This study sets out to develop a simplified risk premium model to explain output decline within the economies of Asia in the immediate aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. Firms are allowed to borrow from both domestic and foreign banks, with the firms¡¯ debts being loosely constrained (at...

Mismatches between the supply and the demand of safe financial assets in fast-growing emerging countries have been singled out by economic theory as drivers of international capital flows and, ultimately, global current account imbalances. This paper assesses empirically the contribution of the...

This paper investigates contagion effects. In a model with highly and lowly informed investors we show that a currency crisis in one country can trigger a crisis in another country. Portfolio losses of the highly informed investors in one country will force them to withdraw capital from the...

A key challenge for macroeconomic policy in open economies is how to simultaneously manage exchange rates, interest rates and capital account openness—the trilemma. This paper calculates a trilemma index for India and investigates its evolution over time. We find that financial integration has...

China's high corporate savings rate is commonly claimed to be a key driver for the country's large current account surplus. The mainstream explanation for high corporate savings is a combination of windfall profits in state-owned firms, especially in resource sectors, and mis-governance of...

Between 2002 and 2008, the Canadian dollar appreciated in real terms against the US dollar by 60 percent. This large change in real exchange rates between such major trading partners as Canada and the US is almost unprecedented. This paper explores the historical background to the movement of...

While flexible exchange rates facilitate stabilisation, exchange rate fluctuations can cause real volatility. This gives policy importance to the causal relationship between exchange rate depreciation and its volatility. An exchange rate may be expected to become more volatile when the...

The business of this study is to investigate what role openness play in bank efficiency with respect to income levels. From a panel of 29 countries spelling from 1987 to 2008, we provide evidence that; trade and financial openness, breed less bank efficiency in low income countries; justifying...

This paper investigates contagion effects. In a model with highly and lowly informed investors we show that a currency crisis in one country can trigger a crisis in another country. Portfolio losses of the highly informed investors in one country will force them to withdraw capital from the...

This paper extends the study of current account reversals by considering the implications for the composition of output and employment. It is shown that decreases in current account deficits imply increases in tradable relative to nontradable output and/or declines in investment. The impact of...