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This paper re-examines international transmissions of monetary policy shocks from advanced economies to emerging market economies. In terms of methodologies, it combines three novel features. First, it separates co-movement in monetary policies due to common shocks from spillovers of monetary policies from advanced to peripheral economies. Second, it uses revisions in growth and inflation and the Taylor rule to gauge desired changes in a country's interest rate if it is to focus exclusively on growth, inflation, and real exchange rate stability. Third, it proposes a specification that can work with the quantitative easing episodes when no changes in US interest rates are observed. In terms of empirical findings, we differ from the existing literature and document patterns of “2.5-lemma” or something between a trilemma and a dilemma: without capital controls, a flexible exchange rate regime offers some monetary policy autonomy when the center country tightens its monetary policy, yet it fails to do so when the center country lowers its interest rate. Capital controls help to insulate periphery countries from monetary policy shocks from the center country even when the latter lowers its interest rate.

A country may adopt policy measures such as raising its foreign exchange reserves to better prepare for sudden reversal of international capital flows or currency attacks, which in principle should reduce financial vulnerability for its firms and the entire economy, but the beneficial effect of such policies may be partially offset by endogenous firms' decisions to take on more risks. We present a robust but previously undocumented relationship between corporate leverage and country-level foreign exchange reserve holdings. For 6610 non-financial firms in 23 emerging markets from 2000 to 2006, we show that more foreign reserve accumulation leads to higher corporate leverage. The effect is significantly greater in sectors that are intrinsically more sensitive to uncertainty. We go from correlation to causality via a two-prong instrumental variable strategy: simultaneously (1) instrumenting FX reserves by global commodity price movement, and (2) examining leverage of firms outside the commodity-sensitive sectors.

This paper studies the effects of trade liberalization on capital flows in a dynamic Heckscher-Ohlin model and makes four contributions. First, we identify an interest rate over-determination problem in such a model, and solve it with an endogenous discount factor. Second, we show that a trade liberalization in a developing country generally leads to a greater current account surplus, which is the exact opposite of a common but partial equilibrium intuition. Third, factor market reforms reinforce the effect of the trade liberalization on capital outflows. Finally, our calibrations suggest that China's accession to the WTO is likely an important factor driving the rise of current account surplus during 2001–2010.

We study the implications of global supply chains for the design of monetary policy, using a small-open economy New Keynesian model with multiple stages of production. Within the family of simple monetary policy rules with commitment, a rule that targets separate producer price inflation at different production stages, in addition to output gap and real exchange rate, is found to deliver a higher welfare level than alternative policy rules. As an economy becomes more open, measured by export share, the optimal weight on the upstream inflation rises relative to that on the final stage inflation. If we have to choose among aggregate price indicators, targeting PPI inflation yields a smaller welfare loss than targeting CPI inflation alone. As the production chain becomes longer, the optimal weight on PPI inflation in the policy rule that targets both PPI and CPI inflation will also rise. A trade cost shock such as a rise in the import tariff can alter the optimal weights on different inflation variables.

This paper develops a new theory of international economics by introducing Heckscher–Ohlin features of intra-temporal trade into an intertemporal trade approach of current account. To do so, we consider a dynamic general equilibrium model with tradable sectors of different factor intensities, which allows for substitution between intertemporal trade (current account adjustment) and intra-temporal trade (goods trade). An economy's response to a shock generally involves a combination of a change in the composition of goods trade and a change in the current account. Flexible factor markets reduce the need for the current account to adjust. On the other hand, the more rigid the factor markets, the larger the size of current account adjustment relative to the volume of goods trade, and the slower the speed of adjustment of the current account towards its long-run equilibrium. We present empirical evidence consistent with the theory.

Using accounting data for 7722 non-financial firms in 42 countries, we examine how the 2007–2009 crisis affected firm performance and how various linkages propagated shocks across borders. We isolate and compare effects from changes in business cycle, international trade, and external financing conditions, on firms' profits, sales and investment using both sectoral benchmarks and firm-specific sensitivities estimated prior to the crisis. We find that the crisis had a bigger negative impact on firms with greater sensitivity to business cycle and trade developments, particularly in countries more open to trade. Interestingly, financial openness made limited difference.

Disparity between control and ownership rights gives rise to the risk of tunneling by the controlling shareholder, and is prevalent in many emerging market economies and present in some developed countries. At the same time, international investors come from different countries whose home markets are characterized by varying degrees of control–ownership disparity. This paper studies whether this difference in investors' home countries affects their portfolio choice in an emerging market. It combines two unique data sets on ownership and control in business groups, and investor-stock level foreign investment in Korea. A key finding is that investors from low-disparity countries disfavor high-disparity stocks in Korea, but investors from high-disparity countries are indifferent. Moreover, investors from low-disparity countries became averse to disparity only after the Asian financial crisis. These results suggest that the nature of corporate governance in international investors' home countries affects their portfolio choice abroad, and therefore these investors should not be lumped together in the analyses of their portfolio choice.

This paper studies the value of external commitment to policy reforms in the case of WTO/GATT accessions. The accessions often entail reforms that go beyond narrowly defined trade liberalization, and have to overcome fierce resistance in the acceding countries, as reflected in protracted negotiations. We study the growth and investment consequences of WTO/GATT accessions, with attention to a possible selection bias. We find that the accessions tend to raise income, but only for those countries that were subject to rigorous accession procedures. Policy commitments associated with the accessions were helpful, especially for countries with poor governance.

Different categories of foreign portfolio investors in Korea have differences as well as similarities in their trading behavior before and during the currency crisis. First, non-resident institutional investors are always positive feedback traders, whereas resident investors were negative feedback (contrarian) traders before the crisis but switch to be positive feedback traders during the crisis. Second, individual investors herd significantly more than institutional investors. Non-resident (institutional as well individual) investors herd significantly more than their resident counterparts. Third, differences in the Western and Korean news coverage are correlated with differences in net selling by non-resident investors relative to resident investors ...

This paper examines the evidence for nonlinear price behavior in retail goods prices across U.S. cities. First, a simple continuous-time model is used to explore the types of price behavior that can arise in the presence of market frictions. These frictions could be interpreted as transport costs, but we prefer a broader interpretation in which they operate at the level of technology and preferences. Second, we gather price data from 24 U.S. cities on individual goods like orange juice and toothpaste. The empirical analysis reveals that price discrepancies between U.S. cities are stationary and nonlinearly mean-reverting to price parity.