What determines sovereign risk? We study the London bond market from the 1870s to the 1930s. Our findings support conventional wisdom concerning the limited credibility of the interwar gold standard. Before 1914, gold standard adherence effectively signalled credibility and shaved 40 to 60 basis...

The interwar period was marked by the end of the classical gold standard regime and new levels of macroeconomic disorder in the world economy. The interwar disorder often is linked to policies inconsistent with the constraint of the open-economy trilemma the inability of policymakers...

What determines sovereign risk? We study the London bond market from the 1870s to the 1930s. Our findings support conventional wisdom concerning the low credibility of the interwar gold standard. Before 1914 gold standard adherence effectively signalled credibility and shaved up to 30 basis...

The interwar period was marked by the end of the classical gold standard regime and new levels of macroeconomic disorder in the world economy. The interwar disorder is often linked to policies inconsistent with the constraint of the open-economy trilemma - the inability of policy-makers...

This paper studies the mechanisms of international payments adjustment at work under the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates between 1945 and 1971. I argue that two market failures - imperfect international capital mobility and imperfect wage-price flexibility - are central to...

In this paper we connect the events of the last twelve months, "The Panic of 2008" as it has been called, to the demand for international reserves. In previous work, we have shown that international reserve demand can be rationalized by a central bank's desire to backstop the broad money supply...

In this paper I focus on two specific hazard areas in the transition from Stage Two to Stage Three of European economic and monetary union (EMU), as well as on some key problems of Stage Three that EMU’s monetary and fiscal structures appear ill-prepared to handle. The transitional hazards are...

The exchange-rate regime is often seen as constrained by the monetary policy trilemma, which imposes a stark tradeoff among exchange stability, monetary independence, and capital market openness. Yet the trilemma has not gone without challenge. Some (e.g., Calvo and Reinhart 2001, 2002) argue...

The exchange-rate regime is often seen as constrained by the monetary policy trilemma, which imposes a stark tradeoff among exchange stability, monetary independence, and capital market openness. Yet the trilemma has not gone without challenge. Some (e.g., Calvo and Reinhart 2001, 2002) argue...

The exchange-rate regime is often seen as constrained by the monetary policy trilemma, which imposes a stark trade-off among exchange stability, monetary independence, and capital market openness. Yet the trilemma has not gone without challenge. Some (e.g., Calvo and Reinhart 2001, 2002) argue...