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To update a famous old statistic: a political leader in a developing country is twice as likely to lose office in the 6 months following a currency crash as otherwise. This difference, which is highly significant statistically, holds regardless whether the devaluation takes place in the context of an IMF program. Why are devaluations so costly? Many of the currency crises of the last ten years have been associated with output loss. Is this, as alleged, because of excessive reliance on raising the interest rate as a policy response? More likely it is because of contractionary effects of devaluation. There are various possible contractionary effects of devaluation, but it is appropriate that the balance sheet effect receives the most emphasis. Passthrough from exchange rate changes to import prices in developing countries is not the problem: this coefficient fell in the 1990s, as a look at some narrowly defined products shows. Rather, balance sheets are the problem. How can countries mitigate the fall in output resulting from the balance sheet effect in crises? In the shorter term, adjusting promptly after inflows cease is better than procrastinating by shifting to short-term dollar debt, which raises the costliness of the devaluation when it finally comes. In the longer term, greater openness to trade reduces vulnerability to both sudden stops and currency crashes.

Clara Zverina for research assistance, and Ernesto Stein (who was originally going to be a co-author of this paper). Andy Rose (2000), followed by many others, has used the gravity model of bilateral trade on a large data set to estimate the trade effects of monetary unions among small countries. The finding has been large estimates: Trade among members seems to double or triple, that is, to increase by 100-200%. After the advent of EMU in 1999, Micco, Ordoñez and Stein and others used the gravity model on a much smaller data set to estimate the effects of the euro on trade among its members. The estimates tend to be statistically significant, but far smaller in magnitude: on the order of 10-20 % during the first four years. What explains the discrepancy? This paper seeks to address two questions. First, do the effects on intra-euroland trade that were estimated in the euro’s first four years hold up in the second four years? The answer is yes. Second, and more complicated, what is the reason for the big discrepancy vis-à-vis other currency unions? We investigate three prominent possible explanations for the gap between 15 % and 200%. First, lags. The euro is still very young. Second, size. The European countries are much bigger on average than most of those who had formed currency unions in the past. Third, endogeneity of the decision to adopt an institutional currency link. Perhaps the high correlations estimated in earlier studies were spurious, an artifact of reverse causality. Contrary to expectations, we find no evidence that any of these factors explains a substantial share of the gap, let alone all of it.

This paper explores the conflict of real and monetary convergence during the EMU run-up of the future Central and Eastern European (CEE) EU member states. Based on a Balassa-Samuelson model of productivity driven inflation, it compares the policy options which might make the compliance possible, i.e., fiscal tightening and nominal appreciation within the ERM2 band. Nominal appreciation within ERM2 seems the better option to achieve the compliance with the Maastricht criteria as no discretionary government intervention is necessary and losses in terms of real growth are less. Having once opted for nominal appreciation within ERM2 the Irish model seems the best choice. By fixing the ERM2 entry rate as the ERM2 central rate, a high degree of flexibility is provided in coping with erratic short-term capital inflows. When decisions about possible revaluation prior to the final fixing of the EMU entry rate are made, the CEE countries have to weigh the positive competitiveness effect of deprecation against the danger of additional inflationary pressure in the post-entry period. Despite the merits of nominal appreciation, countries committed to hard euro pegs might choose fiscal contraction as the second best solution.

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of the IIIS. All works posted here are owned and copyrighted by the author(s). Papers may only be downloaded for personal use only. International Investment Patterns*

Trade theories covering Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are as diverse as the literature in search of their empirical support. To account for the model uncertainty that surrounds the validity of the competing PTA theories, we introduce Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to the PTA literature. BMA minimizes the sum of Type I and Type II error, the mean squared error, and generates predictive distributions with optimal predictive performance. Once model uncertainty is addressed as part of the empirical strategy, we report clear evidence of Trade Creation, Trade Diversion, and Open Bloc effects. After controlling for natural trading partner effects, Trade Creation is weaker – except for the EU. To calculate the actual effects of PTAs on trade flows we show that the analysis must be comprehensive: it must control for Trade Creation and Diversion as well as all possible PTAs. Several prominent control variables are also shown to be robustly related to Trade Creation; they relate to factor endowments and economic policy.

comments. We also thank Karen Simhony-Boniel for assistance during the data collection process. Special thanks are due to Mark N. Cutis, Jaakko P. Karki, Fukuyoshi Kikunaga, Amos Rubin, and Constantine Thanassulas for their detailed description of the workings of the primary market for international bonds. A. Melnik thanks the visiting fellow program at ICER in Torino for its hospitality while part of this work was conducted.

aspects of regional currency areas and the use of foreign currencies

for comments; and Clara Zverina for research assistance. Andy Rose (2000), followed by many others, has used the gravity model of bilateral trade on a large data set to estimate the trade effects of monetary unions among small countries. The finding has been large estimates: Trade among members seems to double or triple, that is, to increase by 100-200%. After the advent of EMU in 1999, Micco, Ordoñez and Stein and others used the gravity model on a much smaller data set to estimate the effects of the euro on trade among its members. The estimates tend to be statistically significant, but far smaller in magnitude: on the order of 10-20 % during the first four years. What explains the discrepancy? This paper seeks to address two questions. First, do the effects on intra-euroland trade that were estimated in the euro’s first four years hold up in the second four years? The answer is yes. Second, and more complicated, what is the reason for the big discrepancy vis-à-vis other currency unions? We investigate three prominent possible explanations for the gap between 15 % and 200%. First, lags. The euro is still very young. Second, size. The European countries are much bigger on average than most of those who had formed currency unions in the past. Third, endogeneity of the decision to adopt an institutional currency link. Perhaps the high correlations estimated in earlier studies were spurious, an artifact of reverse causality. We test the hypotheses regarding lags and size directly; and we address the endogeneity problem by means of a natural experiment involving trade between the CFA countries of Africa and the euro countries of Europe. Contrary to expectations, we find little evidence that any of these factors explains a substantial share of the gap, let alone all of it. Key words:

Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of the IIIS. All works posted here are owned and copyrighted by the author(s).