Recent empirical research on the effects of monetary policy shocks on exchange rate fluctuations have encountered the exchange rate puzzle and the forward discount bias puzzle. The exchange rate puzzle is the tendency of the domestic currency (of non-U.S. G-7 countries) to depreciate against the...

Solow residuals are used as proxies for productivity shocks in many empirical studies. Considering the shortcomings of this approach this paper proposes the common trends approach as an alternative. The common trends econometric technique is utilized here in an attempt to identify and analyze...

Existing economic indicators and indexes assess economic activity but no single indicator measures the general macro-economic performance of a nation, state, or region in a methodologically simple and intuitive way. This paper proposes a simple, yet informative metric called the Economic...

The GCC countries maintain a policy of open capital accounts and a pegged (or nearly-pegged) exchange rate, thereby reducing their freedom to run an independent monetary policy. This paper shows, however, that the pass-through of policy rates to retail rates is on the low side, reflecting the...

Over the past decade policy makers in Latin America have adopted a number of macroprudential instruments to manage the procyclicality of bank credit dynamics to the private sector and contain systemic risk. Reserve requirements, in particular, have been actively employed. Despite their...

This paper studies the linkage between structural coherence and economic growth. Structural coherence is defined as the degree that a country's industrial structure optimally reflects its factor endowment fundamentals. The paper found that at least for the overall capital, the shares of capital...