Consumption Preferences, Asset Demands, and Distribution Effects in International Financial Markets

This paper is an attempt to examine some of the microeconomic foundations of this last view of the link between current accounts and exchange rata. Several authors, especially Kouri and de Macedo (1978), but also more recently Dornbusch (1980), have sought to justify the portfolio approach in terms of finance theory, deriving asset demands from a mean-variance framework and arguing that differences in the portfolios of different countries explain why changes in the world distribution of wealth affect exchange rates. What I will do in this paper is to argue that, even under seemingly favorable assumptions, these distribution effects nay run the wrong way; that if they run the right way, they will be very weak; and that the incentives for inter-national, portfolio diversification are in any case small, and can be swamped by quite modest transaction costs or other costs to diversification.

Target Zones and Exchange Rate Dynamics

This paper develops a highly simplified model of exchange rate behavior within the band under a target zone regime. It shows that the expectation that authorities will defend the band exerts a stabilizing effect on exchange rate behavior within the band, even when the authorities are not actively intervening. The extent of stabilization can be related in a straightforward way to three factors: the sensitivity of the current exchange rate to expected depreciation, the volatility of the process driving exchange rate "fundamentals", and the credibility of the commitment by authorities to defend the target zone.

Financing vs. Forgiving a Debt Overhang

This paper examines the tradeoffs facing creditors of a country whose debt is large enough that the country cannot attract voluntary new lending. If the country is unable to meet its debt service requirements out of current income, the creditors have two choices. They can finance the country, lending at an expected loss in the hope that the country will eventually be able to repay its debt after all; or they can forgive, reducing the debt level to one that the country can repay. The post-1983 debt strategy of the IMF and the US has relied on financing, but many current calls for debt reform call for forgiveness instead. The paper shows that the choice between financing and forgiveness represents a tradeoff. Financing gives the creditors an option value: if the country turns out to do relatively well, creditors will not have written down their claims unnecessarily. However, the burden of debt distorts the country's incentives, since the benefits of good performance go largely to creditors rather than itself. The paper also shows that the tradeoff itself can be improved if both financing and forgiveness are made contingent on states of nature that the country cannot affect, such as oil prices, world interest rates, etc.

Real Exchange Rate Adjustment and the Welfare Effects of Oil Price Decontrol

Conventional analysis of the welfare effects of U.S. oil price regulation in the 1970's focuses on the deadweight losses in the oil market. This paper argues that such analysis substantially understates the benefits from decontrolling prices, because decontrol will lead to an improvement in the U.S. terms of trade with respect to other oil importing countries. A simple model of the relationship between oil decontrol and the terms of trade is developed, and the impact is calculated for plausible parameter values. The results suggest that the terms of trade benefits are several times larger than the benefits as conventionally measured.