Posted Content•
Exchange Rate Dynamics Redux
TL;DR: This paper developed an analytically tractable two-country model that marries a full account of global macroeconomic dynamics to a supply framework based on monopolistic competition and sticky nominal prices.
Abstract: We develop an analytically tractable two-country model that marries a full account of global macroeconomic dynamics to a supply framework based on monopolistic competition and sticky nominal prices The model offers simple and intuitive predictions about exchange rates and current accounts that sometimes differ sharply from those of either modern flexible-price intertemporal models or traditional sticky-price Keynesian models Our analysis leads to a novel perspective on the international welfare spillovers due to monetary and fiscal policies
Citations
More filters
Posted Content•
TL;DR: A number of recent studies have weighed in with fairly persuasive evidence that real exchange rates (nominal exchange rates adjusted for differences in national price levels) tend toward purchasing power parity in the very long run as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: FIRST ARTICULATED by scholars of the ISalamanca school in sixteenth century Spain,1 purchasing power parity (PPP) is the disarmingly simple empirical proposition that, once converted to a common currency, national price levels should be equal. The basic idea is that if goods market arbitrage enforces broad parity in prices across a sufficient range of individual goods (the law of one price), then there should also be a high correlation in aggregate price levels. While few empirically literate economists take PPP seriously as a short-term proposition, most instinctively believe in some variant of purchasing power parity as an anchor for long-run real exchange rates. Warm, fuzzy feelings about PPP are not, of course, a substitute for hard evidence. There is today an enormous and evergrowing empirical literature on PPP, one that has arrived at a surprising degree of consensus on a couple of basic facts. First, at long last, a number of recent studies have weighed in with fairly persuasive evidence that real exchange rates (nominal exchange rates adjusted for differences in national price levels) tend toward purchasing power parity in the very long run. Consensus estimates suggest, however, that the speed of convergence to PPP is extremely slow; deviations appear to damp out at a rate of roughly 15 percent per year. Second, short-run deviations from PPP are large and volatile. Indeed, the one-month conditional volatility of real exchange rates (the volatility of deviations from PPP) is of the same order of magnitude as the conditional volatility of nominal exchange rates. Price differential volatility is surprisingly large even when one confines attention to relatively homogenous classes of highly traded goods. The purchasing power parity puzzle then is this: How can one reconcile the enormous short-term volatility of real exchange rates with the extremely slow rate at which shocks appear to damp out? Most explanations of short-term exchange rate volatility point to financial factors such as changes in portfolio preferences, short-term asset price bubbles, and monetary shocks (see, for example, Maurice Obstfeld and Rogoff forthcoming). Such shocks can have substantial effects on the real economy in the presence of sticky nominal wages and prices. I See Lawrence H. Officer (1982, ch. 3) for an extensive discussion of the origins of PPP theory; see also Dornbusch (1987).
2,901 citations
01 Jan 1998
TL;DR: In the early years of macroeconomics as a discipline, the liquidity trap-that awkward condition in which monetary policy loses its grip because the nominal interest rate is essentially zero, in which the quantity of money becomes irrelevant because money and bonds are essentially perfect substitutes-played a central role as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the early years of macroeconomics as a discipline, the liquidity trap-that awkward condition in which monetary policy loses its grip because the nominal interest rate is essentially zero, in which the quantity of money becomes irrelevant because money and bonds are essentially perfect substitutes-played a central role. Hicks (1937), in introducing both the IS-LM model and the liquidity trap, identified the assumption that monetary policy was ineffective, rather than the assumed downward inflexibility of prices, as the central difference between " Mr. Keynes and the classics ". It has often been pointed out that the Alice-in-Wonderland character of early Keynesianism, with its paradoxes of thrift, widow's cruses, and so on, depended on the explicit or implicit assumption of an accommodative monetary policy; it has less often been pointed out that in the late 1930s and early 1940s it seemed quite natural to assume that money was irrelevant at the margin. After all, at the end of the 30s interest rates were hard up against the zero constraint: the average rate on Treasury bills during 1940 was 0.014 percent. Since then, however, the liquidity trap has steadily receded both as a memory and as a subject of economic research. Partly this is because in the generally inflationary decades after World War II nominal interest rates stayed comfortably above zero, and central banks therefore no longer found themselves " pushing on a string ". Also, the experience of the 30s itself was reinterpreted, most notably by Friedman and Schwartz (1963); emphasizing broad aggregates rather than interest rates or monetary base, they argued in effect that the Depression was caused by monetary contraction, that the Fed could have prevented it, and implicitly that even after the great slump a sufficiently aggressive monetary expansion could have reversed it. To the extent that modern
1,650 citations
TL;DR: The authors fit nonlinearly mean-reverting models to real dollar exchange rates over the post-Bretton Woods period, consistent with a theoretical literature on transactions costs in international arbitrage.
Abstract: We fit nonlinearly mean-reverting models to real dollar exchange rates over the post-Bretton Woods period, consistent with a theoretical literature on transactions costs in international arbitrage. The half lives of real exchange rate shocks, calculated through Monte Carlo integration, imply faster adjustment speeds than hitherto recorded. Monte Carlo simulations reconcile our results with the large empirical literature on unit roots in real exchange rates by showing that when the real exchange rate is nonlinearly mean reverting, standard univariate unit root tests have low power, while multivariate tests have much higher power to reject a false null hypothesis.
1,122 citations
Book•
01 Dec 2001TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the economics of financial information and how microstructure tools help to clarify the types of information most relevant to exchange rates, and show how exchange-rate behavior previously thought to be particularly puzzling can be explained using the micro-structure approach.
