This paper has attempted to estimate the J-curve phenomenon for Azerbaijan using quarterly industry-level data over the period 2000-2009. A weighted average of the production indexes of Azerbaijan’s four major trading partners, which account for 70% of Azerbaijan’s total trade turnover, was...

This paper seeks empirical evidence for the J-curve and the Marshal-Lerner condition for Azerbaijan. The results suggest that a real depreciation of the Azerbaijani Manat would cause a decline in the balance of trade in the short-run and an increase in the long-run. When including the prices of...

Explicit deposit insurance (DI) is widely held to be a crucial element of modern financial safety nets. For this reason, establishing a DI system is frequently recommended by outside experts to countries undergoing reform. Predictably, DI systems have proliferated in the developing world. The...

The carry trade strategy involves selling forward currencies that are at a forward premium and buying forward currencies that are at a forward discount. We compare the payoffs to the carry trade applied to two different portfolios. The first portfolio consists exclusively of developed country...

The distributional effects of the minimum wage are analysed in a model where skilled and unskilled labour enter the production function. It is argued that distributional goals are best achieved by letting the labour market clear and achieving redistribution through taxes and transfers.

When Argentine sovereign default in December 2001 led to a collapse of the peso, the burden of dollar debt became demonstrably unsustainable. But it was not clear what restructuring was feasible, nor when. Eventually, in 2005 after a delay of more than three years, a supermajority of creditors...

The Balassa-Samuelson model, which explains real exchange rate movements in terms of sectoral productivities, rests on two components. First, the model implies that the relative price of non-traded goods in each country should reflect the relative productivity of labour in the traded and...