reaganomics and reputation revisited this paper considers a reformulation of backus and driffill s model of credibility following a change in regime following tabellini we alter their model to better fit macroeconomic policymaking as it is formulated in the u s where monetary and fiscal policies are made by independent policymakers by assuming that policymakers of divergent views have recently entered office and so have no track record the game s equilibrium corresponds to the u s experience during the first years of the reagan administration

devaluation expectations and speculative attacks on the currency balance of payments crises are studied in a framework where investors do not know the threshold level of foreign reserves the attainment of which implies that the central bank abandons its fixed exchange target investors are alternatively risk neutral or risk averse it is shown that depending on whether the threshold level is stochastic or fixed but unknown to investors currency speculation reveals itself as respectively a speculative outflow distributed over a longer time period or a sudden speculative attack on the currency

inflation and reputation in many macroeconomic models with rational expectations optimal policy is time inconsistent and therefore announced policy may not be credible this paper models the government s credibility explicitly using kreps and wilson s analysis time consistent optimal government policy emerges as a sequential equilibrium in a repeated game this policy is at least as good as the inconsistent optimal policy and dominates the consistent policy when reputational effects are ignored thus the analysis resolves the problem of specifying a credible optimal policy in such models the results show why attempts to disinflate may lead to recession even with perfectly flexible prices this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

multinationals and the developing countries in multinational enterprise and economic analysis caves provides a summary of economic research on multinationals and developing countries yet for policy makers major questions remain unanswered the gaps can be grouped into four categories the impact of the widespread change in development strategies on multinationals the net impact of foreign direct investment on host countries the causes of declining tensions between developing countries and foreign investors and links between our economic knowledge and the decisions that face private and government managers

the role of free entry in an oligopolistic heckscher ohlin model retaining the basic properties of the heckscher ohlin trade model namely free entry and exit fully integrated international commodity markets and the same number of sectors with that of factors the authors develop a two country model with cournot oligopoly in this economy factor price equalization and the standard heckscher ohlin theorem on comparative advantage hold between two countries which are identical except for size however autarkic prices are different even though the level of trade is zero under the free trade regime nevertheless free trade reduces the oligopoly price and increases welfare copyright 1995 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

exchange rate policy wage formation and credibility abstract since the collapse of the bretton woods system some european countries have pursued discretionary exchange rate policies in order to maintain or enhance the international competitiveness of the traded goods sector these countries which typically feature centralized wage setting have also tended to experience high nominal wage increases the overall outcome may be described as a devaluation wage spiral this paper applies two models of repeated games to analyze the strategic interaction between an exchange rate setting policy maker and a wage setting trade union it is shown how a devaluation wage spiral may result from a conflict of interest over the real wage it is also shown how reputational forces may provide a way out of the devaluation wage spiral

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

balance of payments crises in a cash in advance economy the author shows that a flexible prices sidrauski type model with a cash in advance constraint is capable of depicting some of the phenomena associated with a balance of payments crisis like the onesrecently observed in argentina and mexico current accounts deficits and appreciation of the real exchange rat e it is also shown that these phenomena become exacerbated as the rate of devaluation before the crisis occurs becomes smaller copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

resource allocation in a general equilibrium model of production under uncertainty the case of variable supply of labor abstract this paper examines the effects of a marginal change in uncertainty on resource allocation and factor rewards by relaxing the assumption of factor inelasticity we demonstrate that integrating a variable labor supply into batra s two sector uncertainty model can mitigate or reverse many of the earlier results specifically a marginal increase in uncertainty may trigger the resource to move from the certainty sector to the uncertainty sector in the presence of a backward bending labor supply curve

rational expectations and policy credibility following a change in regime we examine the dynamic path of an economy after a change in regime when neither the policy to be followed nor the reactions of the public are known the model is an application of kreps and wilson s reputation model to barro and gordon s macroeconomic policy game equilibrium is defined to be the dynamically consistent solution to a game between the government and the private sector it involves mixed strategies and bayesian learning by both sides until the uncertainty about government and public behaviour is resolved the absence of complete credibility of government policy and intransigence of private sector wage demands increase the output loss of disinflation the analysis also sheds light on the strategic nature of economic policymaking and the role of information in macroeconomics

activist monetary policy under rational expectations the purpose of this paper is to argue that the pursuit of an activist monetary policy may make economic sense even when people s expectations are formed rationally the paper presents a simple model in which 1 prices are costly to adjust 2 there is uncertainty concerning the parameters affecting aggregate demand and 3 there are positive costs of gathering and processing information by reference to this model it can be shown that an activist monetary policy may or may not be useful in offsetting aggregate disturbances depending upon the extent of information costs and of parameter uncertainty