Abstract: Historically, the fields of exchange-rate economics and microstructure finance have progressed independently of each other. Recent interaction, however, has given rise to a microstructure approach to exchange rates. This book focuses on the economics of financial information and how microstructure tools help to clarify the types of information most relevant to exchange rates. The microstructure approach views exchange rates from the perspective of the trading room, the place where exchange rates are actually determined. Emphasizing information economics over institutional issues, the approach departs from three unrealistic assumptions common to previous approaches: that all information relevant to exchange rates is publicly available, that all market participants are alike in their goals or in how they view information, and that how trading is organized is inconsequential for exchange rates. The book shows how exchange-rate behavior previously thought to be particularly puzzling can be explained using the microstructure approach. It contains a combination of theoretical and empirical work.
1,042 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors discusses the profound difficulties of maintaining fixed exchange rates in a world of expanding global capital markets, and discusses the small number of successful fixers, as well as the dynamic interplay between credibility and commitment.
Abstract: This paper discusses the profound difficulties of maintaining fixed exchange rates in a world of expanding global capital markets. Contrary to popular wisdom, industrialized-country monetary authorities easily have the resources to defend exchange parities against virtually any private speculative attack. But if their commitment to use those resources lacks credibility with markets, the costs to the broader economy of defending an exchange-rate peg can be very high. The dynamic interplay between credibility and commitment is illustrated by the 1992 Swedish and British crises and the 1994-95 Mexican collapse. We also discuss the small number of successful fixers.
1,016 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed a theory of exchange rate movements under perfect capital mobility, a slow adjustment of goods markets relative to asset markets, and consistent expectations, and showed that along that path a monetary expansion causes the exchange rate to depreciate.
Abstract: The paper develops a theory of exchange rate movements under perfect capital mobility, a slow adjustment of goods markets relative to asset markets, and consistent expectations. The perfect foresight path is derived and it is shown that along that path a monetary expansion causes the exchange rate to depreciate. An initial overshooting of exchange rates is shown to derive from the differential adjustment speed of markets. The magnitude and persistence of the overshooting is developed in terms of the structural parameters of the model. To the extent that output responds to a monetary expansion in the short run, this acts as a dampening effect on exchange depreciation and may, in fact, lead to an increase in interest rates.
4,766 citations
TL;DR: The theoretical and practical implications of increased mobility of capital have been discussed in this paper, where the authors assume the extreme degree of mobility that prevails when a country cannot maintain an interest rate different from the general level prevailing abroad.
Abstract: The world is still a closed economy, but its regions and countries are becoming increasingly open. The trend, which has been manifested in both freer movement of goods and increased mobility of capital, has been stimulated by the dismantling of trade and exchange controls in Europe, the gradual erosion of the real burden of tariff protection, and the stability, unparalleled since 1914, of the exchange rates. The international economic climate has changed in the direction of financial integration and this has important implications for economic policy. My paper concerns the theoretical and practical implications of the increased mobility of capital. In order to present my conclusions in the simplest possible way, and to bring the implications for policy into sharpest relief, I assume the extreme degree of mobility that prevails when a country cannot maintain an interest rate different from the general level prevailing abroad. This assumption will overstate the case but it has the merit of posing a stereotype towards which international financial relations seem to be heading. At the same time it might be argued that the assumption is not far from the truth in those financial centres, of which Zurich, Amsterdam, and Brussels may be taken as examples, where the authorities already recognize their lessening ability to dominate money market conditions and insulate them from foreign influences. It should also have a high degree of relevance to a country like Canada whose financial markets are dominated to a great degree by the vast New York market.
2,290 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors consider how important monopolistic competition is to an understanding of the effects of aggregate demand on output, and show that it can, together with other imperfections, generate effects in aggregate demand in a way that perfect competition cannot.
Abstract: How important is monopolistic competition to an understanding of the effects of aggregate demand on output? We ask the question at three levels. Can monopolistic competition, by itself, explain why aggregate demand movements affect output? Can it, together with other imperfections, generate effects of aggregate demand in a way that perfect competition cannot? If so, can it give an accurate account of the response of the economy to aggregate demand movements? The answers are no, yes, and yes.
1,629 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of expectations in exchange rate determination and a direct observable measure of expectations is proposed, based on the information that is contained in data from the forward market for foreign exchange.
Abstract: This paper deals with the determinants of the exchange rate and develops a monetary view (or more generally, an asset view) of exchange rate determination. The first part traces some of the doctrinal origins of approaches to the analysis of equilibrium exchange rates. The second part examines some of the empirical hypotheses of the monetary approach as well as some features of the efficiency of the foreign exchange markets. Special emphasis is given to the role of expectations in exchange rate determination and a direct observable measure of expectations is proposed. The direct measure of expectations builds on the information that is contained in data from the forward market for foreign exchange. The empirical results are shown to be consistent with the hypotheses of the monetary approach.
1,281 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the extent of "pricing to market" by foreign suppliers, and show that pricing to market is a real phenomenon, but not universal; in particular, evidence on German export prices suggests that stickiness of import prices is largely confined to machinery and transport equipment.
Abstract: It has been widely remarked that US import prices have not fully reflected movements in the exchange rate. This paper begins with an investigation of the actual extent of "pricing to market" by foreign suppliers. It shows that pricing to market is a real phenomenon, but not universal; in particular, evidence on German export prices suggests that stickiness of import prices is largely confined to machinery and transport equipment. The paper then considers a number of possible models. While the evidence is not sufficient to distinguish among thesemodels, it seems probable that a full explanation will involve both dynamics and imperfect competition.
1,160 citations