Usando los datos anuales para Colombia durante los 30 años pasados, probamos las teorías de oposición que explican fluctuaciones macroeconómicas: la síntesis neoclásica, que postula eso en presencia de rigidez temporal del precio una extensión monetaria inesperada produce los aumentos de...

Why are investors rushing to purchase US government securities when the US is the epicentre of the financial crisis? This column attributes the paradox to key emerging market economies’ exchange practices, which require reserves most often invested in US government securities. America’s...

Economists have long been involved in the search for a few key indicators that predict the behavior of market economies. For Canada, it has been shown that the yield curve reliably tilts down and that real M1 growth declines before economic contraction, but this has been demonstrated almost...

Using annual data for Colombia over the last thirty years and a new battery of econometric techniques, we test opposing theories that explain macroeconomic fluctuations: The neoclassical synthesis, which posits that, in the presence of temporary price rigidity, an unanticipated monetary...

With many emerging market currencies tied to the U.S. dollar either implicitly or explicitly, movements in the exchange values of the currencies of major countries–in particular the prolonged appreciation of the U.S. dollar vis-a-vis the yen and the deutsche mark in advance of Asia’s...

Capital inflows can be a mixed blessing, especially in economies with thin domestic financial markets and when driven by investors with a short-term focus. Many levers of policy can be applied to resist the effects of the inflows. One that has been widely relied upon has been currency...

Two assertions about exchange rate regimes circulate with some frequency in policy circles. The first, which could be called the hypothesis of the excluded middle, holds that authorities must either choose perfectly floating exchange rates or a hard peg. The second, seemingly unrelated, notion...

The U.S recession of 2007 to 2009 is unique in the post-World-War-II experience by the broad company it kept. Activity contracted around the world, with the advanced countries of the North experiencing declines in spending normally the purview of the developing economies of the South. The last...

The standard pattern: capital flows into the new “hot” nation, but then stop or reverses forcing painful adjustment. This column presents research based on such episodes from 181 nations during 1980-2007 and for a subset of 66 nations for the 1960-2007 period. If the pattern of the past few...

Fashions are hard to resist, and it is now fashionable in much of the North to rely on a fiscal engine of growth. As for emerging markets, however, boosting spending at a time in which revenues are contracting or, in many cases, collapsing for an uncertain period of time is an more complicated...