buying and selling attacks on fixed exchange rate systems abstract in this paper we show how rational expectations models of speculative attacks on fixed exchange rate systems can be extended to take into account the possibility that the central bank could be forced to either devalue or revalue essential to the analysis are the concepts of buying attack and selling attack by means of which we were able to describe how expectations about the future exchange rate are formed we also provide a discussion on the problem of uniqueness of the equilibrium that may arise in this kind of speculative attack models

balance of payments crises and devaluation the collapse of a fixed exchange rate is typically marked by a sudden balance of payments crisis in which speculators fleeing from the domestic currency acquire a large portion of the central bank s foreign exchange holdings faced with such an attack the central bank often withdraws temporarily from the foreign exchange market allowing the exchange rate to float freely before devaluing and returning to a fixed rate regime this paper links the timing of the initial speculative attack to the magnitude of the expected devaluation and to the length of the transitional period off loating an implication of the analysis is that there exist devaluations so sharp and transition periods so short that acrisis must occur the moment the market first learns that the current exchange parity will eventually be altered for sufficiently long transition periods the floating exchange rate overshoots its new peg before appreciating back toward it for shorter periods the rate depreciates monotonically to its new fixed level accordingly the central bank s return tothe foreign exchange market can occasion a capital outflow or a capital inflow this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

explaining the absence of international factor price convergence abstract as capital markets have become integrated factor prices have not converged as expected this paper provides an explanation the key observation is that non specific output risks are borne by capital making international portfolio diversification a dominant strategy capital market integration can elicit many patterns of factor price response under this circumstance factor prices will move in parallel if countries are identical when countries differ factor prices may diverge or even have their relative sizes reversed the integration of capital markets affects welfare through changes in risk and in overall returns to savings welfare need not improve

speculative currency attacks and balance of payments crises abstract this paper reviews the recent theoretical literature on collapsing exchange rate regimes using a combination of technique intuition and realworld observation we discuss the literature s main insights point out some unresolved questions and offer suggestions for future research the survey should be of interest to both specialists and non specialists in the field of international macroeconomics

speculative attacks and macroeconomic fundamentals evidence from some european currencies abstract this paper evaluates the role of macroeconomic fundamentals in generating episodes of speculative pressures on six currencies of the european exchange rate mechanism erm the observed regime changes are first estimated by a set of speculative pressure indicators the contribution of economic fundamentals are then examined by using the implications of the basic speculative attack literature in general episodes of speculative pressures appear to be associated with a deterioration in economic fundamentals only for some of the sample currencies confirming the view that consistent macro policies are necessary but not sufficient to ensure the maintenance of an exchange rate peg

interest rate policy with expectations of devaluation the problem of recurrent devaluations in the nordic countries is dealt with using a simple rational expec tations model given imperfect international asset substitutability a nd sufficient foreign exchange reserves a small open economy can use interest rate policies geared to competitiveness to put an end to re current devaluations if this policy is known and credible no intere st rate adjustments are called for except shortly before and during the expected devaluation phase in contrast a completely unanticipat ed interest rate policy requires that the rate of interest be raised continuously as the expected devaluation date is approached copyright 1988 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics

reappraising the eclectic paradigm in an age of alliance capitalism this article discusses the implications of the advent of alliance capitalism for our theorizing about the determinants of mne activity in particular it argues that due to the increasing porosity of the boundaries of firms countries and markets the eclectic or oli paradigm of international production needs to consider more explicitly the competitive advantages arising from the way firms organize their inter firm transactions the growing interdependencies of many intermediate product markets and the widening of the portfolio of the assets of districts regions and countries to embrace the external economies of interdependent activities

recent advances in oligopoly theory from a game theory perspective abstract this paper surveys the contribution that recent developments in game theory have made to the understanding of oligopoly theory it is argued that conventional models suffer from the problem that there are a number of solution concepts offered with little guidance as to which should be selected and this is related to the static nature of the models employed one important development in game theory has been the analysis of repeated games and when applied to oligopoly theory this suggests that outcomes may be more cooperative than conventional theory suggests related to this is the requirement that firms employ credible threats to punish cheating from cooperative outcomes and the paper examines the extent to which imperfect information may restrict the scope of firms to employ such punishments one way in which firms may seek to make threats credible is through strategic investments for example in production capacity and the paper explores how competition over price or output is integrated with competition over instruments for strategic investment

