To what extent do national borders and national currencies impose costs that segment markets across countries? To answer this question the authors use a dataset with product-level retail prices and wholesale costs for a large grocery chain with stores in the United States and Canada. They...

Rebalancing growth patterns of Asian economies is an important component of the overall rebalancing effort that will be required in the world economy. In this paper, I provide an empirical characterization of the composition of GDP levels and growth rates for the key emerging markets and other...

This paper investigates the feasibility of creating a common-currency union consisting of 16 countries in Southern Africa. We estimate an augmented-gravity model that includes public deficit, public debt, public expenditure, inflation, and the foreign reserves position. We also integrate...

There are significant effects of changing demographics on economic indicators: growth in GDP especially, but also the current account balance and gross capital formation. The 15-24 age group appears to be one of the key age groups in these effects, with increases in that age group exerting...

The closed and open economy literatures both work on evaluating the role of real rigidities, but in parallel. This paper brings the two literatures together. We use international price data and exchange rate shocks to evaluate the importance of real rigidities in price setting. We show that,...

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 and the U.S. have a close but complicated economic relationship. This note provides a fuller picture of the tightening embrace between the two countries – in terms of flows of goods and services, financial capital and people – and discusses the potential flashpoints in this...

This paper examines the determinants of cross-border flows of U.S. dollar banknotes, using a new panel data set of bilateral flows between the United States and 103 countries from 1990 to 2007. We show that a gravity model explains international flows of currency as well as it explains...

The use of different currencies in the invoicing of international trade transactions plays a major role in the international transmission of economic fluctuations. Existing studies argue that an exporter’s invoicing choice reflects structural aspects of its industry, such as market share and...

Why are foreigners willing to invest almost $2 trillion per year in the United States? The answer affects if the existing pattern of global imbalances can persist and if the United States can continue to finance its current account deficit without a major change in asset prices and returns. This...