We provide the first empirical tests for financial protectionism, defined as a nationalistic change in banks’ lending behaviour, as the result of public intervention, which leads domestic banks either to lend less or at higher interest rates to foreigners. We use a bank-level panel data set...

In contrast to earlier recessions, the monetary regimes of many small economies have not changed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. This is due in part to the fact that many small economies continue to use hard exchange rate fixes, a reasonably durable regime. However, most of the...

Gravity-based cross-sectional evidence indicates that currency unions stimulate trade; cross-sectional evidence indicates that trade stimulates output. This paper estimates the effect that currency union has, via trade, on output per capita. We use economic and geographic data for over 200...

We study empirically the macroeconomic effects of an explicit de jure quantitative goal for monetary policy. Quantitative goals take three forms: exchange rates, money growth rates, and inflation targets. We analyse the effects on inflation of both having a quantitative target, and of hitting a...

This Paper is an empirical study of fiscal policy in countries with extreme monetary regimes. We study members of multilateral currency unions, dollarized countries that officially use the money of another country, and countries using currency boards. We find that belonging to an international...

A country’s suitability for entry into a currency union depends on a number of economic conditions. These include, inter alia, the intensity or trade with other potential members of the currency union, and the extent to which domestic business cycles are correlated with those of the other...

We analyse banking crises using a panel of macroeconomic and financial data for more than 100 developing countries from 1975 through 1992. We find that banking crises in emerging markets are strongly associated with adverse external conditions. In particular, high Northern interest rates are...

This paper argues that the theoretical foundations for the gravity equation are general, while the empirical performance of the gravity equation is specific to the type of goods examined. Most existing theory for the gravity equation depends on the assumption of differentiated goods. We show...

This paper applies the Meese-Rogoff (1983a) methodology to the stock market. We compare the out-of-sample forecasting accuracy of various time-series and fundamentals-based models of aggregate stock prices. We stick as close as possible to the original Meese-Rogoff sample and methodology. Just...

Currency crises tend to be regional; they affect countries in geographic proximity. This suggests that patterns of international trade are important in understanding how currency crises spread, above and beyond any macroeconomic phenomena. We provide empirical support for this hypothesis. Using...