uncertainty and the theory of international trade in long run equilibrium abstract we consider a country with two factors and two industries each of which faces technical and price uncertainty entrepreneurs choose outputs in order to maximize the expected utility of profits they also draw factor payments and purchase consumption goods after the uncertainty isresolved they enter and exit from an industry according to whether participation there increases their expected utility within this model the validity of the propositions of neoclassical trade theory depends on how the entrepreneurs entry decisions are affected by parameter changes via their roles as risk bearers consumers and factor owners

responsible leadership for multinational enterprises in bottom of pyramid countries the knowledge of local managers the gulf between multinational enterprises focus on high income countries and the reality of 80 of the world living in developing bottom of pyramid hahn j bus ethics 84 313 324 2009 economies could magnify the anti globalisation movement and political backlashes in the twenty first century the global financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 has increased such social tensions throughout the world and creates greater challenges for responsible leadership in this conceptual article the authors analyse the value and identity of local managers and the liability of foreignness caused by over reliance on expatriate managers and under reliance on local managers in bottom of pyramid countries hahn 2009 it is argued that multinational enterprises need to assess local managers knowledge and contributions as having not only operational and market value but also institutional value such as access to local knowledge and local social capital such a holistic approach will ensure fairer equal treatment of all managers in the multinational enterprise responsible leadership in the twenty first century requires a greater appreciation of local managers institutional value and the overcoming of any psychological distance towards local managers of bottom of pyramid countries

structural uncertainty and subsidy removal for economies in transition abstract economies in transition are faced with a high degree of structural uncertainty i e uncertainty about which it is possible to learn through experience we study structural uncertainty s effects on a subsidy removal program subsidy removal causes unemployment but yields fiscal benefits and facilitates private sector growth when the policymaker does not know the speed with which the private sector absorbs the unemployed he will be driven toward a more decisive and therefore more informative policy the model also rationalizes policy reversals and implies that irreversibility constraints and political instability dampen the learning effect making policy more gradualist

wage distortion and resource allocation under uncertainty the effects of uncertainty on resource allocation have been examined in a two sector general equilibrium model of production constructing a model in which firms are risk indifferent and face uncertainty regarding the use of capital rothenberg and smith 9 considered the implications of uncertainty for welfare resource allocation and income distribution their model was refined by batra 3 to permit uncertainty in production to influence the firms decisions to hire both capital and labor batra s approach appears to be more general in that producers are assumed to be risk averse in lieu of risk neutral the writing of this paper is inspired by batra s contributions 2 3 batra s well known intermediate run equilibrium model is reformulated to allow for wage distortion utilizing the model several issues regarding the effects of changes in factor supplies in commodity prices and in the degree of wage distortion will be examined factor market distortions in the absence of uncertainty have been studied extensively in literature 2 their impacts on resource allocation in stochastic environment have not been explored however we argue that the introduction of the wage differential has a major impact on batra s results first relative value factor intensities generally replace relative physical factor intensities in determining signs of

wealth creation in china and some lessons for development ethics in the last 30 years china has experienced an astounding economic development that calls for a differentiated understanding of this complex process of wealth creation in the first section of this article i present a new concept of wealth creation that goes beyond making money maximizing profit and adding value and serves as a framework to address the article s main topic in the second section i investigate in what ways and to what extent this new concept might apply to china s economic reform and development particularly in the 1980s and 1990s in the third section i attempt to draw a couple of lessons for development ethics in general

dynamic stability and international trade under uncertainty in the presence of output or price uncertainty the heckscher ohlin samuelson h o s model with incomplete risk markets has been shown to exhibit a wide range of perverse comparative statics responses which contradict the predictions d la stolper samuelson and rybczynski and opens up the possibility of perverse price output responses this paper revisits the question raised by neary 1978 and examines the dynamic stability properties of an h o s model under uncertainty in relation to the conditions under which these perverse responses emerge the findings suggest that once the risk attitudes of the representative entrepreneur is appropriately accounted for in the specification of value factor intensities dynamic stability with respect to a marshallian adjustment process is necessary and sufficient for the normality of all of the standard comparative statics responses except for the rybczynski result the basic analytics are then applied to various existing setups of the h o s model under uncertainty in each case the applicability of the stability condition in precluding comparative static responses that violate standard predictions is examined

