Adverse foreign output shocks have a sizable impact on the welfare of small open economies. Therefore, one of the key roles of monetary policy in those economies is to minimize the welfare losses arising from such shocks. To assess the welfare impact of external shocks under different monetary...

I identify new patterns in countries' economic performance over the 2007-2014 period based on proximity through distance, trade, and finance to the US subprime mortgage and Eurozone debt crisis areas. To understand the causes of the cross-country variation, I develop an open economy model with...

We analyze implications of inflation persistence for business cycle dynamics following terms of trade and risk-premium shocks in a small open economy, under fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes. We show that the country's adjustment paths are slow and cyclical if there is a significant...

This paper intends to fill two gaps in the Optimal Currency Area literature. First of all, Mundell's original idea has very little formalmodel theoretical underpinning. Second, it almost exclusively views countries contemplating monetary unification as single economies. We question this view and...

This paper assesses the prospects for monetary integration between Emerging East Asian (EEA) economies. Our empirical analysis is based on a simple analytical framework for currency unions of small open economies, with a focus on the conduct of monetary policy in the presence of different types...

Many economists believe that, while openness to trade increases average GDP growth rates, it also raises output volatility by exposing countries to terms-oftrade shocks. This view does not take into account that, as suggested by a recent strand of the financial fragility literature, commercial...

How do financial development and financial integration interact? We focus on Japan's Great Recession after 1990 to study this question. Regional differences in banking integration affected how the recession spread across the country: financing frictions for credit-dependent firms were more...

We construct a simple firm-based model of global interdependence. We show how extremely strong statistical correlations can naturally develop between countries even if the interconnections between those countries remain very weak. Potential policy implications of this result are also discussed.

The authors investigate financial spillovers across countries with an emphasis on the effect of shocks to financial conditions in the United States on financial conditions and economic activity in Canada. These questions are addressed within a global vector autoregression model. The framework...

How do financial development and financial integration interact? We focus on Japan's Great Recession after 1990 to study this question. Regional differences in banking integration affected how the recession spread across the country: financing frictions for credit-dependent firms were more...