We study how the financial conditions in the Center Economies [the U.S., Japan, and the Euro area] impact other countries over the period 1986 through 2015. Our methodology relies upon a two-step approach. We focus on five possible linkages between the center economies (CEs) and the non-Center...

Accurately determining the number of excess deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is hard. The most important challenge is accurately estimating the counterfactual count of baseline deaths that would have occurred in its absence. This analysis used new methods to: estimate this baseline metric;...

This paper examines potential tradeoffs between research methods in answering important questions versus providing more cleanly identified estimates on problems that are potentially of lesser interest. The strengths and limitations of experimental and quasi-experimental methods are discussed and...

Three large current account imbalances -- one deficit (the United States) and two surpluses (Japan and the Euro area) -- are subjected to a minimalist structural interpretation. Though simple, this interpretation enables us to assess how much of each of the imbalances require a real exchange...

Several alternative measures of "effective" exchange rates are discussed in the context of their theoretical underpinnings and actual construction. Focusing on contemporary indices and recently developed econometric methods, the empirical characteristics of these differing series are examined,...

The hypothesis that interest rate differentials are unbiased predictors of future exchange rate movements has been almost universally rejected in empirical studies. In contrast to previous studies, which have used short-horizon data, we test this hypothesis using interest rates on...

This study investigates how maternal employment is related to the outcomes of 10 and 11 year olds after controlling for a wide variety of child, mother and family background characteristics. The results suggest that the mother's labor supply has deleterious effects on cognitive development,...