World commodity prices and their macroeconomic impact especially on emerging economies have long been a main concern in economic research. Decades ago the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis of secularly deteriorating terms of trade (Prebisch 1950 Singer 1950) was the subject of intense debate and became a ...

There is no consensus about the economic implications of real exchange rate (RER) misalignments. Some authors argue that keeping the real exchange rate away from its equilibrium level creates distortions in the relative prices of tradable and nontradable goods generating misleading signals to economic ...

The financial crisis that unraveled after the Lehman Brothers collapse affected in different degrees almost all countries around the world independently of the direct exposure of their financial institutions to toxic assets. Most countries saw a sharp drop in demand together with sudden increases in ...