The purpose of this paper is to analyze the macroeconomic effects of trade policy, when the instrument is a voluntary export restraint (VER), on both the home (imposing) country and the foreign (targeted) country. The innovation in the paper is the analysis of trade policy when debt servicing is...

Using a sample of 110 developed and developing countries for the period 1990-2004 we analyze the empirical characteristics of systemic sudden stops (3S) in capital flows --understood as large and largely unexpected capital account contractions that occur in periods of systemic turmoil -- and the...

The paper analyzes the choice of an exchange rate regime for a small open economy indebted in foreign currency, incorporating the ¯nancial accelerator. Conventional wisdom suggests that floating regimes should insulate the economy from real shocks. I show that this result depends on the...

The paper argues that global financial factors played an important role in the capital-inflow episode in Emerging Market economies (EMs), during the early part of the 1990s, and clearly in the Sudden Stop (of capital inflows) crises that took place after the 1998 Russian crisis. Moreover, the...

This paper extends MURPHY's (1991) analysis of alternative lending arrangements. We incorporate the capital accumulation into the two sector model and departure from traditional model of this kind by making two assumptions. One of them is to postulate rigid wage and unemployment, and the another...

Currency board (CB) was a corner solution for Argentine hyperinflation, however its balance is controversial. How does a CB work as a long run regime? After evaluating the result of ten years CB regime, we obtain important lessons for a monetary union and for dollarization proposals. We discuss:...

We offer an alternative explanation for the fall of Argentina's Convertibility Program based on the country's vulnerability to Sudden Stops in capital flows. Sudden Stops are typically accompanied by a substantial increase in the real exchange rate that breaks havoc in countries that are heavily...

I study a small open economy in which elections affect and are affected by capital inflows. Two candidates, one favoring workers and another favoring entrepreneurs, run for office; the winner chooses taxes, which affect investment returns. A pro labor victory results in a "sudden stop" in...

In standard models of the balance of payments, crises occur when investors begin to doubt the credibility of the government's commitment to its exchange rate policy. In this paper, we develop an alternative model in which balance of payments crises occur even if the credibility of government...

With heterogeneous productivity and sticky prices in the short run, exchange rate changes can generate real effects on agents in the economy; the result is that the currency regime becomes a policy variable amenable to political competition. This paper discusses how special interests and...