input choices and uncertain demand the theory of the firm under demand uncertainty has to date assumed that the firm s input decisions are unaffected by the stochastic nature of demand this assumption is not usually made explicitly but it is implied by the assumption that the firm s cost function presumably derived by finding the minimum cost combination of inputs for any given level of output is unaffected by the uncertainty however if firms must choose some of their inputs before the uncertainty regarding demand is resolved then different input decisions may involve different levels of risk since firms decisions regarding price and output are affected by demand uncertainty and non linear risk preferences as previous authors have shown it seems reasonable to suspect that their input decisions will also be affected but if input decisions are affected then firms cost functions are not invariant to uncertainty and the results of previous studies must be reexamined three different types of firms are considered in this paper the competitive firm the quantity setting imperfect competitor and the price setting imperfect competitor input decisions of the competitive firm and the quantity setting imperfect competitor are shown to be unaffected by demand uncertainty and hence the assumption of an unchanging cost function is appropriate in these cases for the price setting imperfect competitor however input decisions are influenced by demand uncertainty and an unchanging cost function is therefore not appropriate this case is considered in some detail and conditions under which results can differ from those previously reported in the literature are examined

bashing and coercion in monetary policy bashing and coercion in monetary policy i introduction we ve got excess plant capacity i don t think that growth is excessive i have not been overly concerned with inflation president bush in a february 14 1989 interview with the wall street journal p a8 with the economy running close to potential the risks seem to be on the side of a further strengthening of price pressure chairman greenspan in testimony before congress on february 21 1989 reprinted from the wall street journal february 22 1989 p a2 many investors appeared to be confused by conflicting statements by bush greenspan and other u s officials wall street journal february 22 1989 p a1 if the fed pushes interest rates significantly higher bush may go public with critism wall street journal march 24 1989 p a1 recent research in macroeconomic policy games by rogoff 1985 alesina 1988 tabellini 1987 and waller 1989a has concentrated on the importance of an independent central bank in a discretionary policymaking environment in the original work on policy games by barro and gordon 1983a 1983b no distinction was made between the monetary authority and the fiscal authority but these researchers argue that because the fiscal authority may have incentives to create excessive inflation giving the powers of money creation to an independent monetary authority whose inflation preferences differ from the current fiscal authority may enable society to reduce the equilibrium inflation rate this results holds even though monetary policy is still chosen in a discretionary fashion therefore backus and driffill 1985a 537 conclude autonomous central banks thus act as a precommitment device which may help to make noninflationary policies more credible and less costly implicit in the term independent is the belief that the central bank is free to choose monetary policy without interference from the fiscal authority administration however this is not generally the case the appointment of central bankers by the legislative or executive branch of the government governmental oversight of policy decisions or political pressure on the central bank by these branches will tend to influence the setting of monetary policy and subsequently the extent to which the central bank is truly independent 1 kane 1984 argues that even if it is not able to directly choose monetary policy the current administration still may be able to achieve its preferred monetary growth path by putting pressure on the monetary authority to do its bidding restricting the powers of the central bank public criticism of central bank performance here after referred to as bashing 2 exclusion from fiscal policy planning which hurts the egos of central bankers or undertaking actions which damage the post central bank income or opportunities of the central bankers are ways he suggests in which the administration can coerce cooperation from the central bank in creating excessive money growth such arguments have given rise to the view that the administration is engaged in a reputation building game with the central bank although the central bank has control of the money supply the administration can threaten to impose a welfare loss by bashing the central bank if it does not generate the monetary policy preferred by the administration the success of this strategy depends on the size of the bashing costs imposed on the central bank and also on the extent to which these threats are credible credibility in turn depends on the benefits and costs incurred by the administration in carrying out its threats as a result the administration may choose to bash the central bank if it does not produce the administration s preferred money inflation outcome by establishing a reputation for bashing the administration may be able to obtain its desired policy outcome in the future

economic development as self discovery in the presence of uncertainty about what a country can be good at producing there can be great social value to discovering costs of domestic activities because such discoveries can be easily imitated we develop a general equilibrium framework for a small open economy to clarify the analytical and normative issues we highlight two failures of the laissez faire outcome there is too little investment and entrepreneurship ex ante and too much production diversification ex post optimal policy consists of counteracting these distortions to encourage investments in the modern sector ex ante but to rationalize production ex post we provide some informal evidence on the building blocks of our model

