Traditional assessments of the impact of exchange rate depreciation or appreciation on trade have involved estimating the elasticity of trade volume to relative prices.Such studies relied heavily on aggregated trade data.More recent studies employ bilateral trade data and methodologies such as...

Efforts to spur growth in sub-Sahara Africa have been intensified amid structural and institutional constraints. Tax revenue, the chief source of funding for developmental purposes in SSA remains low and unstable. In fact, the SSA sub-region finds it difficult generating tax revenue up to 20 per...

We study the impact of exchange rate risk upon export production within an emerging economy lacking in currency forward markets. However there exists a financial asset whose price is correlated with the relevant foreign currency. We present conditions under which export production is stimulated...

We discuss how the welfare ranking of fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes in a New Open Economy Macroeconomics model depends on the interplay between the degree of exchange rate pass-through and the elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods. We identify combinations of these...

This paper argues that the Brazilian economy went recently through a process of accelerated growth driven by exports and fixed capital formation. Although the pace of growth was more robust than in the 1990 decade, we can still see the presence of macroeconomic constraints to its continuation in...

We present a new approach to study empirically the effect of the introduction of the euro on currency invoicing. Our approach uses a compositional multinomial logit model, in which currency choice depends on the characteristics of both the currency and the country. We use unique quarterly panel...

Alarmed by the persistent and large US trade deficit vis-à-vis China and the rapidly swelling Chinese foreign exchange reserves, influential US policymakers are urging the Chinese authorities to allow a substantial appreciation of the Renminbi (RMB). This paper establishes that the arguments...

In recent years wages in China have been rising and the yuan has appreciated, potentially eroding China's cost advantage in manufactures. This paper explores the evolution of China's relative unit labor costs in manufacturing over 1998-2009. Between 1998 and 2003 China's unit labor costs fell,...

This paper revisits the issue of exchange rate regimes in emerging Asia. It is divided into two main parts. The first part compares de jure and de facto exchange rate regimes in Asia over the decade 1999-2009. It finds that while Asia is home to a wide array of exchange rate regimes, there are...