May 2002 <p> Japan's interest rates have been compressed toward zero because of pressure coming through the foreign exchanges. Twenty years of current account surpluses have led to a huge build up of claims – mainly dollars – on foreigners. Because of ongoing fluctuations in the yen/dollar...</p>

January 2003 <p> Before the crisis of 1997-98, the East Asian economies—except for Japan but including China— pegged their currencies to the US dollar. To avoid further turmoil, the IMF now argues that these currencies should float more freely. However, our econometric estimations show that the...</p>

May 2003 <p> Rapidly growing Chinese exports are middle-tech—and increasingly high-tech—manufactured goods. China runs a huge and growing bilateral trade surplus with the United States, and the position of Japan has changed radically from being a net exporter to China in the 1980s and most of...</p>

August 2002 <p> Since the early 1980s, the smaller East Asian economies have experienced a synchronized business cycle. Before the Asian crisis of 1997-98, they pegged their exchange rates to the US dollar. Post crisis, we show that they have resumed dollar pegging on a high frequency, i.e.,...</p>

June 2000 <p> Japan's macroeconomic problem has yet to be properly diagnosed. Throughout the 1990s, policy makers could not decide on the proper macro economic measures to combat the country's severe economic slump. We propose a unified explanation, with deep historical roots, of why aggregate...</p>

April 2001 <p> For more than 20 years, the United States has run current-account deficits with the rest of the world—and is now the world’s largest international debtor. Because the world is on a dollar standard, the United States is unique in having a virtually unlimited international line of...</p>

For creditor countries on the periphery of the dollar standard such as China with current account surpluses, foreign mercantile pressure to appreciate their currencies and become more flexible is misplaced. Just the expectation of variable exchange appreciation seriously disrupts the natural...