Are humans unique in their ability to interpret exogenous events as causes? We addressed this question by observing the behavior of rats for indications of causal learning. Within an operant motor-sensory preconditioning paradigm, associative surgical techniques revealed that rats attempted to control an outcome (i.e., a potential effect) by manipulating a potential exogenous cause (i.e., an in...

In this paper I develop a model to investigate the connection between debt relief and current account sustainability. This model can be used as a key input in assessing whether a HIPC country’s real exchange rate is ‘overvalued,’ and will thus need to go through devaluation. The working of the model is illustrated for the case of Nicaragua, a country that in 2002 had one of the highest external...

Currency devaluation refers to a deliberate and official reduction in the value of country's currency relation other currencies. It can occur through various mechanisms, such as adjusting interest rates, intervening foreign exchange markets, or implementing monetary policies aimed at reducing supply domestic currency. create financial challenges for SMEs. Financial institutions may be more caut...

587 The Russian economy is tightly woven into the global economy, and is therefore highly dependent on the development of exchange rates. Since 2014, the ruble has fallen by more than 50 percent against the U.S. dollar. The devaluation goes hand in hand with the Western sanctions that were imposed due to the political tensions between Russia and Ukraine. At the same time, the decline in oil pri...

Most analyses of the East Asian financial crisis have focused on its causes and the links between currency and banking crises. However a related question is what happens in the aftermath of a crisis? What factors determine the path of an economy in the post-devaluation phase? Does it swiftly bounce back, with the crisis being followed by a period of economic recovery, or does it face a period o...

The devaluation of the Mexican peso of 1995 along with the more recent financial crises in emerging economies are viewed as systematic outcomes of the operation of free currency markets. The hypothesis is that there exists a distortion in free currency markets that makes developing countries systematically misallocate resources. The distortion lies in “asymmetric reputation” that leads to subst...

Abstract During the Great Depression, countries endowed with abundant gold reserves were not able to leave standard and devalue their currencies until mid-1930s. Instead, they forced go down road of internal devaluation. We analyze policies Swiss authorities by estimating a New Keynesian small open economy model. Our results show that long adherence failure devaluation imposed considerable cost...

This paper analyses predictions of a simple model of currency crises in which the peg will be abandoned when the currency overvaluation hits a certain threshold, unknown to the agents. Due to learning about the threshold, some features usually observed in the data and identified with models with multiple equilibria arise in the model. But the model yields distinctive predictions about the behav...

Largemouth bass Micropterus salmoides broods were experimentally reduced in size to test whether brood size (BS) and simulated brood depredation affect the decision by a male to continue providing care for its brood or to abandon that brood prematurely before its offspring reach independence. The highest ranked of the generalized linear models predicting brood abandonment was based on the numbe...

In the present article a theory is outlined that explains why and when behavioral inhibition alters stimulus evaluations. In addition, some initial evidence is presented that supports the theory. Specifically, results of three experiments show that refraining from responding to stimuli results in devaluation of these stimuli, but only when these stimuli are positive. These findings suggest auto...