This Paper characterizes the integration patterns of international currency unions (such as the CFA Franc zone and the East Caribbean Currency Area). We empirically explore different features of currency unions, and compare them both to countries with sovereign monies, and to regions within...

A gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade. The panel data set used includes bilateral observations for five years spanning 1970 through 1990 for 186 countries. In this data set, there are over one hundred...

This paper develops a procedure to rank-order countries and commodities using disaggregated US imports data. It finds strong evidence that both countries and commodities can be ranked, consistent with the ‘product cycle’ hypothesis. Countries habitually begin to export goods to the United...

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...

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...

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...