Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 34.
(refine search)
Working Paper
Optimal monetary policy in a currency union with interest rate spreads
We introduce ?financial imperfections? - asymmetric net wealth positions, incomplete risksharing, and interest rate spread across member countries - in a prototypical two-country currency union model and study implications for monetary policy transmission mechanism and optimal policy. In addition to, and independent from, the standard transmission mechanism associated with nominal rigidities, financial imperfections introduce a wealth redistribution role for monetary policy. Moreover, the two mechanisms reinforce each other and amplify the effects of monetary policy. On the normative side, ...
Report
Uncertainty, exchange rate regimes, and national price levels
Large differences in national price levels exist across countries. In this paper, I develop a general equilibrium model predicting that these differences should be related to countries? exchange rate regimes. My empirical findings confirm that countries with fixed exchange rate regimes have higher national price levels than countries with flexible regimes. At the disaggregate level, the relationship between exchange rate regimes and national price levels is stronger for nontraded goods than for traded goods. I also find that measuring the misalignment in national price levels around times of ...
Working Paper
Currency unions and trade: a post-EMU mea culpa
In our European Economic Review (2002) paper, we used pre-1998 data on countries participating in and leaving currency unions to estimate the effect of currency unions on trade using (then-) conventional gravity models. In this paper, we use a variety of empirical gravity models to estimate the currency union effect on trade and exports, using recent data which includes the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). We have three findings. First, our assumption of symmetry between the effects of entering and leaving a currency union seems reasonable in the data but is uninteresting. Second, ...
Working Paper
Catalytic IMF? a gross flows approach
The financial assistance the International Monetary Fund (IMF) provides is assumed to catalyze fresh investment. Such a catalytic effect has, however, proven empirically elusive. This paper deviates from the standard approach based on the net capital inflow to study instead the IMF?s catalytic role in the context of gross capital flows. Using fixed-effects regressions, instrumental variables and local projection methods, we find significant differences in how resident and foreign investors react to IMF programs as well as in inward and outward flows. While IMF lending does not catalyze ...
Working Paper
On what states do prices depend? answers from ecuador
In this paper, we argue that differences in the cost structure across sectors play an important role in the decision of firms to adjust their prices. We develop a menu cost model of pricing in which retail firms intermediate trade between producers and consumers. An important facet of our analysis is that the labor-cost share of retail production differs across goods and services in the consumption basket. For example, the price of gasoline at the retail pump is predicted to adjust more frequently and by more than the price of a haircut due to the high volatility in wholesale gasoline prices ...
Report
Global standards for liquidity regulation
Liquidity risk has received increased attention recently, especially in light of the 2007 - 2009 financial crisis, when banks' extensive reliance on short-term funding, maturity mismatches between assets and liabilities, and insufficient liquidity buffers made them quite susceptible to liquidity risk. To mitigate such risk, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) introduced an improved global capital framework and new global liquidity standards for banks in December 2010 in the form of the new Basel Accord (Basel III). This brief offers insights from the crisis experience, ...
Working Paper
Inflation Globally
The Phillips curve remains central to stabilization policy. Increasing financial linkages, international supply chains, and managed exchange rate policy have given core currencies an outsized influence on the domestic affairs of world economies. We exploit such influence as a source of exogenous variation to examine the effects of the recent financial crisis on the Phillips curve mechanism. Using a difference-in-differences approach, and comparing countries before and after the 2008 financial crisis sorted by whether they endured or escaped the crisis, we are able to assess the evolution of ...
Report
Fiscal Unions Redux
Before the advent of sophisticated international financial markets, a widely accepted belief was that within a monetary union, a union-wide authority orchestrating fiscal transfers between countries is necessary to provide adequate insurance against country-specific economic fluctuations. A natural question is then: Do sophisticated international financial markets obviate the need for such an active union-wide authority? We argue that they do. Specifically, we show that in a benchmark economy with no international financial markets, an activist union-wide authority is necessary to achieve ...
Working Paper
How successful is the G7 in managing exchange rates?
The paper assesses the extent to which the Group of Seven (G7) has been successful in its management of major currencies since the 1970s. Using an event-study approach, the paper finds evidence that the G7 has been overall effective in moving the U.S. dollar, yen and euro in the intended direction at horizons of up to three months after G7 meetings, but not at longer horizons. While the success of the G7 is partly dependent on the market environment, it is also to a significant degree endogenous to the policy process itself. The findings indicate that the reputation and credibility of the G7, ...
Journal Article
Opportunities and challenges of the U.S. dollar as an increasingly global currency: a Federal Reserve perspective
The rapid growth of demand for U.S. currency over the past two decades, especially the proportion estimated to be held abroad, has posed challenges for the Federal Reserve in meeting its congressionally mandated responsibilities for currency availability and distribution. Those challenges lie in making certain that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) prints adequate amounts of currency; that overseas distribution channels have sufficient capacity to distribute U.S. currency when and where it is needed; and that the integrity of U.S. currency is maintained by monitoring counterfeiting ...