January 2000 - No - there is no systematic association between interest rates and the outcome of speculative attacks. Drawing on evidence from a large sample of speculative attacks in industrial and developing countries, Kraay argues that high interest rates do not defend currencies against...

This paper documents nominal stability in Switzerland from 1805 to 2013 using a data set on annual price, wage and nominal GDP changes. The trends of these indicators are estimated by an unobserved-components stochastic-volatility model in order to control for short-term fluctuations and...

I study the link between real activity and deflation, taking into account measurement problems in 19th century CPI data. Replications based on modern data show that measurement problems spuriously increase the volatility of inflation as well as the number of deflationary episodes, and they lower...

I assess the stability of the monetary environment in Switzerland over the past two centuries. In order to control for transitory measurement errors, in particular in nineteenth century data, I use an unobserved-components stochastic-volatility model to extract the permanent trends from several...

Measurement error in historical data distorts descriptive analyses based on binary classifications. Modern replications of deficiencies in retrospective CPI estimates for the 19th century show that measurement issues cause misclassification of inflationary and deflationary episodes. We therefore...

We estimate a multivariate unobserved components-stochastic volatility model to explain the dynamics of a panel of six exchange rates against the US Dollar. The empirical model is based on the assumption that both countries' monetary policy strategies may be well described by Taylor rules with a...

Lack of transparency increases the probability of a banking crisis following financial liberalization. In a country where government policy is not transparent, banks may tend to increase credit above the optimal level. - Mehrez and Kaufmann investigate how transparency affects the probability of...

December 1999 - Markets have had limited success predicting crises and might do better by drawing on private information available to resident enterprise managers, who seem to know better than markets about future movements in exchange rates. Kaufmann, Mehrez, and Schmukler investigate whether...