In this paper I review the use of precautionary measures aimed at mitigating emerging markets' exposure to fragility associated with financial integration. The discussion draws possible lessons from the ongoing global liquidity crisis. The fear of losing international reserves (IR) constrained...

This paper takes stock of recent research dealing with the degree to which the trilemma choices of Asian countries facilitated a smoother adjustment during the global crisis of 2008-2009, and the way the region has been coping with the adjustment to the postcrisis challenges. We point out that...

Conventional logic suggests that lowering the policy interest rate will stimulate consumption and investment while discouraging people from saving, but low interest rates may also prompt people to increase their saving to compensate for the low rate of return. Using data on 135 countries from...

The Impossible Trinity doctrine still holds a powerful sway over policymakers, advisors (particularly the International Monetary Fund [IMF]) and academia. In East Asia over the past decade, however, most countries have been able to maintain open capital markets, monetary policy independence, and...

Since the 1980s, emerging countries have been urged to welcome foreign capital inflows. The result has often been a pattern of surges, where excessive inflows were followed by damaging "sudden stops" and reversals. This was dramatically evident in the Asian crisis of 1997 - 1998. Since that...

This paper extends our previous paper (Aizenman, Chinn, and Ito 2008) and explores some of the unexplored questions. First, we examine the channels through which the trilemma policy configurations affect output volatility. Secondly, we investigate how trilemma policy configurations affect the...

We develop a new set of indexes of exchange rate stability, monetary policy independence, and financial market openness as the metrics for the trilemma hypothesis. In our exploration, we take a different and more nuanced approach than the previous indexes developed by Aizenman, Chinn, and Ito...

We present a theoretical framework for policy making based on the "impossible trinity" or the "trilemma" hypothesis. A simple optimization model shows that placing more weight in terms of preference for each of the three open macroeconomic policies - exchange rate stability, financial market...

Recently, a dramatic accumulation in foreign exchange reserves has been widely observed in developing countries. This paper explores the possible long-run impacts of this trend on macroeconomic variables in developing countries. We analyze a simple open economy model where increased foreign...

This paper explores the stability of the key conditioning variables accounting for real estate valuation before and after the crisis of 2008 - 2009, in a panel of 36 countries, for the period of 2005:I - 2012:IV, recognizing the incidence of global financial crisis. Our paper validates the...