Germany has had a large and persistent current account surplus for the past almost two decades. We review different theoretical explanations of this phenomenon and conclude from the empirical litera-ture that Germany's external surplus reflects an imbalance that is a threat to macroeconomic...

I develop an asymmetric two-country incomplete markets model in which economies trade final consumption goods and inputs. The purchases of imported inputs from the firms of one of the economies (the emerging) to the firms of the other economy (the advanced) are subject to a foreign currency...

Although the role of gold in the world economy has declined since the gold standard was abandoned, it remains important as a central bank reserve, a hedge against risks, a barometer of geopolitical uncertainty, and an input for jewelry. While portfolio demand for gold has been well studied,...

This paper analyzes recent changes in the relative importance of the determinants of capital flows to emerging market economies. For this purpose, we estimate vector autoregressive (VAR) models for the period 2009-2020. Based on these models, we estimate the effects on debt flows from shocks to...

International financial integration has greatly increased the scope for changes in a country's net foreign asset position through the valuation channel of external adjustment, namely capital gains and losses on the country's external assets and liabilities. We examine this valuation channel...

India embarked on reintegration with the world econ- omy in the early 1990s. At first, a certain limited open- ing took place emphasising equity flows by certain kinds of foreign investors. This opening has had myriad in- teresting implications in terms of both microeconomics and macroeconomics....

Motivated by the apparent failure of the credit multiplier mechanism (CM) to deliver amplification in DSGE models, we re-examine its role in business cycles to address the question: is something wrong with the CM? Our answer is no. In coming to this answer we construct a model with reproducible...

This paper studies how foreign investors' concerns about model misspecification affect sovereign bond spreads. We develop a general equilibrium model of sovereign debt with endogenous default wherein investors fear that the probability model of the underlying state of the borrowing economy is...

This paper examines the effect of minimum wage changes on local aggregate inflation and consumption growth. The paper utilizes variation in state-level minimum wages across locations and finds that minimum wage increases have a relatively modest effect on both city-level inflation and spending...

The revolving credit available to consumers changes substantially over the business cycle, life cycle, and for individuals. We show that debt changes at the same time as credit, so credit utilization is remarkably stable. From ages 20-40, for example, credit card limits grow by more than 700...