The paper analyses the impact of financial liberalization and reform in emerging markets on the dynamics of capital flows to these markets, using a simple model of international investors' behaviour. We first show that the gradual nature of liberalization, combined with the cost of absorbing...

Two well-known, but seemingly contradictory, features of exchange rates are that they are close to a random walk while at the same time exchange rate changes are predictable by interest rate differentials. In this paper we investigate whether these two features of the data may in fact be...

This paper offers empirical evidence that real exchange rate volatility can have a signi.cant impact on the long-term rate of productivity growth, but the effect depends critically on a country's level of financial development. For countries with relatively low levels of financial development,...

There is widespread evidence of excess return predictability in .nancial markets. In this paper we examine whether this predictability is related to expectational errors. To consider this issue, we use data on survey expectations of market participants in the stock market, the foreign exchange...

The recent East Asian crisis has highlighted the relationship between financial development and output volatility. In this essay we develop a simple model of a small open economy producing a tradeable good using a non-tradeable input and where firms access to borrowings and investment depends on...

We develop a simple general equilibrium framework to study the effect of the exchange rate system on trade and welfare. An important feature of the model is deviations from purchasing power parity, caused by rigid price setting in buyers' currency. We find the following. First, exchange rate...

This paper introduces a framework for analyzing the role of financial factors as a source of instability in small open economies. Our basic model is a dynamic open economy model with one tradeable and one non-tradeable good with the non-tradeable being an input to the production of the...

This paper analyzes the optimal interest rate policy in currency crises. Firms are credit constrained and have debt in domestic and foreign currency, a situation that may easily lead to a currency crisis. An interest rate increase has an ambiguous effect on firms since it both makes more...

This paper presents a simple model of currency crises which is driven by the interplay between the credit constraints of private domestic firms and the existence of nominal price rigidities. The possibility of multiple equilibria, including a "currency crisis" equilibrium with low output and a...