Recent years have seen a substantial increase in the volatility of exchange rates. This trend has prompted economists and finance analysts to question if the observed behavior of exchange rates is consistent with a rational model. Does that volatility, further, hinder trade? Professors Sercu and Uppal examine these issues in the context of dynamic general equilibrium models, explicitly considering the role of financial markets while allowing for commodity markets to be segmented across countries. They show that the implications of the theoretical model for exchange rates in this context are...

This study examines the impact of British capital flows on the evolution of capital markets in four countries--Argentina, Australia, Canada, and the United States--over the years 1865 to 1914. In substantive chapters on each of the countries it offers parallel histories of the evolution of their financial infrastructures--commercial banks, nonbank intermediaries, primary security markets, formal secondary security markets, and the institutions that provide the international financial links connecting the frontier country with the British capital market.

Recent years have seen a substantial increase in the volatility of exchange rates. This trend has prompted economists and finance analysts to question if the observed behavior of exchange rates is consistent with a rational model. Does that volatility, further, hinder trade? Professors Sercu and Uppal examine these issues in the context of dynamic general equilibrium models, explicitly considering the role of financial markets while allowing for commodity markets to be segmented across countries. They show that the implications of the theoretical model for exchange rates in this context are...

Despite the successes achieved in liberalizing trade by multilateral trade negotiations sponsored by the World Trade Organization (WTO), numerous countries have separately negotiated preferential trade treaties with one another. Representing a significant departure from the WTO's central principle of non-discrimination among member countries, preferential trade blocs are the subject of an intense academic and policy debate. The first section of this 2005 book presents a rudimentary and intuitive introduction to the economics of preferential trade agreements. The following chapters present the...

The authors treat macroeconomic models as composed of large numbers of micro-units or agents of several types and explicitly discuss stochastic dynamic and combinatorial aspects of interactions among them. In mainstream macroeconomics sound microfoundations for macroeconomics have meant incorporating sophisticated intertemporal optimization by representative agents into models. Optimal growth theory, once meant to be normative, is now taught as a descriptive theory in mainstream macroeconomic courses. In neoclassical equilibria flexible prices led the economy to the state of full employment...