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Working Paper
The mirage of fixed exchange rates
This paper discusses the profound difficulties of maintaining fixed exchange rates in a world of expanding global capital markets. Contrary to popular wisdom, industrialized-country monetary authorities easily have the resources to defend exchange parities against virtually any private speculative attack. But if their commitment to use those resources lacks credibility with markets, the costs to the broader economy of defending an exchange-rate peg can be very high. The dynamic interplay between credibility and commitment is illustrated by the 1992 Swedish and British crises.
Conference Paper
The unsustainable U.S. current account position revisited
We show that the when one takes into account the global equilibrium ramifications of an unwinding of the US current account deficit, currently running at nearly 6% of GDP, the potential collapse of the dollar becomes considerably larger (more than 50% larger) than our previous estimates (Obstfeld and Rogoff 2000a). It is true that global capital market deepening appears to have accelerated over the past decade (a fact documented by Lane and Milesi-Ferreti (2005) and recently emphasized by US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan), and that this deepening may have helped allowed the United ...
Conference Paper
The unsustainable U.S. current account position revisited
Conference Paper
Optimal fiscal policy in a monetary union - comments
Conference Paper
The case for open-market purchases in a liquidity trap
Working Paper
The Euro and the Geography of International Debt Flows
Greater financial integration between core and peripheral EMU members had an effect on both sets of countries. Lower interest rates allowed peripheral countries to run bigger deficits, which inflated their economies by allowing credit booms. Core EMU countries took on extra foreign leverage to expose themselves to the peripherals. The result has been asset-price bubbles and collapses in some of the peripheral countries, area-wide banking crisis, and sovereign debt problems. We analyze the geography of international debt flows using multiple data sources and provide evidence that after the ...