Evidence of excess volatilities of asset prices compared with those of market fundamentals is often attributed to speculative bubbles. This study examines the sense in which speculative bubbles could in theory lead to excess volatility, hut it demonstrates that some of the variance hounds...

Typical evaluations of the choice of exchange rate regime employ a criterion function that depends on the real performance of the economy, and they focus on regimes that are expected to last indefinitely. This latter feature is strongly contradicted by the transitory nature of actual...

This paper develops an open-economy macroeconomic model which can be used to interpret the observed fluctuations in output, inventories,prices,and exchange rates in the medium-sized economies of the world. The model is consistent with the major empirical regularities that have been discovered in...

The paper develops a general stochastic macroeconomic model which can be used to study the international transmission of disturbances under alternative exchange-rate systems. Four types of exchange-rate systems are considered: uniform flexible exchange rates, uniform fixed exchange rates,...

This paper develops a simple new methodology to test financial market integration. Our technique is tightly based on a general intertemporal asset-pricing model, and relies on estimating and comparing expected discount rates across asset markets. The technique is undemanding in terms of both...

This is the 2004 (Volume 51) Special Issue of IMF Staff Papers, which includes 6 selected papers (from more than 20) that were presented at the IMF's Fourth Annual Research Conference, November 6-7, 2003