This paper employs newly constructed measures for productivity differentials, external imbalances, and commodity terms of trade to estimate a panel cointegrating relationship between real exchange rates and a set of fundamentals for a sample of 48 industrial countries and emerging markets. It...

This paper attempts to provide a perspective on real exchange rate developments following the inception of the EMS. The focus is on structural determinants of real exchange rates, notably the behavior of tradables and nontradable prices and productivity. It is found that changes in the relative...

International financial integration allows countries to become net creditors or net debtors with respect to the rest of the world. In this paper, we show that a small set of fundamentals-shifts in relative output levels, the stock of public debt and demographic factors-can do much to explain the...

This paper examines the rationale for the imposition of fiscal rules as a way to reduce budgetary imbalances. It presents theoretical arguments for the existence of a “fiscal deficit bias” and the empirical evidence on the economic, political and institutional factors leading to this bias....

The relationship between international payments and the real exchange rate—the “transfer problem”—is a classic question in international economics. We use new data on countries’ net external positions together with real exchange rate data to shed light on this question. We present a...

This paper examines the link between the net foreign asset position, the trade balance and the real exchange rate. In particular, it decomposes the impact of a country's net foreign asset position ("external wealth") on its long-run real exchange rate into two mechanisms: the relation between...

This paper studies determinants and effects of capital controls using a panel of 61 developed and developing countries. The results suggest that capital account restrictions are more likely to be in place in countries with low income, a large share of government, and where the central bank is...

This paper investigates the behavior of Korean trade flows during the last three decades and presents estimates of aggregate export and import equations. In particular, it considers different choices for scale and price variables and assesses the relative merits of these alternative...

We construct estimates of external assets and liabilities for 145 countries for the period 1970-2004. We describe our estimation methods and present key features of the data at the country and the global level. We focus on trends in net and gross external positions, and the composition of...