Search Results
Working Paper
A bargaining theory of trade invoicing and pricing
We develop a theoretical model of international trade pricing in which individual exporters and importers bargain over the transaction price and exposure to exchange rate fluctuations. We find that the choice of price and invoicing currency reflects the full market structure, including the extent of fragmentation and the degree of heterogeneity across importers and across exporters. Our study shows that a party has a higher effective bargaining weight when it is large or more risk tolerant. A higher effective bargaining weight of importers relative to exporters in turn translates into lower ...
Journal Article
Current account adjustment with high financial integration: a scenario analysis
A narrowing of the U.S. current account deficit through exchange rate movements is likely to entail a substantial depreciation of the dollar. We assess how the adjustment is affected by the high degree of international financial integration, with exchange rate movements having a direct valuation impact on international assets and liabilities. In particular, a dollar depreciation generates a capital gain for the United States by boosting the value of its assets that are denominated in foreign currencies. We consider an adjustment scenario in which the U.S. net external debt is held constant. ...
Working Paper
Could Capital Gains Smooth a Current Account Rebalancing?
A narrowing of the U.S. current account deficit through exchange rate movements is likely to entail a substantial depreciation of the dollar, as stressed in the widely cited contribution by Obstfeld and Rogoff (2005). We assess how the adjustment is affected by the high degree of international financial integration in the world economy. A growing body of research stresses the increasing leverage in international financial positions, with industrialized economies holding substantial and growing financial claims on each other. Exchange rate movements then leads to valuations effects as the ...
Journal Article
Curbing unemployment in Europe: are there lessons from Ireland and the Netherlands?
Since the mid-1980s, unemployment rates in Ireland and the Netherlands have plummeted, while the average rate for the European Union has maintained its longtime high level. Ambitious labor market reforms_including wage moderation and the tightening of unemployment benefits_have helped to bring the Irish and Dutch rates down. Other European countries would benefit from adopting similar reforms, but they are unlikely to see the same dramatic improvement in their unemployment numbers.
Journal Article
To what extent does productivity drive the dollar?
The continuing strength of the dollar has fueled interest in the relationship between productivity and exchange rates. An analysis of the link between the dollar's movements and productivity developments in the United States, Japan, and the euro area suggests that productivity can account for much of the change in the external value of the dollar over the past three decades.
Journal Article
The impact of exchange rate movements on U.S. foreign debt
In 2001, the United States' net debt to the rest of the world jumped to $2.3 trillion, a level double that recorded in 1999. Much of the increase reflects the new borrowing undertaken by the country to finance its mounting current account deficit. A third of the change, however, can be traced to a simple accounting effect--the impact of a rising dollar on the value of U.S. assets held abroad.
Journal Article
Coping with terms-of-trade shocks in developing countries
Sharp swings in a developing country's terms of trade, the price of its exports relative to the price of its imports, can seriously disrupt output growth. An analysis of the effects of a decline in export prices in seventy-five developing economies suggests that countries with a flexible exchange rate will experience a much milder contraction in output than their counterparts with fixed exchange rate regimes.
Journal Article
The changing nature of the U.S. balance of payments
Earnings on cross-border investments figure only marginally in net estimates of the U.S. current account, but they represent an increasingly large share of gross flows between the United States and other nations. Because these earnings fluctuate much more sharply than trade flows, they can be expected to create permanently higher current account volatility. Such increased volatility is not necessarily grounds for concern, however; it reflects an international sharing of risk that provides a buffer against domestic economic uncertainty.
Journal Article
The income implications of rising U.S. international liabilities
Although the United States has seen its net liabilities surge in recent years, its investment income balance has remained positive-largely because U.S. firms operating abroad earn a higher rate of return than do foreign firms operating here. The continuing buildup in liabilities, however, should soon push the U.S. income balance below zero. In that event, net income flows will begin to boost the nation's current account deficit instead of reducing it.
Journal Article
The economics of currency crises and contagion: an introduction
Two theories of the causes of currency crises prevail in the economic literature. The first traces currency instability to countries' structural imbalances and weak policies; the second identifies arbitrary shifts in market expectations as the principal source of instability. The authors of this article contend that only a synthesis of these theories can capture the complexity of the 1997-98 Asian currency crisis. In their view, the crisis resulted from the interaction of structural weaknesses and volatile international capital markets. The authors also cite two other factors that contributed ...