America in the Near East, 1819-2010: Preservation and Access Planning for the American Mission Board (ABM) Collection

The American Research Institute Turkey (ARIT) respectfully requests $40,000 in outright funds from the NEH to support project planning for management and dissemination of the resources of the American Board of Missions (ABM) archive and library in Istanbul. ARIT proposes to develop a comprehensive and efficient plan for the preservation, arrangement, cataloging, and digitizing of the archive of the American Board of Missions in Istanbul

Fixing for Your Life

The Asian crisis took place against a background of exchange rate regimes that were characterized as soft pegs. This has led many analysts to conclude that the peg did it' and that emerging markets (EMs) should just say no' to pegged exchange rates. We present evidence that EMs are very different from developed economies in key dimensions that play a key role when it comes to the choice of exchange rate regime--floating for EMs is no panacea. In EMs currency crashes are contractionary, the adjustments in the current account are far more acute. Credibility and market access, as captured in the behavior of credit ratings and interest rates, is adversely affected by devaluations or depreciations. Exchange rate volatility is more damaging to trade and the passthrough from exchange rate swings to inflation is far higher in EMs. These differences between emerging and developed economies may explain EMs reluctance to tolerate large exchange rate movements. In a simple framework we illustrate why large exchange rate swings are feared when access to international credit may be lost.

Fear of Floating

In recent years, many countries have suffered severe financial crises, producing a staggering toll on their economies, particularly in emerging markets. One view blames fixed exchange rates-- soft pegs'--for these meltdowns. Adherents to that view advise countries to allow their currency to float. We analyze the behavior of exchange rates, reserves, the monetary aggregates, interest rates, and commodity prices across 154 exchange rate arrangements to assess whether official labels' provide an adequate representation of actual country practice. We find that, countries that say they allow their exchange rate to float mostly do not--there seems to be an epidemic case of fear of floating.' Since countries that are classified as having a free or a managed float mostly resemble noncredible pegs--the so-called demise of fixed exchange rates' is a myth--the fear of floating is pervasive, even among some of the developed countries. We present an analytical framework that helps to understand why there is fear of floating.

Debt Intolerance

This paper introduces the concept of "debt intolerance," which manifests itself in the extreme duress many emerging market economies experience at levels of indebtedness that would seem manageable by advanced country standards. The paper argues that "safe" external debt-to-GNP thresholds for debt-intolerant countries depend on the country's default and inflation history and may be as low as 15 percent in some cases. Debt intolerance is linked to the phenomenon of serial default that has plagued many countries over the past two centuries. Understanding and measuring debt intolerance is fundamental to assessing the problems of debt sustainability, debt restructuring, capital market integration, and the scope for international lending to ameliorate crises. The paper makes a first pass at quantifying debt intolerance, including delineating debtors' "clubs" and regions of vulnerability, based on a history of credit events for a large number of countries going back to the 1820s.macroeconomics, Debt Intolerance

Addicted to Dollars

Dollarization, in a broad sense, is increasingly a defining characteristic of many emerging market economies. How important is this trend quantitatively and how important is it for the conduct of monetary policy and the choice of exchange rate regimes? Though these questions have become a hot topic in both the theory and policy literature, most efforts are remarkably uninformed by evidence, in no small part because meaningful data has been lacking, except for a very narrow range of assets. This paper attempts to move the discussion forward and shed light on the critical questions by proposing a measure of dollarization that is broad both conceptually and in terms of country coverage. We use this measure to identify trends in the evolution of dollarization in the developing world in the last two decades, and to ascertain the consequences that dollarization has had on the effectiveness of monetary and exchange rate policy. We find that, contrary to the general presumption in the literature, a high degree of dollarization does not seem to be an obstacle to monetary control or to disinflation. A level of dollarization does, however, appear to increase exchange rate pass-through, reinforcing the claim that fear of floating' is a greater problem for highly dollarized economies. We also review the developing countries' record in combating their addiction to dollars. Concretely, we try to explain why some countries have been able to avoid certain forms of the addiction, and examine the evidence on successful de-dollarization.

Crecimiento y financiamiento externo en América Latina

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) En este trabajo se trata el desempeño económico de América Latina durante la última década, y se le presta atención especial al crecimiento y al sector financiero. En particular, se muestra que factores externos tales como las tasas de interés en EE. UU. y el ciclo económico desempeñan un papel clave en los ingresos de capitales, la inversión y el crecimiento. Como consecuencia de ello, el crecimiento económico de la región tiende a ser frágil y exhibe un elevado grado de movimiento conjunto, es decir, una elevada correlación de la producción entre los países. Esta última característica exacerba la fragilidad, porque hay poco espacio para el aseguramiento mutuo dentro de América Latina, en caso de que un país sufra una sacudida grave, y el financiamiento durante los cambios desfavorables de la coyuntura debe provenir principalmente de fuera de la región.

Parametric Manifolds I: Extrinsic Approach

A parametric manifold can be viewed as the manifold of orbits of a (regular) foliation of a manifold by means of a family of curves. If the foliation is hypersurface orthogonal, the parametric manifold is equivalent to the 1-parameter family of hypersurfaces orthogonal to the curves, each of which inherits a metric and connection from the original manifold via orthogonal projections; this is the well-known Gauss-Codazzi formalism. We generalize this formalism to the case where the foliation is not hypersurface orthogonal. Crucial to this generalization is the notion of deficiency, which measures the failure of the orthogonal tangent spaces to be surface-forming, and which behaves very much like torsion. Some applications to initial value problems in general relativity will be briefly discussed.Comment: Plain TeX, 21 pages, no figure

Increased plasma viscosity as a reason for inappropriate erythropoietin formation

The aim of this study was to examine whether altered plasma viscosity could contribute to the inappropriately low production rate of erythropoietin (EPO) observed in patients suffering from hypergammaglobulinemias associated with multiple myeloma or Waldenström's disease. We found that the EPO formation in response to anemia in these patients was inversely related to plasma viscosity. A similar inverse relationship between plasma viscosity and EPO production was seen in rats in which EPO formation had been stimulated by exchange transfusion and the plasma viscosity of which was thereby altered by using exchange solutions of different composition to alter plasma viscosity and thus whole blood viscosity independently from hematocrit. Raising the gammaglobulin concentration to approximately 40 mg/ml plasma in the rats almost totally blunted the rise in serum EPO levels despite a fall of the hematocrit to 20%. Determination of renal EPO mRNA levels by RNase protection revealed that the reductions in serum EPO levels at higher plasma viscosities were paralleled by reductions in renal EPO mRNA levels. Taken together, our findings suggest that plasma viscosity may be a significant inhibitory modulator of anemia-induced EPO formation. The increased plasma viscosity in patients with hypergammaglobulinemias may therefore contribute to the inappropriate EPO production, which is a major reason for the anemia developing in these patients