originally appeared in the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Annual Report, 1977

The focus of the book is on the U.S. segment of the global foreign exchange market. Chapters 1-3 describe the structure of the market and how it has changed. Chapters 4-6 comment on the main participant groups and the instruments that are traded. Chapters 7-8 look at foreign exchange trading...

The econometrics literature contains a variety of two-sided tests for unknown breakpoints in time-series models with one or more parameters. This paper derives an analogous one-sided test that takes into account the direction of the change for a single parameter. In particular, we propose a sup...

A growing share of international trade occurs through intra-firm transactions-those between domestic and foreign subsidiaries of a multinational firm. The difficulties associated with writing and enforcing a vertical contract compound when a product must cross a national border, and may explain...

This paper addresses the effectiveness of fiscal policy at zero nominal interest rates. I analyze a stochastic general equilibrium model with sticky prices and rational expectations and assume that the government cannot commit to future policy. Real government spending increases demand by...

This paper presents a model in which a government's current capital controls policy signals future policies. Controls on capital outflows evolve in response to news on technology, contingent on government attitudes toward taxation of capital. When there is uncertainty over government types, a...

We study liquidity and systemic risk in high-value payment systems. Flows in high-value systems are characterized by high velocity, meaning that the total amount paid and received is high relative to the stock of reserves. In such systems, banks rely heavily on incoming funds to finance outgoing...