Search Results
Working Paper
Export market diversification and productivity improvements: theory and evidence from Argentinean firms
This paper examines the relationship between trade and investment in technology adoption when firms face demand uncertainty. Our model predicts that, for a given overall market size, exporting to several countries reduces firms' demand uncertainty and, hence, raises incentives to invest in productivity improvements. The effects of diversification are heterogeneous across firms: An additional foreign market matters more for firms exporting to fewer destinations. We test the proposed theory using a large sample of Argentinean manufacturing exporters. The predictions of the model find strong ...
Journal Article
Capital controls by any other name
The embrace of ad hoc capital controls to address temporary market inefficiencies on a case-by-case basis, while pragmatic, perpetuates the view that each capital crisis is an isolated example of failed financial institutions.
Journal Article
Commodity price gains: speculation vs. fundamentals
Commodities of all sorts have risen in price over the past few years. Some say that the prices reflect a bubble, driven by low interest rates and excessive speculation. Others say the price gains can be fully explained by supply and demand.
Journal Article
Quantitative easing: lessons we've learned
Working Paper
Sources of exchange rate fluctuations: are they real or nominal?
I analyze the role of real and monetary shocks on the exchange rate behavior using a structural vector autoregressive model of the US vis--vis the rest of the world. The shocks are identified using sign restrictions on the responses of the variables to orthogonal disturbances. These restrictions are derived from the predictions of a two-country DSGE model. I find that monetary shocks are unimportant in explaining exchange rate fluctuations. By contrast, demand shocks explain between 23% and 38% of exchange rate variance at 4-quarter and 20-quarter horizons, respectively. The contribution of ...
Journal Article
Japan reenters the foreign exchange market
From 1999 to 2004 Japan unilaterally sold a combined, and unprecedented, 500 billion dollars of yen.
Journal Article
Why health care matters and the current debt does not
All of the attention given to raising the debt ceiling this past summer might lead some to believe that spending by the federal government only recently became unsustainable. Hardly. We've been on this path a long time.
Journal Article
Monetary policy and asset prices
The housing market crisis is the latest reminder that asset prices can and do run wild at rates capable of negative effects on real economic activity. Not surprisingly, this has reinvigorated debate over whether central banks should respond to asset price bubbles.
Journal Article
Coming to America: covered bonds?
Ultimately, covered bonds and ABS are complements, not substitutes.
Journal Article
When oil prices jump, is speculation to blame?
Whenever the price at the pump climbs week after week, people start pointing fingers at investment banks, hedge funds and other speculators. This article quantifies the role that speculation played in the rise of oil prices during the past decade.