The effects of foreign shocks when interest rates are at zero

In a two‐country DSGE model, the effects of foreign demand shocks on the home country are greatly amplified if the home economy is constrained by the zero lower bound on policy interest rates. This result applies even to countries that are relatively closed to trade such as the United States. Departing from many of the existing closed‐economy models, the duration of the liquidity trap is determined endogenously. Adverse foreign shocks can extend the duration of the trap, implying more contractionary effects for the home country. The home economy is more vulnerable to adverse foreign shocks if the neutral rate is low—consistent with “secular stagnation”—and trade openness is high.     

Financial frictions,interest rate dynamics,and international business cycle synchronization

A two‐country real business cycle model with national endogenous borrowing constraints and working capital requirements can account for the high level of international co‐movements. The effects of technology shocks are transmitted internationally through the dynamics of the interest rate. Specifically, the borrowing mechanism brings about a wedge between the real interest rate and the expected marginal product of capital, such that interest rates fall following positive technology shocks. A lower interest rate induces more investment by Foreign firms, which in turn contribute to greater synchronization of economic activities across countries. Moreover, terms of trade amplify the effects of technology shocks.     

International macroeconomic dynamics: A factor vector autoregressive approach

In this paper international comovements among a set of key real and nominal macroeconomic variables in the US, UK, Canada, Japan and the Euro area have been investigated for the 1980–2005 period, using a factor vector autoregressive approach. We present evidence that comovements in macroeconomic variables do not concern only real activity, but are an important feature also of stock market returns, inflation rates, interest rates and, to a smaller extent, monetary aggregates. Both common sources of shocks and similar transmission mechanisms explain international comovements, with the only exception of Japan, where the idiosyncratic features seem to dominate. Finally, concerning the origin of global shocks, evidence of both global supply-side and demand-side disturbances is found.     

Spillover effects of fiscal policy in a monetary union: Why do fiscal instruments matter?

Using a two‐country DSGE model, we analyse the spillover effects of fiscal policy in a monetary union. Based on a non‐Walrasian labour market with a labour force participation decision and involuntary unemployment and a detailed fiscal sector, we focus on the relative cross‐border effects of different kinds of fiscal shocks (government expenditure and tax shocks). Among the major lessons from this analysis, five general and striking results are worth highlighting : (1) spillover effects differ widely according to the fiscal instrument, (2) all fiscal instruments produce positive spillover effects on foreign GDP except a rise in government consumption, (3) the response of unemployment is not always negatively correlated with the response of output (4) the different fiscal shocks trigger different effects on foreign inflation and the term of trade, which implies heterogeneous interest‐rate and trade channels, and (5) a more accommodative monetary policy and a scenario of ‘fiscal dominance’ alter greatly the effects of fiscal policy shocks.     

On Gravity,Specialization and Intra‐industry Trade

Contrary to the popular belief, specialization is not necessary for gravity equations. This paper shows that the simple gravity equation holds if and only if the market share of an exporting country is constant across all importing countries. Specialization is just one special case satisfying this condition. The constant‐share condition can hold in a variety of situations where multiple producers compete with a homogeneous good. Further, this paper shows that the ratio of bilateral trade to the product of partner incomes is increasing in the extent of specialization and in the intensity of intra‐industry trade. Since the relationship is not model‐specific, the correlations among these variables do not support any specific model.     

Quality Assurance and the Home Market Effect

The home market effect is considered as a distinguishing feature of models of trade with increasing returns to scale in production and imperfect competition. However, some empirical studies found the existence of home market effect even in constant returns to scale industries. This paper builds a model of intra‐industry trade based upon quality assurance and shows the existence of the home market effect without increasing returns in the production technology. This throws into question the rationale of empirical studies attempting to validate the increasing returns model of trade based upon testing the existence of the home market effect.     

Optimal Monetary Policy and Sectoral Shocks: Is International Monetary Cooperation Beneficial?

A stochastic general‐equilibrium model is used to explore the welfare effects of optimal monetary policy and the potential benefits of policy coordination. Cross‐country perfectly symmetric shocks in the traded goods sectors and imperfectly correlated shocks in the non‐traded goods sectors are considered. In this set‐up, monetary policy may not be able to achieve efficient sectoral resource allocations within countries and avoid inefficient relative price changes across countries. Welfare gains from coordination are sizable if the shocks to the traded and non‐traded goods sectors are negatively correlated and both sectors are of roughly equal size.     

HOW IMPORTANT ARE TERMS‐OF‐TRADE SHOCKS?

