This paper examines whether financial aggregates provide information useful for predicting the subsequent behavior of real output and inflation. We employ vector autoregression (VAR) techniques to summarize the information in the data, providing evidence on the incremental forecasting value of...

A country's financial system is internationally illiquid if its potential short-term obligations in foreign currency exceed the amount of foreign currency it can have access to in short notice. This condition may be necessary and sufficient for financial crises and/or exchange rate collapses...

We present a simple model that can account for the main features of recent financial crises in emerging markets. The international illiquidity of the domestic financial system is at the center of the problem. Illiquid banks are a necessary and a sufficient condition for financial crises to...

U.S. velocity of base money exhibits three distinct trends since 1950. After rising steadily for thirty years, it flattens out in the 1980s and falls substantially in the 1990s. This paper explores whether the observed secular movements in velocity can be accounted for exclusively by endogenous...

Causal analysis in multiple equation models often revolves around the evaluation of the effects of an exogenous shift in a structural equation. When taking into account the uncertainty implied by the shape of the likelihood, we argue that how normalization is implemented matters for inferential...