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Working Paper
A state-of-processing model of inflation
Discussion Paper
The Impact of COVID-19 on Emerging Market Economies' Financial Conditions
The emerging market economies (EMEs) – and the lower-income developing economies to an even greater extent – generally are extremely vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many EMEs have weak public health systems, poor and financially vulnerable populations, inadequate social safety nets, limited monetary and especially fiscal policy space, and high exposure to global trade and commodity prices.
Discussion Paper
Are Rising U.S. Interest Rates Destabilizing for Emerging Market Economies?
Rising U.S. interest rates are often thought to be bad news for emerging market economies (EMEs) as they increase debt burdens, trigger capital outflows, and generally cause a tightening of financial conditions that can lead to financial crises. Indeed, as shown in Figure 1 below, the rise in the federal funds rate (the black line) during the Volcker disinflation of the early 1980s was associated with a sharp rise in the incidence of financial crises in EMEs (the green bars).
Working Paper
Real exchange rates and inflation in exchange-rate based stabilizations: an empirical examination
Considerable research has focused on explaining why currencies appreciate in real terms after the nominal exchange rate is stabilized, but this research generally has taken a theoretical approach, and rarely has tested its hypotheses empirically. In this paper I estimate a simple error-correction model for Mexico, based on the Salter-Swan framework, in which inflation is determined by (1) the gap between the actual real exchange rate and the exchange rate that clears the market for non-traded goods, and (2) persistence effects of past inflation. Using this model, I decompose the excess of ...
Working Paper
Monetary policy in the end-game to exchange-rate based stabilizations: the case of Mexico
Exchange-rate based stabilizations, while useful in accelerating the disinflation process, typically lead to overvalued exchange rates and large current account deficits. These factors, in turn, make it difficult to sustain exchange rate pegs, placing heaving demands upon monetary policy to sustain exchange-rate based programs in their later phases. This paper evaluates the extent to which Mexican monetary policy in 1994 may have loosened, or not tightened sufficiently, in the lead up to the devaluation of the peso that December. Using econometric models of the demand for money, we find ...
Working Paper
Capital inflows, financial intermediation, and aggregate demand.
In trying to explain the balance-of-payments and banking crises of 1994-95 that erupted in Mexico, observers have pointed to various effects of the substantial capital inflows that took place in the preceding half decade. It has been argued that these inflows contributed to rapid monetary growth, real appreciation of the peso, and the widening of Mexico's current account deficit. In addition, by making available credit for consumption loans at a time when investment spending in Mexico was not yet ready to grow rapidly, these inflows may have contributed to the fall in Mexico's savings rate. ; ...
Working Paper
External debt and developing country growth
This paper examines the question of how the path of real GDP in four important Latin American countries, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico, might have differed if the sharp run-up in borrowing during the late 1970s and early 1980s had not occurred. Specifically, we ask whether these countries are better off or worse off for having borrowed heavily prior to the debt crisis, and we attempt to gauge the extent to which they would have received greater benefits if policies that improve economic efficiency had been followed. A simple macroeconomic mode is developed, and the simulation results ...