower quality local goods can...

This paper develops an open economy model in which financial intermediation is subject to occasionally binding collateral constraints, and uses the model to study unconventional policies such as credit facilities and foreign exchange intervention. The model highlights the interaction between the...

This paper proposes a tractable and realistic nonlinear model of exchange rate dynamics, and argues that its predictions are consistent with available empirical evidence on exchange rate and interest differential behavior in real-life target zones. In our model, the exchange rate fluctuates...