Government is often considered the safe sector of an open economy that provides households with insurance against external risk exposure. Among highly integrated economies, however, households should be able to exploit common financial markets to insure themselves. In this paper we examine the...

Even though external debt can play a buffer role against adverse shocks to assist consumption smoothing, it may also exert a volatility amplifying effect, depending on the currency of denomination and the cyclicality of the borrower’s exchange rate. We empirically investigate the nexus between...

There is an increasing endorsement for the yen s depreciation as a means to fight the ongoing deflation in Japan. The idea of generating inflation via depreciation relies on the assumption that exporters pass-through most of the effect of the exchange rate changes to the Japanese importers and...

There is an increasing endorsement for the yen's depreciation as a means to fight the ongoing deflation in Japan. The idea of generating inflation via depreciation relies on the assumption that exporters pass-through most of the effect of the exchange rate changes to the Japanese importers and...

This study reconsiders the well-known cross-country positive association between prices and income by focusing on heterogeneity between the inter-developed-country and inter-developing-country relationships. Empirical results reveal not only that developed and developing countries differ in...

An empirical measure of trade openness is defined as the ratio of total trade to GDP, and represents a convenient variable routinely used for cross-country studies on a variety of issues. However, the effects that the crude measure captures remain ambiguous, making it difficult to interpret the...

Currency mismatch makes a debtor country suffer from domestic depreciation by magnifying the burden of its external debt. Since external debt can be paid back by exporting more than importing, a crucial channel for inducing recovery is net export. It is not warranted, however, that domestic...

For emerging economies, borrowing abroad is a double-edged sword: it can buffer against adverse economic shocks and smooth their domestic consumption; however, it can also amplify volatility in consumption, depending on the currency in which the debt is denominated and cyclicality in the...

We evaluate the recent evidence for real interest parity, focusing on long-term yields. Examining the data on financial instruments of various maturities across the G7 countries, we find substantial differences in the degree of real interest equalization measured at different horizons. In...

We examine the relationship between market structure and the persistence of U.S. dollar-based sectoral real exchange rates for fourteen OECD countries. Our empirical results based on disaggregated data suggest that differences in market structure significantly determine the rates at which...