This paper studies the merits of policy rules with escape clauses, analyzing as an example fixed exchange-rate systems that allow member countries the freedom to realign in periods of stress. Motivating this example is the debate within the European Monetary System over how quickly to move from...

Current and planned measures liberalizing the external capital accounts of France and Italy call into question the continued viability of the policy of periodic exchange-rate realignment followed to date in the European Monetary System (EMS). This paper is intended as a first step in studying...

The global financial crisis which erupted in the United States instantaneously swept across Europe. Like the United States, the European Monetary Union (EMU) was ripe for a crash. It had its own real estate bubble, specifically in Ireland and Spain, indulged in excessive deficit spending,...

The discomfort a government suffers from speculation against its currency determines the strategic incentives of speculators and the scope for multiple currency-market equilibria. After describing an illustrative model in which high unemployment may cause an exchange- rate crisis with...

In the presence of asymmetric information, the stage at which financing decisions are made about investment projects in a small open economy is crucial for the composition of international capital inflows as well as for the efficiency of channeling savings into investment. This paper compares...

In Razin, Sadka and Yuen (1998, 1999a), we explored the policy implications of the home-bias in international portfolio investment as a result of asymmetric information problems in which domestic savers, being 'close' to the domestic market, have an informational advantage over foreign portfolio...

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....

In this paper I focus on two specific hazard areas in the transition from Stage Two to Stage Three of European economic and monetary union (EMU), as well as on some key problems of Stage Three that EMU's monetary and fiscal structures appear ill-prepared to handle. The transitional hazards are...

Changes in tax policy can affect all aspects of the economy. Not only do firms and individuals change behavior, creating efficiency costs, but government expenditure choices can also change. Unless these expenditure choices had been optimal' previously, changes in response to a tax reform affect...

To date, China has maintained a variety of restrictions on its financial markets. In addition to imposing capital controls and regulating interest rates, the government controls both the set of firms that can sell equity on the domestic or foreign stock markets, and the amount they can sell....