According to conventional wisdom, terms‐of‐trade shocks represent a major source of business cycles in emerging and poor countries. This view is largely based on the analysis of calibrated business‐cycle models. We argue that the view that emerges from empirical structural vector autoregression (SVAR) models is strikingly different. We estimate country‐specific SVARs using data from 38 countries and find that terms‐of‐trade shocks explain less than 10% of movements in aggregate activity. We then estimate key structural parameters of a three‐sector business‐cycle model country by country and find a disconnect between the importance assigned to terms‐of‐trade shocks by theoretical and SVAR models.     

Cooperation in Stochastic OLG games

This paper builds on Cremer's (Quart. J. Econ. 101 (1986) 33) seminal analysis which shows that (almost) complete cooperation can be achieved as an equilibrium in a game played by overlapping generations of players if the institution in which players cooperate is infinitely lived.We analyze a similar model in which the costs of cooperation are subject to random shocks. Even if these random shocks are very small, the range of parameters for which cooperation can be sustained is decreased considerably in comparison to the deterministic case. Furthermore, we show how the efficient outcome can be approximated if the level of cooperation can be varied continuously and the cooperation technology has decreasing or constant returns to scale, while this is not possible in the case of increasing returns to scale.     

Technology for Sale

Free trade in commodities typically leads to gains for all participating countries. These gains can be augmented by trade in productive factors if returns differ between countries. But such trade would not exhaust potential gains if technological knowledge, not embedded in productive factors, differs between countries. Using a Ricardian model this paper shows how a country which has an absolute advantage based on technology in both commodities in a two-commodity world can gain by selling, giving, or even bribing the other country into using the advanced technology in the other country's export sector. If each country has an absolute advantage in the single commodity it produces, an exchange of technology for the other commodity can nonetheless lead to extra gains for both countries.     

International risk sharing and commodity prices

Abstract Cole and Obstfeld (1991) exposited a classic result where equilibrium movements in the terms of trade could make ex ante risk‐sharing arrangements unnecessary: a unity elasticity of substitution across goods and production specialization. This paper extends their model to N countries and M commodities (N > M). Here the terms of trade provides insurance against commodity‐specific shocks, not country‐specific shocks. Using commodity‐level production data at the national level and world commodity prices, we document significant terms of trade variability and positive responses of nation‐specific production to terms of trade improvements. The endogenous terms of trade insurance mechanism highlighted in CO is virtually non‐existent.     

Trade Linkages and Output‐Multiplier Effects: a Structural VAR Approach with a Focus on Asia*

This paper develops a structural VAR model to measure how a shock to one country affects other countries’ GDP. It uses trade linkages to estimate the multiplier effects as a shock is transmitted through output fluctuations and introduces a new specification strategy that reduces the number of unknowns and allows cross‐country relationships to vary over time. This model is used to examine the impact of shocks to 11 Asian countries, the US, and the rest of the OECD. Impulse‐response matrices suggest that these multiplier effects are large and can transmit shocks in very different patterns than predicted from a bilateral‐trade matrix.     

FINANCIAL MARKET INTEGRATION AND BUSINESS CYCLE VOLATILITY IN A MONETARY UNION

This paper uses a dynamic general equilibrium two‐country sticky‐price model to analyze the implications of financial market integration for the propagation of asymmetric productivity and government spending shocks in a monetary union. Financial market integration has a small effect on the propagation of these shocks if households can only trade in risk‐free bonds. However, financial market integration has a more substantial effect on the propagation of these shocks in a monetary union with a complete market for state‐contingent claims. This result indicates that it may be important to account for threshold effects in empirical analyses of the impact of financial market integration on business cycle volatility in a monetary union.     

Optimal Monetary Policy with Vertical Production and Trade*

This paper explores the optimal monetary policy response to domestic and foreign technology shocks in an open economy with vertical structure of production and trade. We find that any stage‐specific productivity shock in one country may have a transborder spillover effect on the other country via the vertical trade. So when choosing optimal monetary rules, each monetary authority should respond to both home and foreign productivity shocks. Also, the flexible exchange rate cannot replicate the flexible price equilibrium, even under producer currency pricing, due to price stickiness in multiple stages. We also find that the existence of a transborder spillover effect depends on the currencies of price setting. Finally, vertical trade may affect the value of exchange rate flexibility under PCP and LCP setting.     

Trade Liberalization and Technology Choice

This paper considers the links between trade liberalization and technology choice in the nonliberalizing country. Trade‐liberalization‐induced changes in relative product prices have direct effects on equilibrium relative factor returns. The consequent changes in relative input costs may also lead producers to switch to alternative technologies, which will in turn induce a further indirect change in relative factor returns. Will this indirect affect exacerbate or ameliorate the direct effect on relative factor returns? It is found that this depends on the relative cost savings across sectors and factor cost shares.     

