Devaluation: Levels versus rates

In a context of infinitely-lived families à la Sidrauski, where consumers are lump-sum compensated for the inflation tax, and there is no capital mobility, it is shown that a devaluation improves while an increase in the rate of devaluation deteriorates the balance of payments.     

Sudden Stop and Sudden Flood of Foreign Direct Investment: Inverse Bank Run,Output, and Welfare Distribution

In this paper, I focus on a phenomenon that has not received much attention in the literature, namely that the mere expectation of foreign direct investment (FDI) incentivizes long‐maturity investment projects by domestic residents, and a Sudden Stop when expectations are frustrated. Long‐maturity investment projects enhance productivity but increase the economy's vulnerability to Sudden Stop. The discussion is framed in a context in which a Sudden Stop follows a surge of capital inflows (Sudden Flood), and FDI is concentrated on ongoing projects. A Sudden Stop episode can trigger a fire sale of long‐term assets, output collapse, and welfare redistribution, which is another ignored phenomenon.     

Análisis de contagio en el sistema financiero mexicano combinando el modelo de Merton y redes aleatorias

The control of systematic risk and the contagion effect are very important on the regulation and Basilea context. This paper presents a two phase model (Merton Model on the first part and Random networks Erdös-Rényi in the second part) in order to analyze the contagion effect on the Mexican bank system. The conclusions are that the Banks could not be infected or fall into default depending of the behavior of liabilities, the structure of the network and (external asset/interbank asset) ratio and (capital/asset) ratio. The results are consistent with the regulation politics in order to avoid the contagion in Mexico Financial System.     

Trading and information in futures markets

This paper studies the trading behavior of different types of traders (customer type indicators [CTI's]) in corn futures. Nonmembers (CTI4) consume most of the intraday liquidity while local traders (CTI1) as market makers are its main provider. Both groups combine most of the intraday trading volume. Interday trading comes mainly from proprietary accounts (CTI2) and other local traders' trades (CTI3), reflecting their longer-term needs for hedging and speculation. Changes in the overnight positions of the general public (CTI4) and clearing members (CTI2) contribute mostly to daily price discovery, while the positions of CTI3 group reflect possible information advantage about future price movements.     

Forecasting emerging technologies: Use of bibliometrics and patent analysis

It is rather difficult to forecast emerging technologies as there is no historical data available. In such cases, the use of bibliometrics and patent analysis have provided useful data. This paper presents the forecasts for three emerging technology areas by integrating the use of bibliometrics and patent analysis into well-known technology forecasting tools such as scenario planning, growth curves and analogies. System dynamics is also used to be able to model the dynamic ecosystem of the technologies and their diffusion. Technologies being forecasted are fuel cell, food safety and optical storage technologies. Results from these three applications help us to validate the proposed methods as appropriate tools to forecast emerging technologies.     

Monetary policy in a dual currency environment

We develop a small open economy general equilibrium model with sticky prices and partial dollarization – a situation where both domestic and foreign currencies coexist. We derive a tractable representation of the model in terms of domestic inflation and the output gap in which a trade-off, which depends on the degree of dollarization, arises endogenously due to the presence of foreign interest rate shocks. We use this framework to show analytically how higher degrees of dollarization induce larger volatilities of the output gap and inflation, thus hampering a central bank’s effectiveness to stabilize the economy. Our impulse response functions show that the transmission of such shocks has a positive (negative) effect on inflation and negative (positive) effect on the output gap when money aggregates and consumption are complements (substitutes).     

Accounting for intermediates: Production sharing and trade in value added

We combine input–output and bilateral trade data to compute the value added content of bilateral trade. The ratio of value added to gross exports (VAX ratio) is a measure of the intensity of production sharing. Across countries, export composition drives VAX ratios, with exporters of Manufactures having lower ratios. Across sectors, the VAX ratio for Manufactures is low relative to Services, primarily because Services are used as an intermediate to produce manufacturing exports. Across bilateral partners, VAX ratios vary widely and contain information on both bilateral and triangular production chains. We document specifically that bilateral production linkages, not variation in the composition of exports, drive variation in bilateral VAX ratios. Finally, bilateral imbalances measured in value added differ from gross trade imbalances. Most prominently, the U.S.–China imbalance in 2004 is 30–40% smaller when measured in value added.     

Are emerging market indicators of vulnerability to financial crises decoupling from global factors?

This paper assesses the extent to which common factors underlie indicators of vulnerability to financial crises in emerging market economies (EMEs) and whether this link is changing over time. We use a Bayesian dynamic common factor model to estimate their common component in a sample of up to 41 countries including both developed as well as emerging economies. This permits us to interpret the component in common to both of them as a global factor. We introduce time variation into the model to investigate whether indicators are decoupling from global factors over time. While decoupling can be observed in a few cases, the exposure to global factors in most countries tends to fluctuate around the mean. Broadly speaking then, the answer is no.