Financially closed economies insure themselves against current-account shocks using international reserves. We characterize the optimal management of reserves using an open-economy model of precautionary savings and emphasize several results. First, the welfare-based opportunity cost of reserves...

In a two-country DSGE model, the effects of foreign demand shocks on the home country are greatly amplified if the home economy is constrained by the zero lower bound on policy interest rates. This result applies even to countries that are relatively closed to trade such as the United States....

This paper generates persistent real effects of a monetary disturbance in the context of staggered price setters. The model combines two related and reinforcing features: a translog demand structure and a particular input--output production structure. These features offer a rationale why a firm,...