Policies that distort domestic saving decisions have general equilibrium effects on trade flows and the real exchange rate. In particular increasing domestic savings keeps the real exchange rate undervalued depressing imports and increasing exports. However there are important differences between ...

Empirical analysis reveals three regularities among middleincome countries: consumption is highly procyclical and more volatile than output, investment is highly procyclical and three to four times as volatile as output, and real net exports are countercyclical and about three times as volatile as ...

Monetary policy in South Africa's emerging market economy, given capital account liberalization and severe constraints on fiscal policy, has the major responsability for curbing inflation and currency instability while trying to ensure sufficient growth for longer-term political stability and the ...

On 16 December 2008 the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) lowered the federal funds rate—its traditional monetary policy instrument—to essentially zero in response to the most severe U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression. Because U.S. currency carries an interest ...

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 ...

Monetary policy has come under strain since the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007–09. Once the GFC broke out central banks’ swift and determined response was essential to stabilise markets and to avoid a self-reinforcing downward spiral between the financial system and the real economy. But putting ...

Automatic price adjustment mechanisms, or indexation, have arisen in a variety of economies with distinct macroeconomic environments and in different moments in time. Examples include the labor market indexation implemented in various European countries in the postwar era, the indexation of financial ...

After marked fluctuations in the business cycle over the last fifty years, the Chilean economy now appears to be less volatile and more resilient to external shocks. Because Chile is a small and increasingly open economy, analysts have long suspected that the amplitude of the cyclical fluctuations in ...

Globalization has been under attack over the last few years. Activists, famous academics, and commentators of various stripes have mounted a systematic campaign against free trade in goods and, especially, in financial claims. One of the latest manifestations of this antiliberalization mood was the ...

Protectionist trade policies aim at shielding some sectors— typically but not exclusively manufacturing—from international competition. In doing so they may produce unintended consequences. In particular they tend to create some taxed sectors that use protected inputs usually in the agricultural sector ...