This paper investigates the factors determining the impact of exchange rate regimes on the behavior of domestic investment and foreign direct investment (FDI). Producers may diversify internationally in order to increase the flexibility of production. We characterize the possible equilibria in a...

This paper examines indicators of competitiveness. It analyzes the conceptual foundations of conventional measures of the real exchange rate and finds that inferences about competitiveness from these indicators require strong, and in many cases implausible, assumptions. Based on this analysis...

The paper examines the employment and unemployment implications of permitting unemployed people to use part of their unemployment benefits to provide employment vouchers to the firms that hire them. This opportunity to transfer unemployment benefits into employment subsidies--“benefit...

The paper discusses the case against a laissez faire approach to resource allocation and develops a model of supply bottlenecks. It argues that: (1) once budget constraints are hardened and credit markets begin to function appropriately, externalities associated with production bottlenecks and...

The paper surveys unemployment policies for advanced market economies and evaluates them by examining the predictions of the underlying macroeconomic theories. The basic idea is that, for the most part, different unemployment policy prescriptions rest; on different macroeconomic theories, and...

This paper examines the long-run effects of macroeconomic policy shocks on the behavior of output, inflation, real wages and the real exchange rate in a small open economy. The analysis is based on a two-sector, three-good optimizing model with imperfect capital mobility, nominal wage contracts...

This paper investigates the consequences of pricing to market for exchange rate pass-through and real exchange rate dynamics across different patterns of trade under market segmentation. Under two-way, intraindustry trade--where home prices display greater linkage with those of foreign...

A theoretical framework to assess the degree of fragility or, inversely, the soundness of the banking system is proposed. It is argued that, while a bank may be either solvent or insolvent at any given time, its degree of fragility must be a forward-looking measure based on the probability that...

This paper deals with the early stages of transformation of centrally-planned economies (CPEs) into market economies during which expectations play a key role. It focuses on the transitional phase during which the economy is not any more a CPE but has not yet become a market economy. During this...

The financial press frequently suggest that the shape of yield curve reflects information about the prospects of the economy. This paper attempts to formalize the link between the yield curve and the real economic activity. A closed-form formula for the term structure of interest rates is...