Many developing countries have adopted investor-friendly policies in recent years in order to attract export-oriented foreign direct investment (FDI). The effects of these policies on the external accounts have been largely ignored. This paper endogenizes FDI inflows in a structuralist general...

This paper explores aspects of increased informalization in developing countries with the help of a modified specific factors model with a fixed nominal wage in the formal sector, which is assumed to have a “lighthouse” effect on the informal sector wage. Both sectors produce a tradable good...

This paper extends the model developed by Krugman and Taylor (1978) to take into account interesting features of the evolving structure of global trade. The growing presence of transnational production chains and differential pricing behaviour of exports destined for industrial and developing...

An important body of literature explores the political economy reasons underlying delays in macroeconomic stabilization. This paper develops a framework to analyze conflict between two groups of economic actors, one that has an endowment of internationally tradable goods and another that is...

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...

Standard open economy macro models with unemployment predict a contractionary short-run effect of international capital inflows. Empirical evidence, on the other hand, often associates such inflows with short-term booms, and developing country policy makers frequently go out of their way to...

COVID-19 constitutes a health crisis which has rapidly turned into a social and economic crisis. This paper briefly explores some of the issues raised by the combination of a massive supply-side shock with a massive demand-side shock, and the interaction of these with the exponential dynamics of...

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the effects of the real exchange rate (RER) on international trade, economic development and growth. We summarize the main conceptual issues, discuss the relevance of the RER as an instrument of development policy, provide an...

We study the extent to which countries undergo structural change during and after episodes of sustained investment surges. In particular, we explore the evolution of trade flows, considering (i) exports sophistication or complexity, (ii) exports diversification, and (iii) capital goods imports....

Employing propensity score reweighting and event-based strategies, we provide evidence that sustained real exchange rate (RER) misalignments have significant effects on economic development: positive on GDP per capita and capital stock in the case of undervaluation, and negative on the capital...