The right response to a speculative attack on the domestic currency by monetary authorities in a country with liabilities in US dollars has been a matter of hot debate among academics and policy makers especially after the East Asian Crisis. Using a modified version of the currency crisis model...

The paper investigates the impact of foreign currency lending in the Hungarian corporate sector on real investment. Using a rich micro dataset we consider two questions. First we test whether foreign currency (FX) lending – by lowering user cost and easing liquidity constraints – contributed...

Understanding differences in business cycle phenomena between Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and industrialized countries has been at the center of recent research on macroeconomic fluctuations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the importance of certain credit market imperfections...

We use household survey data from Hungary to analyse the determinants of foreign currency (FX) borrowing. We do not find evidence that Hungarian FX borrowers are better educated, wealthier or more risk-loving than their peers. In fact, FX borrowing is a common phenomenon driven mostly by...

This paper outlines a framework for analysing the interaction between financial frictions at the household and firm level, liability dollarization and optimal monetary policy in a small, open economy subject to productivity and capital inflow shocks. It is found that, first, for the shocks under...