The May 10, 2007, congressional-executive branch agreement, labeled "A New Trade Policy for America," establishes a bipartisan foundation of confidence and trust and provides new language for pending free trade agreements (FTAs). Most important is the accord on inclusion of core labor standards,...

Active accommodation of fiscal consolidations by monetary policy is controversial, as can be seen in current euro area discussions. While many observers acknowledge that there is usually a place for monetary accommodation in response to fiscal consolidation, a sequencing argument is often heard...

The escalating crisis in Ukraine has prompted the United States and Europe to impose the toughest economic sanctions against Russia since the end of the Cold War. Continued instability and military conflict in eastern Ukraine are straining Ukrainian finances. Despite a generous international...

China's property market has slowed more than expected since the first half of 2014, leading many commentators to believe this could trigger a hard landing of the Chinese economy, even a financial crisis. However, China's nascent property market is experiencing another cyclical turn. The...

The failure in mid-January by the US Congress to approve IMF reform legislation halted progress on Fund governance and damaged the US reputation around the world. If the IMF is to benefit strong and troubled economies alike, the administration and the Congress must make every effort to pass this...

The amount of assets held by the Federal Reserve has dramatically increased since 2009. It recently crossed $4 trillion and will likely peak at about $4.5 trillion. This increase is the result of the Fed's large-scale asset purchase programs, which were intended to support economic growth....

The latest estimates of fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) in this semiannual series indicate that the currencies of the United States, the euro area, China, and Japan are approximately at their FEER levels and need no adjustment to reduce excessive external imbalances. The...

Laments over the decline of the manufacturing base in the United States are widespread. But while manufacturing employment has steadily declined for many decades, more direct measures of manufacturing productivity show that the growth of the US manufacturing sector has actually been strong and...

More than 20 countries have increased their aggregate foreign exchange reserves and other official foreign assets by an annual average of nearly $1 trillion in recent years. This buildup—mainly through intervention in the foreign exchange markets—keeps the currencies of the interveners...

Exchange rates are often described as overvalued or undervalued. But how do we make these judgments, and how do we assess by how much an exchange rate is misaligned? These questions have reemerged as central to the international macropolicy debate as the dollar continues to appreciate, the yen...