The design of an interest rate rule with staggered contracting and costly transacting

We examine interest rate rules in a model in which agents plan their consumption decisions in the face of two rigidities. First, households need cash balances to aid trade. Second, today's price level is inherited from past contracting decisions so that changes in nominal aggregate demand fall on output in the short run. Given these rigidities, the central bank can set the nominal interest rate in the short run. However, a pure interest rate peg fails to uniquely determine nominal and real magnitudes. A reaction function constraining the nominal interest rate to be continuous and showing some sensitivity to inflation does not exhibit this indeterminacy.     

From Financial Repression to External Distress: The Case of Venezuela

Recent work suggests a connection between domestic debt and external default. We examine potential linkages for Venezuela, where the evidence reveals a nexus among domestic debt, financial repression, and external vulnerability. The financial repression tax (as a share of GDP) is similar to OECD economies, in spite of higher debt ratios in the latter. The financial repression “tax rate” is higher in years of exchange controls and legislated interest rate ceilings. We document a link between domestic disequilibrium and a weakening of the net foreign asset position via private capital flight. We suggest these findings are not unique to Venezuela.     

越俎代庖的美联储

在过去几周里，美国联邦储备委员会（Fed）基本上是重新定义了央行应在市场经济中扮演的角色。     

Capital Inflows,Exchange Rate Flexibility and Credit Booms

Historically, capital flow bonanzas have often fueled sharp credit expansions in advanced and emerging market economies alike. Focusing primarily on emerging markets, this paper analyzes the impact of exchange rate flexibility on credit markets during periods of large capital inflows. It is shown that bank credit is larger and its composition tilts to foreign currency in economies with less flexible exchange rate regimes, and that these results are not explained entirely by the fact that the latter attract more capital inflows than economies with more flexible regimes. The findings thus suggest countries with less flexible exchange rate regimes may stand to benefit the most from regulatory policies that reduce banks' incentives to tap external markets and to lend/borrow in foreign currency; these policies include marginal reserve requirements on foreign lending, currency‐dependent liquidity requirements and higher capital requirement and/or dynamic provisioning on foreign exchange loans.     

Financial crises: past and future

Business Economics - This article takes a selective global tour of some of the prominent economic and financial risks in advanced, emerging, and low-income developing economies. The primary...     

Default, Currency Crises, and Sovereign Credit Ratings

Sovereign credit ratings play an important part in determiningcountries' access to international capital markets and the termsof that access. In principle, there is no reason to expect thatsovereign credit ratings should systematically predict currencycrises. In practice, in emerging market economies there is astrong link between currency crises and default. Hence if creditratings are forward-looking and currency crises in emergingmarket economies are linked to defaults, it follows that downgradesin credit ratings should systematically precede currency crises.This article presents results suggesting that sovereign creditratings systematically fail to predict currency crises but doconsiderably better in predicting defaults. Downgrades in creditratings usually follow currency crises, possibly suggestingthat currency instability increases the risk of default.     

MR imaging of annular pancreas

The appearance of annular pancreas on magnetic resonance (MR) images is described in a 14-year-old boy with pancreatitis and incomplete pancreas divisum. The presence of the coexisting abnormalities complicated the interpretation of an upper gastrointestinal series and computed tomographic (CT) study. MR imaging was useful as a problem-solving technique to supplement the conventional imaging tests.