We propose an integrated fiscal and monetary approach to economic stabilisation policy in small open financially integrated economies (SOFIE's), using fiscal policy to achieve external balance at a targeted exchange rate. This approach overcomes the conundrum of the conventional Mundell-Fleming...

This paper illustrates how stress tests of banking systems may be designed to evaluate banks' reaction to shocks of increasing intensity, up to the point where regulatory norms are breached, or banks become insolvent. This approach offers useful insight and guidance for regulatory policy and...

The remarkable surge in Chinese economic productivity, especially since the turn of the century, has been of material benefit to every economy in the world trading system, and the Caribbean has shared in those benefits. The most substantial benefit to the Caribbean from the relationship with...

The currencies of Caribbean countries have now outlived their usefulness, and have become a liability. They were devised at a time when most payments were made using notes and coin, issued in distant metropolitan centres. Scarcity of the means of payment was a severe hindrance to commerce. In...

This chapter explores the tools available to policy-makers in small developing countries, to ensure balance in the short run and growth in the long run. Our point of departure is the "Washington consensus", including policies for fiscal reform, exchange rate adjustment, trade liberalization,...

This chapter draws inferences from the recent literature on open-economy macroeconomics about policies to achieve sustainable economic growth with stable external account balances and low inflation in small developing economies

This study investigates the role of price competitiveness and other factors such as global aggregate demand, investment and technology, on the growth of tradable output in the Caribbean and Central America. We use a measure of price competitiveness which reflects the structure of the tradables...

This paper discusses the institutional arrangements for exchange rate targeting in Barbados and the critical role they played in the policy response to its balance of payments crisis of 1991-92. The framework featured ongoing cooperation between the central bank and the Ministry of Finance, and...

Over the last decade or more micro price studies have proliferated. In this paper a survey of this literature reveals alternative theoretical explanations of sticky prices: (a) sellers review and change prices only at predetermined intervals (except under extraordinary circumstances), so that...