The U.S. has significant interests involved in the world debt problem. It affects the profitability and even the stability of our banking system, but the debt problem also matters because debt service requires trade surpluses for debt- ors. Debtor countries have made their goods extra...

In the past fifteen years key exchange rates have moved in larger and more persistent ways than advocates of flexible rates in the late 1960s would have left anyone free to imagine. Certainly there was no expectation of constancy for nominal exchange rates. But real exchange rate movements of 30...

The appreciation of the U.S. dollar over the past five years opens important areas of research. The fact of a large and persistent real appreciation poses a challenge for equilibrium theorists to uncover the change in fundamentals and seems to support the role of long-term wage contracts in...

The essay is an extended version of the Frank D. Graham Lecture presented at Princeton University in May 1985. It discusses the interaction of inflation and exchange rate policy in a variety of contexts. Four different settings are used to highlight that role: the experiments with exchange rate...

The special role of money in the hyper inflation process, and particularly in the stabilization phase, has now been reconsidered in a bestselling essay by Sargent. The message is that credible fiscal stabilizationis the sine qua non of stopping inflation. This is definitely not viewed as being...

The exchange rate consistent with high employment and a balanced current account are rarely the same as the rates consistent with asset market equilibrium at interest rates policy makers wish to prevail. Whenever rates are freely determined the assets markets prevail and the results may be hard...

The paper is a survey of PPP theory and evidence prepared for the New Palgrave dictionary of economics. Following a statement of the absolute and relative versions of the theory, there is a brief sketch of the history of thought with emphasis on Cassel and the monetary approach. A theoretical...

The paper reviews macroeconomic events and policies in Argentina in the period 1981-1984. In that period inflation,that had decelerated to less than 100 percent, resumed and reached irore than 600 percent in mid-1984. The real exchange rate that had appreciated in the policy of disinflation...

The paper investigates the sources of debt and debt difficulties for a group of Latin American countries. It is argued that external shocks -- oil, interest rates, world recession and the fall in real commodity prices -- cannot account by themselves for the problems. Budget deficits that...

The paper was prepared for the NBER-IMF conference on Exchange Rate Policy and Interdependence. It reviews the experience with flexible exchange rates and the main policy alternatives that have been suggested. The theoretical part develops a modern open economy macro model with an emphasis on...