Purchasing Power Parity As An Explanation of Long-Term Changes In Exchange Rates
About: This article is published in Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.The article was published on 1970-08-01. It has received 84 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Relative purchasing power parity & Purchasing power parity.
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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
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on international portfolio choice and corporation finance, and present a micro-theory of individual portfolio choice; equilibrium pricing relationships and risk-return tradeoffs; Objectives for value maximizing firms.
Abstract: Focuses on international portfolio choice and corporation finance. Micro-theory of individual portfolio choice; Equilibrium pricing relationships and risk-return tradeoffs; Objectives for value maximizing firms. (Из Ebsco)
1,473 citations
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01 Jan 2002TL;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.
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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
TL;DR: The authors found strong evidence of mean-reverting real exchange rate behavior, using simple, stationary, autoregressive models estimated on pre-float data, and easily outperformed nonstationary real-exchange rate models in dynamic forecasting exercises over the recent float.
Abstract: Using annual data spanning two centuries for dollar-sterling and franc-sterling real exchange rates, we find strong evidence of mean-reverting real exchange rate behavior. Using simple, stationary, autoregressive models estimated on prefloat data, we easily outperform nonstationary real exchange rate models in dynamic forecasting exercises over the recent float. Such stationary univariate equations explain 60-80 percent of the in-sample variation in real exchange rates, although the degree of short-run persistence may be high. The econometric estimates imply a half-life of shocks to the real exchange rate of about 6 years for dollar-sterling and a little under 3 years for franc-sterling.
979 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors proposed a multivariate test whose null hypothesis is violated only when all of the processes in question are stationary, and applied the tests to real exchange rates among the G5 over the recent float.
862 citations