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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.

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Citations
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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

Journal ArticleDOI
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

ReportDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a small open economy version of the Calvo sticky price model, and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a simple representation in domestic inflation and the output gap.
Abstract: We lay out a small open economy version of the Calvo sticky price model, and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a simple representation in domestic inflation and the output gap. We use the resulting framework to analyse the macroeconomic implications of three alternative rulebased policy regimes for the small open economy: domestic inflation and CPI-based Taylor rules, and an exchange rate peg. We show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail. We also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy, and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with the suboptimal rules.

1,311 citations

Book
01 Jan 2002
TL;DR: In the last few decades exchange rate economics has seen a number of developments, with substantial contributions to both the theory and empirics of exchange rate determination as mentioned in this paper. But, while our understanding of exchange rates has significantly improved, a few challenges and open questions remain in the exchange rate debate, enhanced by events including the launch of the Euro and the large number of recent currency crises.
Abstract: Description Contents Resources Courses About the Authors In the last few decades exchange rate economics has seen a number of developments, with substantial contributions to both the theory and empirics of exchange rate determination. Important developments in econometrics and the increasingly large availability of high-quality data have also been responsible for stimulating the large amount of empirical work on exchange rates in this period. Nonetheless, while our understanding of exchange rates has significantly improved, a number of challenges and open questions remain in the exchange rate debate, enhanced by events including the launch of the Euro and the large number of recent currency crises. This volume provides a selective coverage of the literature on exchange rates, focusing on developments from within the last fifteen years. Clear explanations of theories are offered, alongside an appraisal of the literature and suggestions for further research and analysis.

1,222 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
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

References
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Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
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

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Nov 1962
TL;DR: In this paper, it is shown that the expansionary effect of a given increase in money supply will always be greater if the country has a floating exchange rate than if it has a fixed rate.
Abstract: T HE BEARING of exchange rate systems on the relative effectiveness of monetary policy on the one hand, and of budgetary policy on the other, as techniques for influencing the level of monetary demand for domestic output, is not always kept in mind when such systems are compared. In this paper it is shown that the expansionary effect of a given increase in money supply will always be greater if the country has a floating exchange rate than if it has a fixed rate. By contrast, it is uncertain whether the expansionary effect on the demand for domestic output of a given increase in budgetary expenditure or a given reduction in tax rates will be larger or smaller with a floating than with a fixed rate. In all but extreme cases, the stimulus to monetary demand arising from an increase in money supply will be greater, relative to that arising from an expansionary change in budgetary policy, with a floating than with a fixed rate of exchange.

1,449 citations

Book ChapterDOI
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