Hong Kong's currency is pegged to the US dollar in a currency board arrangement. In autumn 2003, the Hong Kong dollar appreciated from close to 7.80 per US dollar to 7.70, as investors feared that the currency board would be abandoned. In the wake of this appreciation, the monetary authorities...

This paper analyzes institutional arrangements for exchange rate systems and reviews what we know. It looks at the foreign exchange market, different balance of payment situations in which countries find themselves and the necessary exchange rate adjustments. It studies the options that are...

We estimate a variety of exchange rate elasticities of international tourism. We show that, in addition to the bilateral exchange rate between the tourism origin and destination countries, the exchange rate vis-à-vis the US dollar is also an important driver of tourism flows and pricing. The...

Bolivia has achieved noteworthy success over the past 15 years in raising incomes, reducing poverty, and maintaining macroeconomic stability by deploying commodity revenues to finance transfers, public investment, and state-led development, using an exchange rate peg as a policy anchor. However,...

This paper extends the single-asset target-zone model pioneered by Krugman (1991) to include both bonds and equities. The new model provides a convenient framework for investigating a ‘puzzle' recently noted in Hong Kong. While the economy has experienced persistently lower interest rates...

In a target-zone exchange rate system, both fundamentals and exchange rate expectations, reflected in interest rate differentials between the domestic and anchor currency, determine the exchange rate. However, the scope to capture exchange rate expectations is limited when policy rates are close...

This paper proposes a quasi-bounded process for exchange rate dynamics within a target zone, consistent with a credible exchange rate band in which the exchange rate cannot breach the strong-side limit while the weak-side limit is only accessible under restricted conditions of the relationship...

Currency risk is one of the two components of the total interest rate differential. Hard pegs, such as currency boards, are meant to reduce or even eliminate currency risk, thus, reducing domestic interest rates. This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of the currency risk premium...

It is frequently argued that credit rating agencies (CRAs) have acted procyclically in their rating of sovereign debt in the European Monetary Union (EMU). They are believed to have under-rated sovereign risk in the early years of EMU, when integrated financial markets provided easier access to...