This paper contributes to the literature on the effect of financial openness by investigating the factors and determinants which drive the income share to self-employed labor during financial liberalization. The question of the precise impact of liberalization on the share of the self-employed...

This paper examines the determinants of cross-border flows of U.S. dollar banknotes, using a new panel data set of bilateral flows between the United States and 103 countries from 1990 to 2007. We show that a gravity model explains international flows of currency as well as it explains...

This paper considers the general equilibrium relationship between exchange rates and global imbalances. It emphasizes that the exchange rate is not a primitive but an equilibrium price determined by the policy mix. It uses extensions of the two-country Obstfeld-Rogoff model to analyze the...

We propose a new Quantity Dual Approach (QDA) to estimate the contribution of nontraded goods to Real Exchange Rate (RER) fluctuations. This method is immune to the bias resulting from the non-inclusion of some goods in CPI calculations and can be applied even in a stringent data environment...

Current account imbalances and their sustainability are among the most debated international policy issues. Through the recently designed External Balance Assessment methodology (EBA), the IMF estimates the impact of several countries' fundamentals and policies on their current account balance,...

Motivated by the observed international reserve hoarding behavior in the post-1997 crisis period, we explore the Mrs Machlup's wardrobe hypothesis and the related keeping-up-with-the-Joneses argument. It is conceived that, in addition to psychological reasons, holding a relatively high level of...

This paper considers the general equilibrium relationship between exchange rates and global imbalances. It emphasizes that the exchange rate is not a primitive but an equilibrium price determined by the policy mix. It uses extensions of the two-country Obstfeld-Rogoff model to analyze the...

This working paper was written by Yin-wong Cheung (University of California, Santa Cruz) and XingWang Qian (University of California, Santa Cruz).Motivated by the observed international reserve hoarding behavior in the post-1997 crisis period, we explore the Mrs Machlup’s wardrobe hypothesis...

It is widely observed that primary commodity prices comove. A parallel literature asserts that correlation risk matters for financial returns. Our novel study connects these topics and presents evidence that commodity correlation risk is both non-constant and important for returns. We reconsider...