This paper investigates the feasibility of creating a common-currency union consisting of 16 countries in Southern Africa. We estimate an augmented-gravity model that includes public deficit, public debt, public expenditure, inflation, and the foreign reserves position. We also integrate...

The paper reviews exchange rate options for Mercosur countries. We start from the observation that most of the countries in the region have a longstanding tendency to adopt fixed exchange rates, and ask how such a system could best be designed. The Argentine crisis has demonstrated that...

Most proposals for Asian monetary cooperation assign a special role to the Japanese yen as an anchor currency. We focus instead on the potential role of the Chinese renminbi. It becomes increasingly clear that China will assume the role of the dominant economy in the region, and that it will...

China and the U.S. have a close but complicated economic relationship. This note provides a fuller picture of the tightening embrace between the two countries - in terms of flows of goods and services, financial capital and people - and discusses the potential flashpoints in this relationship....

China and the U.S. have a close but complicated economic relationship. This note provides a fuller picture of the tightening embrace between the two countries – in terms of flows of goods and services, financial capital and people – and discusses the potential flashpoints in this...

While to an economist, business person or policy maker, movement of goods, services and foreign direct investment should logically be covered in the same agreement, history has not allowed this to happen. International legal regimes are spinning into greater fragmentation as the number of...

The real effective exchange rate (REER) is one of the most cited statistical constructs in open-economy macroeconomics. We show that the models used to compute these numbers are not rich enough to allow for the rising importance of global value chains. Moreover, because different sectors within...

The U.S.-China economic relationship has reached a critical juncture. Over the past year, the U.S. has imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports and China has retaliated, raising tariffs on U.S. exports. The U.S. concerns that underpin these bilateral trade tensions stem from...

This paper documents the impact of the U.S-China trade war on firms worldwide and disentangles the transmission channels involved. Based on a quarterly and up-to-date panel of thousands of listed firms in 40 countries, I establish that firms with export exposure to China have had a decline in...

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership will impact on substantive market regulations in a wide a range of areas bearing on market access, both by establishing substantive new horizontal and sectoral standards and by establishing requirements regarding...