This paper reviews the problems that must be resolved at the Intergovernmental Conference in 1996 to clear the way for European Monetary Union: locking in Germany's commitment to the project, and reconciling EMU with variable geometry. It reviews what we know about the costs and benefits of EMU...

Some theories predict that exchange rate bubbles should deflate faster than they inflate. We find no empirical support for this hypothesis for currencies that floated against the US dollar. The bursting of exchange rate bubbles is not analogous to collapses in the prices of financial assets....

Based on basic financial models and reports in the business press, exchange rate movements are generally believed to affect the value of nonfinancial firms. In contrast, the empirical research on nonfinancial firms typically produces fewer significant exposures estimates than researchers...

More frequent and increasingly severe crises are encouraging emerging market economies to seek means to make themselves less vulnerable to sudden stops in capital flows. Capital controls have been widely discussed, but dollarization may offer a longer-term and more market-friendly solution.

Using industry-level data for 22 Canadian manufacturing industries, the authors examine the relationship between exchange rates and investment during the period 1981-97. Their empirical results show that the overall effect of exchange rates on total investment is statistically insignificant....

The authors provide some of the first empirical evidence on labour market adjustments to exchange rate movements in Canadian manufacturing industries. Generalized method of moments estimates that control for endogeneity show that there are significant changes in labour input when a change in the...

This paper investigates the size and nature of exchange rate pass through to import prices for a panel of 14 emerging economies. We firstly set out a stylized model in which import prices are dependent upon the exchange rate, marginal cost and the mark up. We employed methods which account for...

The paper identifies and evaluates consequences for monetary policy of five features of East Asian development: export orientation, integrated regional trade, bank-dependent finance, the potential for persistent trade surpluses, and the aggressive accumulation of international reserves. The case...

This article provides an overview of recent research into the macroeconomic costs and benefits of monetary unification. We are primarily interested in Europe’s monetary union. Given that unification entails the loss of a policy instrument its potential benefits have to be found elsewhere....

Predicting the timing of currency and banking crises is likely to remain an elusive task for academics, financial market participants, and policymakers. Few foresaw the Asian crises and fewer still could have imagined their severity. However, recent events have highlighted the importance of...