The "traditional structural approach" to determining real commodity prices has relied exclusively on demand factors as the fundamentals that explain commodity prices. This framework, however, has been unable to explain the sustained weakness in commodity prices in the 1980s and 1990s. This paper...

Some of the questions that emerge from the African experiences were echoing those of capital-importing countries in other regions: To what extent are the capital inflows driven by external fundamentals? Or conversely, what role have domestic macroeconomic policies and structural reforms played...

Global financial markets are showing strains on a scale and scope not witnessed in the past three-quarters of a century. What started with elevated losses on U.S.-subprime mortgages has spread beyond the borders of the United States and the confines of the mortgage market. Many risk spreads have...

Over the last 20 years, some financial events, such as devaluations or defaults, have triggered an immediate adverse chain reaction in other countries -- which we call fast and furious contagion. Yet, on other occasions, similar events have failed to trigger any immediate international reaction....

This paper represents a neoclassical model that explains the observed empirical relationship between government spending and world commodity supplies and the real exchange rate and real commodity prices. It is shown that fiscal expansion and increasing world commodity supplies simultaneously...

The economics profession has an unfortunate tendency to view recent experience in the narrow window provided by standard datasets. With a few notable exceptions, cross-country empirical studies on financial crises typically begin in 1980 and are limited in other important respects. Yet an event...

The "engine of growth" argument holds that an economic expansion in a large country increases the growth of its trading partners. Growth in developing countries is routinely linked to growth patterns in the Industrial economies. This paper examines the role of commodity markets in transmitting...

Since the Tequila crisis of 1994-95, the Asian flu of 1997, and the Russian virus of 1998, economists have been busy producing research on the subject of contagion. Yet, few studies have examined empirically through which channels the disturbances are transmitted if there are, indeed,...

This study examines the impact capital controls had in Malaysia (1998-1999) and Thailand (1997). We aim to assess the extent to which the capital controls were effective in delivering the outcomes that motivated their imposition. We conclude that in Thailand the controls did not deliver much of...

Three of the papers in this volume address various aspects of these issues—in particular as regards the behavior and impact of sovereign credit ratings and the development of a portfolio model that lends itself to testing the vulnerability of banks. Two of the papers address issues related to...