dynamic capabilities and base of the pyramid business strategies numerous scholars have observed that the relationship between poverty and violent conflict is endogenous as a result the area of peace through commerce argues as one of its central tenets that the institution of business may be able to contribute to sustainable peace by creating economic development where poverty is a critical issue while this argument may be valid it leaves the question open what is the business case for engaging in poverty alleviation business strategies strategic management scholars are addressing this question arguing the general proposition that poverty is not only experienced by the people but also impacts businesses operating in environments where the phenomenon is pervasive by addressing poverty businesses can help themselves yet organizational theory justifying this proposition is still emerging consisting of only a few studies that generally suggest that these strategies can help firms develop competitive advantage through the lens of the resource based view this article extends the theoretical application of the resource based view suggesting that conditions of poverty directly suppress the value of organizational resources and capabilities that are or could be contributed by people affected by it in addition it characterizes poverty alleviation strategic capabilities as dynamic capabilities finally it describes a framework of base of the pyramid dynamic capabilities that could guide both future discourse in the area and deductive disconfirmatory research examining the efficacy of these strategies

optimal reputation building in the new keynesian model abstract we study the optimal committed monetary policy when the private sector has imperfect information and has to infer the central banker s ability to commit the optimal policy is designed to influence learning and improve the central banker s reputation of being committed the reputation building implies that when a committed central banker first takes office he should resist the temptation to stimulate output with initially high but declining inflation he should reverse a missed inflation target rather than accommodate it and he should adopt a less accommodative inflation response to a cost push shock than a full commitment solution suggests

a reexamination of the neoclassical trade model under uncertainty abstract this paper presents a model that pinpoints the exact places and reasons that the propositions of the heckscher ohlin samuelson model break down under uncertainty within the model if preferences exhibit decreasing absolute risk aversion i a capital poor country tends to obtain lower revenues from its resources than the same resources would yield in capital rich countries ii if there is one riskless and one risky sector a capital abundant country tends to have a comparative advantage in the risky sector and iii the pattern of trade depends on the intra national as well as the inter national distribution of endowments

government debt economic activity and transmission of economic disturbances this paper analyzes the effects of government debt on output and the trade bala nce in a two country rational expectations model of the world economy it is shown that perceived changes in government debt do not affect the level of economic activity but unperceived changes in the home country s government debt are correlated positively with its output and negatively with its trade balance unperceived increases in the foreign country s government debt however have a positive impact on the home country s output and the trade balance empirical evidence from the u s is consistent with most of the implications of the model copyright 1987 by ohio state university press

rational and self fulfilling balance of payments crises speculative attacks on a pegged exchange rate must sometimes occur ifasset price paths are to be free of abnormal profit opportunities suchattacks are fully rational as they reflect the market s response to aregime breakdown that is inevitable the authors shows that under someexpectations about policy balance of payments crises can also be purely self fulfilling events in such cases even a permanently viableregime may collapse and the economy will possess multiple equilibriacorresponding to different subjective assessments of the probability ofa crisis the behavior of the domestic interest rate will naturally reflect the possibility of a speculative attack copyright 1986 by american economic association

the effects of devaluation and foreign price disturbances under rational expectations abstract this paper analyzes the effects of changes in the exchange rate and the foreign price level in a stochastic model in which domestic agents form expectations about possible changes in these variables the general conclusion to emerge is that the impact of such changes on the domestic economy depend critically upon a the extent to which such changes are predicted and b in some cases the permanency with which they are expected to prevail the short run and dynamic effects of a number of specific changes are examined in detail and it is shown how a variety of transitional paths may arise depending upon the accuracy of expectations with respect to both timing and magnitude

introduction to the symposium multinationals the janus face of globalization panning the globe its af liates andstrategic partnerships linking coun tries in complex webs of alliances themultinational enterprise mne is theembodiment of globalization and itsprincipal agent nation states have con tributed towards making the mne thekey agent of globalization through pro moting technological innovation reduc ing tariff and non tariff barriers and lib eralizing their domestic nancial sys tems multinationals have been theprime movers behind globalization tak ing advantage of the increased opennessof domestic economies to integrate theiractivities across national markets and so cieties given their mobility and visibility itis not surprising that mnes have becomea lightning rod for groups concernedabout the various costs of globalization social cultural political and perhapsmost importantly the economic costs although international business ib scholars and policymakers emphasizethe bene ts of globalization and cooper ative relations with mnes the publicand non governmental organizationshave ignored these views and focused onthe dark side of mne state relations with the growing backlash against glob alization and mnes more research onthe janus face of globalization is neededif the pro mne pro globalization viewsof most ib scholars are to prevail in pub lic policy debates this research symposium served as aninvitation to international businessscholars to further explore the janus faceof globalization through organizing thissymposium we have come to appreciatethat when scholars look at problemsidenti ed with globalization s dark side they also often contribute to our under standing of the bright side the potentialfor globalization to bring with it wide spread bene ts for all we submit that asscholars we can learn more when we tryto ferret out the causal relationships be tween globalization the mne the state

