Real exchange rate policy can potentially be utilized to target the trade balance and/or development through capital accumulation. However, the presence of distributional conflict and the trade-off between current and future trade imbalances complicates matters. I show that policy assignment...

Obstfeld and Rogoff (2001) propose that trade frictions lie behind key puzzles in international macroeconomics. We take a dynamic multicountry model of international trade, production, and investment to data from 19 countries to assess this proposition quantitatively. Using the framework...