The coincidence of banking and currency crises associated with the Asian financial crisis has drawn renewed attention to causal and common factors linking the two phenomena. In this paper, we analyze the incidence and underlying causes of banking and currency crises in 90 industrial and...

Questions over the role of the IMF in the economic development and adjustment in developing countries have been the topic of intensive research and debate in recent years. Although most studies find that participation in an IMF program helps facilitate balance of payments adjustment, research in...

Studies of central bank intervention are complicated by the fact that we typically observe intervention only during periods of turbulent exchange markets. Furthermore, entering the market during these particular periods is a conscious “self-selection” choice made by the intervening central...

Japanese official intervention in the foreign exchange market is of by far the largest magnitude in the world, despite little or no evidence that it is effective in moving exchange rates. Up until recently, however, official data on intervention has not been available for Japan. This paper...

Central banks actively engage in sterilized foreign exchange market intervention despite numerous empirical studies indicating that these operations do not systematically affect the exchange rate. Are these policies misguided and central bankers irrational? Or is evidence showing the...

Using a unique intervention "news" data set, this paper investigates the impact of ECB intervention and intervention-related "news" (newswire reports) on the euro exchange rate. A time-series study of "news" generated by ECB officials and market participants regarding intervention and the value...

This paper investigates the output effects of IMF-supported stabilization programs, especially those introduced at the time of a severe balance of payments/currency crisis. Using a panel data set over the 1975-97 period and covering 67 developing and emerging-market economies (with 461 IMF...

The 1989 Reserve Bank of New Zealand Act provides a natural experiment in which the effects of institutional change on economic relationships can be studied. The Act set price stability as the single objective of monetary policy and gave the Bank great independence in achieving that goal. We...

This article formulates and tests for New Zealand a model of exchange rate determination focusing on non-tradeable goods and terms-of-trade shifts. We emphasise the equilibrium properties of this framework and, in this context, estimate an error correction model where adjustment in response to...