collapsing exchange rate regimes some linear examples abstract we construct a pair of linear examples to study the collapse time of a fixed exchange rate regime the first example is a perfect foresight continuous time model which allows calculation of the exact collapse time and the tracking of reserves the second example is a discrete time stochastic model which yields an endogenous probability distribution over the collapse time and produces a forward discount of the exchange rate

borrowing to defend the exchange rate and the timing and magnitude of speculative attacks abstract the paper analyses the implications for the timing and magnitude of a speculative attack on a fixed exchange rate of government borrowing to increase the stock of international reserves it is shown that such borrowing reduces the likelihood of an early collapse and increases the likelihood of an eventual collapse the magnitude of the speculative attack also increases

stabilization with exchange rate management stabilization programs in open economies typically consist of two stages in the first stage the rate of currency devaluation is reduced but the fiscal adjustment does not eliminate the fiscal deficit that causes growth of debt and loss of reserves making a future policy change necessary only later at a second stage is this followed by either an abandonment of exchange rate management or by a sufficiently large cut in the fiscal deficit we study how different second stage policy changes affect economic dynamics during the first stage these changes include tax increases budget cuts on traded and nontraded goods and increases in the growth rate of money

exchange rate policy and monetary information this paper develops a model of a small open economy in which the presence of local deviations from purchasing power parity give rise to differential information it is assumed that the monetary authorities are committed to buy and sell foreign exchange in order to support an exchange rate policy rule it is demonstrated that exchange rate policy can influence the distribution of real output i if agents possess incomplete and differential information and ii if they have contemporaneous money supply or balance of payments information it is also shown that exchange rate policy can be effective because of its ability to influence the information content of available monetary data the argument is turned around and used to support the frequent release of monetary data

speculative attacks with unpredictable or unknown foreign exchange reserves during a currency crisis speculators usually do not know the value of a central bank s foreign exchange reserves in this paper i show that modelling speculators as having imperfect knowledge of reserves enriches the predictions of the classical model of specula tive attacks with realistic lags in reserve reporting and costs to unsuccessful speculation successful speculative attacks will involve a jump depreciation unsuccessful attacks may occur attacks may occur when fundamentals are improving attacks may not be preceded by large increases in interest rates and fixed exchange rates may be abandoned with no attack and no decline in the money supply jel classification f3 1 attaques speculatives quand les reserves de devises etrangeres sont soit imprevisibles soit inconnues au cours d une crise monetaire les speculateurs ne connaissent pas normalement la valeur des reserves de devises etrangeres que la banque centrale a en main ce memoire montre qu une modelisation des speculateurs en postulant qu ils ont une connaissance imparfaite des reserves permet d enrichir les predictions du modele classique des attaques speculatives a partir d une evaluation realiste des delais dans les rapports sur la quantite de reserves et des couits d une speculation ratee on deter mine que les attaques speculatives reussies vont impliquer que se produise une deprecia tion discontinue que des attaques speculatives ratees puissent se produire que des attaques peuvent se produire quand les donnees fondamentales s ameliorent que des at taques ne peuvent pas etre precedees par de fortes augmentations des taux d interet et que des taux de change fixes peuvent etre abandonnes sans attaques et sans chute dans

constant returns to scale and competitive equilibrium under uncertainty abstract this paper considers the implications of the assumption of constant returns to scale in expected utility maximizing models of the competitive firm or industry in which markets for risk are absent under widely used assumptions about risk preferences it is shown that with constant returns to scale average profits are more than necessary to cover the implicit costs of risk bearing when the free entry of identical firms is possible this assumption about technology is shown to be incompatible with the assumption that entrepreneurs are risk averse

devaluation devaluation expectations and price dynamics this paper investigates the inflationary impact of actual and expected de valuations the empirical evidence indicates that 1 the effects of devaluation on the price level are felt for at least three years 2 in the majority of the cases the ceteris paribus inflationary impac t of devaluation is mild 3 significant differences concerning the devaluation inflation relationship exist across countries but there i s little evidence to suggest that such differences exist in general across time within a country and 4 the anticipation of devaluatio n can have severe inflationary consequences and can lead to price lev el overshooting copyright 1987 by the review of economic studies limited