Since the onset of the global financial crisis, China and the U.S. have reduced their current-account imbalances as a share of GDP to less than half their pre-crisis levels. For China, the reduction in its current-account surplus post-crisis suggests a structural change. Panel regressions for a...

This paper explores econometric and theoretical interpretations for the relatively high demand for international reserves by countries in the Far East and the relatively low demand by some other developing countries. Using a sample of about 125 developing countries, we show that reserve holdings...

A developing country often pegs its exchange rate to a single currency, such as the U.S. dollar, even though it faces a higher inflation rate than the country to which it is pegged. As a consequence, it experiences real exchange-rate misalignments and a series of easily-anticipated devaluations....

We use the World Bank decomposition of aggregate investment shares into their private and public components to test for the correlation between volatility and investment in a set of developing countries. We uncover a statistically significant negative correlation between various volatility...

This paper examines the current-account response to anticipated future increases in real oil prices as well as to unexpected increases which may be temporary or permanent in nature. The analysis is conducted using an intertemporal two-period model of a small open economy which produces both...

The paper develops a general stochastic macroeconomic model which can be used to study the international transmission of disturbances under alternative exchange-rate systems. Four types of exchange-rate systems are considered: uniform flexible exchange rates, uniform fixed exchange rates,...

We show that increased uncertainty about the size of an emerging market's external debt has a nonlinear and potentially large adverse effect on the supply of international credit offered to them. We also show that if international creditors are first- order risk averse, attaching greater weight...

This paper examines how increased uncertainty about an emerging market's international reserves affects the willingness of foreign investors to supply international credits. We illustrate the relevance of this concern for South Korea during the recent financial crisis. Using available...

This study uncovers a statistically significant negative correlation between volatility and private investment over the 1970-93 period in a set of almost fifty developing countries and provides a possible interpretation of this result by using the disappointment- aversion expected utility...

This paper is a theoretical and empirical investigation into the duration of exchange-rate pegs. The theoretical model considers a policy-maker who must trade off the economic costs of real exchange- rate misalignment against the political cost of realignment. The optimal time to spend on a peg...