Rents generated by long-lasting government policies may be capitalized as assets. With life-cycle saving behavior, these rents raise international indebtedness. Shifts in policy that affect their capitalized value generate correlated movements in the current account and the real exchange rate....

We describe a methodology to infer the extent of international technology diffusion and to decompose the sources of growth by nation. We compare the results from alternative implementation: of this methodology. A major finding is that the extent of international diffusion is substantial, with...

Sanctions are measures that one party (the sender) uses to influence another (the target). Sanctions, or the threat of sanctions, have been used by governments to alter the human rights, trade, or foreign policies of other governments. The authors develop notions of the sender's and target's...

A number of macroeconomic models of open economies under flexible exchange rate assume a strong version of perfect capital mobility which implies that currency speculation commands no risk premium. If this assumption is dropped a number of important results no longer obtain. First, the exchange...

Free trade is not optimal for a small country that faces uncertain terms of trade if some factors are immobile - ex post, and markets for contingent claims are incomplete. The government can improve social welfare by using commercial policy that serves as a partial substitute for missing...