Both academic researchers and policymakers posit a unique role for the US in the inter-national financial system. This paper investigates the characteristics and determinants of US cross-border financial flows and examines how these contrast with those of the rest of the world. We analyse the...

Central banks actively engage in sterilized foreign exchange market intervention despite numerous empirical studies indicating that these operations do not systematically affect the exchange rate. Are these policies misguided and central bankers irrational? Or is evidence showing the...

Based on a classification of countries and territories according to their regime and anchor currency choice, the study considers the two major currency blocs of the present world. A nested logit regression suggests that long-term structural economic variables determine a given country’s...

Recent trends suggest the world economy may be tending towards an equilibrium with two distinct trading blocs, each internally integrated, but with significant isolation between the blocs. This paper uses a quantitative theory to explore how far this bifurcation would need to go to pose a threat...

How does global risk impact the world economy? In taking up this question, we focus on the dollar’s role in the international adjustment mechanism. First, we rely on high-frequency surprises in the price of gold to identify the effects of global risk shocks in a Bayesian Proxy VAR model. They...

The paper provides a measure of exchange rate anchoring behaviour across 149 emerging market and developing economies for the 1980-2010 period. An extension of the Frankel and Wei (2008) methodology is used to determine whether exchange rates are pegged or floating, and in the case of pegs, to...

We argue that criticism concerning the Chinese dollar peg is misplaced as no predictable link exists between the exchange rate and the trade balance of an international creditor economy. The stable nominal yuan/dollar rate is argued to have stabilized Chinese, East Asian and global growth....

Based on a classification of countries and territories according to their regime and anchor currency choice, the study considers the two major currency blocs of the present world. A nested logit regression suggests that long-term structural economic variables determine a given country's currency...

This paper shows that dollar appreciations lead to declines in GDP, investment, and credit to the private sector in emerging market economies (EMEs). These results imply that the transmission of dollar movements to EMEs occurs mainly through financial conditions rather than net exports, contrary...

This paper analyses the impact of the shift away from a US dollar focus of systemically important emerging market economies (EMEs) on configurations between the US dollar, the euro and the yen. Given the difficulty that fixed or managed US dollar exchange rate regimes remain pervasive and...