Large and persistent current account deficits are frequently raised as a cause for concern for a number of reasons. Perhaps the key concern is that countries in this situation could be on a path to insolvency, building up excessive net foreign debt, raising the prospects of default or a sharp reversal ...

In the 1990s, Southeast Asia experienced very rapid growth associated with large and persistent current account deficits. The episode lasted from 1990 to around 1996, ending with the outbreak of the Asian crisis in 1997–98. Current account deficits peaked at around 10 percent of gross domestic product ...

Economic policies in emerging-market economies (EMEs) are shaped by the structural features and policy challenges of countries on their road to development. Convergence toward income levels of advanced countries is a difficult and bumpy road—it is even uncertain if and when most developing countries ...

Economies in which the extraction of a non-renewable natural resource is a significant activity pose two distinctive challenges for economic policy: Revenues are likely to fluctuate because commodity prices have historically been volatile. Furthermore the revenue from extraction is generated by depleting ...

En este artículo analizo algunos aspectos de la experiencia del Banco Central en la etapa inicial de su autonomía y en especial durante el período 1989-1991 en que me correspondió presidirlo. Para ello utilizo un enfoque de economía política. Dos razones principales justifican esta opción. La primera ...

It is an honor and a pleasure participating in this conference in honor of Vittorio Corbo. He has been a major contributor to the thinking on economic theory and policy with respect to development as an academic as a World Bank official as a consultant and as Governor of the Banco Central de Chile. I ...

Inflation rates fell markedly around the world during the last decade of twentieth century. This was the result of a profound change in the conduct of monetary policy, clearly driven by the strong, anti-inflationary stance adopted by central banks in industrial and developing countries. The central ...

Emerging market economies endure significant macroeconomic volatility. The large correlation between external factors, e.g., terms of trade and world interest rate shocks, and domestic macroeconomic volatility is highly suggestive of their key role, but it does not explain the mechanism through which ...

General equilibrium theory and modeling have proved to be useful for understanding economic interactions between markets and agents and the determination of prices and quantities. Applied general equilibrium models (GEM) have been developed and used to address a wide range of theoretical questions and ...

One of the most popular pieces of wisdom in economic policy is the idea that fiscal policy is more effective in a fixed exchange rate regime or a currency union than in a flexible exchange rate regime. In this paper we revisit the theoretical foundations of the conventional wisdom on the relative ...