Laurence Ball, Gita Gopinath, Daniel Leigh, Prachi Mishra, Antonio Spilimbergo The Covid-19 crisis has increased public debt to unprecedented levels. Yet falling demand and lower commodity prices have reduced inflation rates globally. But in recent months, inflationary pressures have re-emerged, driven by base effects, supply bottlenecks, and the recovery in demand – in some cases boosted by fiscal stimuli (Ball et al. 2021). While many advanced economies maintain a very accommodative policy stance, some central banks in emerging market economies are reversing the interest rates cuts of last year, to bring inflation back on target. The question is how effective these moves will be. Standard open economy models predict that a higher interest rate will lift the exchange rate. A stronger currency, in turn, will reduce import prices and help to bring down domestic inflation. For emerging market economies, however, the empirical evidence does not support this prediction (Kohlscheen 2014, Hnatkovska et al. 2016).