Formerly a favourite location for private capital inflows, Brazil was virtually cut off from further bank lending in the 1980s. The country's rating in secondary loan markets plummeted, and foreign direct investment dwindled. New external financing was replaced by an accumulation of interest...

This paper shows that the German monetary union not only had an impact on the stability of the narrow money demand in Germany but also on the stability of the aggregate demand for money in two larger European currency areas, consisting of 3 and 7 EMS-countries. However, despite fears harbored...

Tariffs no longer represent the most serious impediment to international trade. As the importance of tariffs in restricting free trade has been declining, non-tariff barriers are becoming increasingly important. The use of selected non-tariff barriers is analyzed, focusing on anti-dumping...

This paper characterizes the wage setting behavior in a totally unionized economy under different monetary policy rules. The wage formation strategy of the union can be either aggressive or cooperative.. As long as the union is fully cooperative and in the absence of shocks, the government can...

We revive in this paper the empirical relevance of the competitive storage model by taking a holistic approach to food commodity prices. We augment the seminal Deaton and Laroque (1992, 1996) model by incorporating more comprehensive and realistic supply and demand factors: output and demand...

Using a panel of 27 countries, we analyze the effects of stock market liberalization on financial and macroeconomic development. We find that liberalization is associated with a short-term increase in real private investment growth of about 14 percentage points cumulatively in the four years...

Using a panel of 16 emerging markets, the paper finds a small but statistically significant effect of stock market developments on private consumption spending. In the short run, a 10 percent decline in the annual real stock market return is associated with a reduction in real private...