The most important event in human economic history before the Industrial Revolution was the Neolithic transition from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to sedentary agriculture, beginning about 10,000 years ago. The transition made possible the human population explosion, the rise of...

The paper examines the asymmetric effects of exchange rate fluctuations on real output and price in developing countries. The theoretical model decomposes movements in the exchange rate into anticipated and unanticipated components. Unanticipated currency fluctuations determine aggregate demand...

Dick Sabot, an active member of CGD's founding Board of Directors, was finishing this paper when he died suddenly on July 6 of 2005. The paper highlights the risks to developing countries posed by the growing U.S. external deficit and describes three possible scenarios. In the first, the US...