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Working Paper
International coordination of macroeconomic policies: still alive in the new millennium?
In this paper we provide two building blocks for an analysis of international policy coordination: (1) a survey of models of policy coordination, and (2) an account of experience with policy coordination among the G-7 countries and within Europe since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System. Using these building blocks, we investigate the correspondence between the models and experience and attempt to draw lessons for both the modelers and the practitioners. We find that the correspondence is close enough that the models help in analyzing several instances of actual policy coordination, but ...
Discussion Paper
Globalization and imbalances in historical perspective
Global imbalances associated with the U.S. current account deficit have given rise to speculation about the nature of the impending adjustment: Will it be smooth and gradual, or will it be sudden and costly? This paper summarizes the two views and then considers three historical periods with similar pressures--an earlier era of globalization from 1870 to 1914, the interwar gold standard, and Bretton Woods. A comparison of the periods and their outcomes suggests current global imbalances might resolve themselves quietly.
Report
Why are Switzerland's foreign assets so low? The growing financial exposure of a small open economy
Switzerland's international investment position shows a puzzling feature since 1999: Large and persistent current account surpluses have failed to boost the value of Swiss foreign assets. In this paper, we link this pattern to the substantial increase in the leveraging of Switzerland's international assets and liabilities over the last twenty years, which we document in detail. We estimate the impact of exchange rate and asset prices movements on Swiss net foreign assets, and show that they led to substantial valuations losses since 1999, accounting for between one-quarter and one-half of the ...
Report
Home bias in trade: location or foreign-ness?
With "home bias," a consumer differentiates between domestic goods and imports and tends to purchase the domestic variety. A vast number of empirical studies in the international trade literature report the apparent prevalence of a large degree of home bias (the case of the "missing trade," the "border puzzle"). Many theoretical studies, in turn, assume its presence. Despite this wide usage, the origins of home bias remain cloudy. Do customs officials require extensive paper work, thus making imports prohibitively expensive? Is there some inherent distrust of a foreign product? ; This paper ...
Working Paper
Exchange rate pass-through in U. S. manufacturing: exchange rate index choice and asymmetry issues
This paper explores two issues that have received limited attention in the exchange rate pass-through literature. First, are the pass-through estimates sensitive to the choice of the exchange rate index? Second, are pass-through estimates asymmetric with respect to the sign of exchange rate changes? Using data for 87 industries, we find that the answer to both questions is yes. J-test results indicate that the "Major" exchange rate index produced by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System tends to fit the data better than two alternative indexes. With respect to asymmetry, we ...
Speech
Confessions of a data dependent
Remarks before the New York Association for Business Economics, New York, November 2, 2006 ; "Globalization brings new influences into the Fed's navigation calculations to determine the best flight path for the U.S. economy. To determine that course...we must develop a better understanding of the new forces exerting themselves on the aircraft we have been charged with flying. That aircraft no longer flies solely in domestic space, affected soley by domestic factors. Rather, it flies all over the world, requiring more sophisticated navigation instruments to monitor changing global and ...
Journal Article
Monetary and financial integration: evidence from the EMU
Speech
The U.S. economic outlook
Remarks at the Washington and Lee University H. Parker Willis Lecture in Political Economics, Lexington, Virginia.
Working Paper
Tradability, productivity, and understanding international economic integration
This paper develops a two-country macro model with endogenous tradability to study features of international economic integration. Recent episodes of integration in Europe and North America suggest some surprising observations: while quantities of trade have increased significantly, especially along the extensive margin of goods previously not traded, price dispersion has not decreased and may even have increased. These observations challenge the usual understanding of integration in the literature. We propose a way of reconciling these price and quantity observations in a macroeconomic model ...