Analyzing new data, the authors find that the general trend toward increased use of foreign-currency-denominated bank deposits in emerging markets has continued, despite declines in a few countries. Their analysis of the new data suggests that a sizable fraction (about half, on average) of funds...

Since Egypt's government introduced an economic reform and structural adjustment program in 1991, Egypt's Central Bank has been engaged in massive sterilized interventions to support the fixed nominal exchange rate regime. The result of this process, however, has been an increasing fiscal...

Why do firms and banks hold foreign currency denominated liabilities? The authors argue that foreign currency debt, by altering the effect of a devaluation on output, has a disciplining effect when the Central Bank's objectives differ from the social optimum. However, under imperfect...

Recent developments in a number of emerging economies have heightened interest in the relationship between macroeconomic management and financial regulation, in an environment of open capital accounts and large-scale movements of private capital. The authors analyze the Turkish experience with...

Since 1989, private capital flows to a select group of developing countries have increased sharply, but developments in 1994 have caused concern about the sustainability of those flows. Several highly indebted developing countries that are implementing reform are concerned that a generalized...

In recent years, two classes of computable general equilibrium (CGE) trade models have been used to investigate external sector policies: single country and and multicountry trade models. The authors examine the treatment of exports and imports in recent single country CGE models of small...

Conventional aggregate models of open economies typically rule out trade in capital goods. But capital goods account for a major share of the world trade. In 1990, they represented more than 40 percent of U.S. merchandise exports and more than 30 percent of its imports. In the same year, capital...

An economy's financial integration with the outside world (the extent of capital mobility across its borders) is a key determinant of some of its most important macroeconomic properties. Yet little is known about this characteristic of many developing economies. An important stumbling block in...

Widespread private capital inflows to middle-income countries have surged over the past three years. At the same time, Brady-type debt reduction operations and domestic policy reform took place, indicators of country creditworthiness improved dramatically, and international interest rates...

External shocks, such as commodity price fluctuations, natural disasters, and the role of the international economy, are often blamed for the poor economic performance of low-income countries. The author quantifies the impact of these different external shocks using a panel vector autoregression...