If one ranks cities by population, the rank of a city is inversely related to its size, a well-documented phenomenon known as Zipf's Law. Further, the growth rate of a city's population is uncorrelated with its size, another well-known characteristic known as Gibrat's Law. In this paper, I show...

A gravity model is used to assess the separate effects of exchange rate volatility and currency unions on international trade. The panel data set used includes bilateral observations for five years spanning 1970 through 1990 for 186 countries. In this data set, there are over one hundred...

This paper looks for dynamic patterns in international trade flows using comprehensive multilateral American and Japanese data disaggregated to the four-digit SITC level. Little evidence is found of product-cycle dynamics between 1962 and 1988. Rather, goods that begin the sample in surplus...

In contrast to earlier recessions, the monetary regimes of many small economies have not changed in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. This is due in part to the fact that many small economies continue to use hard exchange rate fixes, a reasonably durable regime. However, most of the...

Regressions of ex post changes in floating exchange rates on appropriate interest differentials typically imply that the high- interest rate currency tends to appreciate, the `forward discount puzzle.' Using data from the European Monetary System, we find that a large part of the forward...

This paper examines the relationship between financial regulation and the current account in an intertemporal model of the current account where financial regulation affects the current account through liquidity constraints. Greater liquidity constraints decrease the size and persistence of the...