This paper describes some experiments with the construction of relatively simple indices which summarise in a systematic and objective way information about emerging economies currently under pressure in financial markets and those vulnerable to such pressure in the future. A survey of the...

This book is an up-to-date, authoritative and comprehensive analysis of the key issues and challenges facing regional currency area projects in the context of financial globalization. The authors focus on several central issues that emerged during the experiences of the 1990s and 2000s: exchange...

The simultaneous occurrence of devaluation and recession in Mexico in 1995, as well as in the East Asian economies more recently, appears to contradict the conventional view that devaluations are expansionary. Moreover, a sizeable theoretical and empirical literature also argues that, contrary...

The paper studies the role of real exchange rates and exchange rate policies in explaining differences in the economic performance in the CFA franc countries, with their fixed exchange rate regime, and another group of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with more flexible arrangements....

This paper estimates the Balassa-Samuelson effects for 11 countries in central and eastern Europe on a disaggregated set of quarterly data covering the period from the mid-1990s to the first quarter of 2008. The Balassa-Samuelson effects are clearly present and explain around 24% of inflation...

The paper reviews the recent conduct of monetary policy and central banks' interest rate setting behaviour in emerging market economies. Using a standard open economy reaction function, we test whether central banks in emerging economies react to changes in inflation, output gaps and the...

A considerable amount of theoretical literature suggests that, contrary to the predictions of textbook analysis, exchange rate devaluations may be contractionary rather than expansionary. This hypothesis has also received considerable empirical support. However, prior statistical analyses of the...

Discussion of exchange rate policy in Asia would benefit from appropriate measures of exchange rates on a multilateral basis. The purpose of this paper is to refine the construction of the effective exchange rates (EERs) for Asian economies, to make allowances for the role of Hong Kong SAR as an...