This paper contributes to the debate on exchange rate elasticities by providing a set of price and quantity elasticities for 51 advanced and emerging market economies. Specifically, we report for each of these countries the elasticity of trade prices and trade quantities on the export and on the...

This study examines foreign exchange intervention based on novel daily data covering 33 countries from 1995 to 2011. We find that intervention is widely used and an effective policy tool, with a success rate in excess of 80 percent under some criteria. The policy works well in terms of smoothing...

This paper investigates the convergence in real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth focusing on the impact of financial crises (i.e. banking crises, currency crises and debt crises) and nominal exchange rate regimes (i.e. fixed, intermediate and flexible) on convergence. To that end, we compute...

Despite the extensive attention that the Basel capital adequacy standards have received internationally, significant variation exists in the implementation of these standards across countries. Furthermore, a significant number of countries increase or decrease the stringency of capital...

We develop a simple model that highlights the costs and benefits of fixed exchange rates as they relate to trade, and show that negative export-price shocks reduce fiscal revenue and increase the likelihood of an expected currency devaluation. Using a new high-frequency data set on...

We use the demise of silver-based standards in the 19th century to explore price dynamics when a commodity-based money ceases to function as a global unit of account. We develop a general equilibrium model of the global economy with gold and silver money. Calibration of the model shows that...

How do trade costs affect international trade? This paper offers a new approach. We rely on a flexible gravity equation that predicts variable trade cost elasticities, both across and within country pairs. We apply this framework to the effect of currency unions on international trade. While we...