Diversification across ASEAN-wide sectoral and national equity returns

This paper examines the effects of local and global shocks on the sector indices and national returns of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by using the univariate AR-GARCH model. We find that regional and global shocks have different influences on the ASEAN-wide sector and national equity indices. There is evidence that the ASEAN-wide sectoral returns are mostly driven by local shocks, except for the insurance and technology sectors. The volatility of Singapore's and Vietnam's national returns mostly results from their own shocks rather than local and global shocks. Applying the trend spillover model, this paper also shows that the effects of regional and global shocks on return volatility have been decreasing for almost all ASEAN-wide sectors' equity indices, while the trend for the volatility spillover effects of those shocks are positive and significant for the production and industries group sectors, as well as the food and beverage sector. Comparing the variance ratios of ASEAN sectoral and national returns, it is evident that the percentage of national equity returns belonging to their own shocks is higher than that of sectoral returns, indicating that investors might be better off diversifying their assets across countries rather than sectors in ASEAN area. This finding is consistent with the results of the mean–variance frontiers, as the portfolio composed purely of ASEAN national returns has a stronger efficiency frontier than a portfolio of all ASEAN-wide sector equity returns. By using the spanning and intersection tests, the paper also indicates that adding ASEAN national equity returns might improve the efficiency frontiers of investors' holding portfolios.     

Trade integration and synchronization of shocks*

According to the European Commission (1990 ), closer integration leads to less frequent asymmetric shocks and to more synchronized business cycles between countries. However, for Krugman (1993 ) closer integration implies higher specialization and, thus, higher risks of idiosyncratic shocks. Drawing on the evidence from a group of transition countries, this paper tries to determine whose argument is supported by the data. This is done by confronting estimated time‐varying coefficients of supply and demand shock asymmetry with indicators of trade intensity and exchange rates. We find that (i) an increase in trade intensity leads to higher symmetry of demand shocks: the effect of integration on supply shock asymmetry varies from country to country; and (ii) a decrease in exchange rate volatility has a positive effect on demand shock convergence. The results confirm ‘The European Commission view’ and also the argument by Kenen (2001 ) according to which the impact of trade integration on shock asymmetry depends on the type of shock.     

International Technology Transfer: Who Gains and Who Loses?*

When one country has a superior technology in all commodities, a Ricardian model with two goods and two countries is used to examine uncompensated transfers of superior technology in one or both goods. A transfer of the superior but second‐best technology always benefits the advanced country because it was improting that good initially and now gets it cheaper. But the free gift of the first‐best technology can also benefit the advanced country if a certain productivity condition is satisfied because that country may now export its former import good at an even better terms of trade.     

Trend shocks and the countercyclical U.S. current account

From 1960 to 2009, the U.S. current account balance has tended to decline during expansions and improve in recessions. We argue that shocks to the trend growth rate of productivity can help explain the countercyclical U.S. current account. Our framework is a two‐country, two‐good business cycle model in which international asset trade is limited to a single, non‐contingent bond. We identify trend and transitory shocks to U.S. productivity using generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation. The specification that best matches the data assigns a large role to trend shocks. The estimated model also captures key facts regarding international co‐movement.     

Let's Get Real: A Factor Analytical Approach to Disaggregated Business Cycle Dynamics

This paper develops a method for analysing the dynamics of large cross-sections based on a factor analytic model. We use "law of large numbers" arguments to show that the number of common factors can be determined by a principal components method, the economy-wide shocks can be identified by means of simple structural VAR techniques and that the parameters of the unobserved factor model can be estimated consistently by applying OLS equation by equation. We distinguish between a technological and a non-technological shock. Identification is obtained by minimizing the negative realizations of the technology shock. Empirical results on 4-digit industrial output and productivity for the U.S. economy from 1958 to 1986 show that: (1) at least two economy-wide shocks, both having a long-run effect on sectoral output, are needed to explain the common dynamics; (2) although the technological shock accounts for at least 50 per cent of the aggregate dynamics of output, it cannot by itself explain dynamics at business cycle frequencies; (3) sector-specific shocks explain the main bulk of total variance but generate mainly high frequency dynamics; (4) both the technological and the non-technological component of output show a peak for positive sectoral comovements of output at business cycle frequencies; (5) technological shocks are strongly correlated with the growth rates of the investment in machinery and equipment sectors and their inputs.