Publications by Date

When the US Bureau of Labor Statistics releases new numbers, in theory it should make no difference whether the press release emphasizes the most recent 1-month number, which is what it does, or the 12-month number, as many other countries’ statistical...

For four decades economists have been finding that the forward discount is a very biased forecast of future changes in the exchange rate. The carry trade makes money, on average. For just as long, they have been debating the appropriate interpretation of...

Across US counties, vaccination rates have a statistically significant downward effect on the Covid-19 death rate, as of August 7. Controlling for poverty rates, age, and temperature lowers the magnitude of the estimate a little. Using the Biden-Trump...

This paper develops a new econometric framework to classify and estimate exchange rate regimes. They are classified into four distinct categories: fixed exchange rates, BBC (band, basket and crawl), managed floating, and freely floating. The procedure...

Government forecasts of GDP growth and budget balances are generally more over-optimistic than private sector forecasts. When official forecasts are especially optimistic relative to private forecasts ex ante, they are more likely also to be over...

Written for a PIIE conference on the 50^th anniversary of floating exchange rates, this paper deals with possible alternatives to a unipolar dollar-based system.  It considers (1) measures of international currency use; (2) potential challengers to the...

We begin by examining determinants of aggregate foreign exchange reserve holdings by central banks (size of issuing country’s economy and financial markets, ability of the currency to hold value, and inertia).  But understanding the determination of...

A majority of countries neither freely float their currencies nor firmly peg.  But most of the remainder in practice also don’t obey such well-defined intermediate exchange rate regimes as target zones.  This paper proposes to define an intermediate...