The Houthakker-Magee effect implies that a country facing unfavorable income elasticities in trade must either grow at a slower rate than its trading partners or experience a trend worsening of its current account and/or depreciation of its real exchange rate. Krugman (1989) first documented the...

This paper introduces a time-varying threshold autoregressive model (TVTAR), which is used to examine the persistence of deviations from PPP. We find support for the stationary TVTAR against the unit root hypothesis; however, for some developing countries, we do not reject the TVTAR with a unit...

The main objective of this paper is to quantify the relationship between the global economic environment and the number of Stand-By Arrangements (SBAs). The results suggest that oil prices, world interest rates, and the global business cycle are the most influential indicators that affect the...

This paper analyzes the sources of Mexico's economic growth since the 1960s and compares various decompositions of historical growth into its trend and cyclical components. The role of the implied output gaps in the inflationary process is then assessed. Looking ahead, the paper presents...

Time series on economic activity in developing countries, in particular real GDP, are reported with important lags. Therefore, it is useful to construct indicators that coincide or lead the actual direction and level of economic activity. A general methodology to construct these indicators is...

Consensus estimates put the half-life of deviations from purchasing power parity (PPP) at about four years (Rogoff, 1996). However, conventional least squares estimates of half-lives are biased downward. Accordingly, as a preferred measure of the persistence of real exchange rate shocks, this...

How much convergence has been achieved between Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies and the eurozone? We explore this question by comparing long-run volatility trends in CEE currencies and the euro. We find that these trends are closely correlated, pointing to convergence in the economic...

We use a range of methods and remittance data from 1990 to 2007 to assess the strength and significance of linkages between remittance flows to Latin America and the U.S. business cycle. All of the evidence suggests that remittance flows are relatively insensitive to fluctuations in the U.S....

This paper provides a numerical analysis of an intertemporal equilibrium model of a small open, barter economy that is subject to random shocks affecting endowments, the terms of trade, and the real interest rate. Equilibrium stochastic processes for macroeconomic aggregates are computed and...

During 2001-07, increases in mature market volatility were associated with declines in forex returns for East Asian countries, consistent with an overall "flight to safety" effect. Estimates from GARCH models suggest that a 5 percentage point increase in mature market equity volatility generated...