The potential financial vulnerability that can occur when private sector or government agents acquire high levels of foreign currency debt has been at the center of discussion since the financial crises that affected the countries of Southeast Asia in the late 1990s. To the extent that a mismatch is ...

A characteristic of the current crisis in Europe is that countries in its periphery have found themselves increasingly cut off from international financial markets. In the present study we ask how such changes in the financial structure influence the welfare consequences of maintaining a fixed exchange ...

Does tight monetary policy stabilize the currency after a collapse?. Does the effect of high interest rates on the exchange rate depend on the condition of the banking system? The East Asian crises and other recent currency crises have put these questions at the center of economic policymaking decisions.

This paper evaluates the capacity of emerging market economies (EMEs) to moderate the domestic impact of global financial and monetary forces through their own monetary policies. I present the case that those EMEs able to exploit a flexible exchange rate are far better positioned than those that devote ...