Investigating the impact of institutional factors on macroeconomic variables has gained momentum in recent years. In this paper we investigate the impact of political rights and civil liberties on the black market premium on foreign exchange. After taking account of other important determinants...

Many of the previous studies that tried to assess the contractionary or expansionary effects of depreciations or devaluations in less developed countries (LDCs) used official exchange rate data and concluded that devaluations are contractionary in LDCs. However, due to capital controls, there is...

Testing purchasing power parity (PPP) using black market exchange rate data has gained popularity in recent times. It is claimed that black market exchange rate data more often support the PPP than the official exchange rate data. In this study, to assess both the long run stability of exchange...

Testing purchasing power parity (PPP) in the black market has increased in recent years due to the apparent puzzle in the literature by which PPP is largely rejected in flexible exchange rate regimes. Many studies of PPP suffer from the problem of imposing symmetry and proportionality...

Using panel data on military spending for 125 countries, we document new facts about the effects of changes in government purchases on the real exchange rate, consumption, and current accounts in both advanced and developing countries. While an increase in government purchases causes real...

We consider public debt from a long-term historical perspective, showing how the purposes for which governments borrow have evolved over time. Periods when debt-to-GDP ratios rose explosively as a result of wars, depressions and financial crises also have a long history. Many of these episodes...