Purchasing power parity and country characteristics: Evidence from panel data tests

We examine long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) using panel data methods to test for unit roots in US dollar real exchange rates of 84 countries. We find stronger evidence of PPP in countries more open to trade, closer to the United States, with lower inflation and moderate nominal exchange rate volatility, and with similar economic growth rates as the United States. We also show that PPP holds for panels of European and Latin American countries, but not for African and Asian countries. Our findings demonstrate that country characteristics can help explain both adherence to and deviations from long-run PPP.     

Is inflation targeting credible in Asia? A panel GARCH approach

We examine the relationship between inflation targeting and the behavior of the level and volatility of inflation for eight Asian countries over the period 1987–2013. In contrast to existing studies that rely upon time series methods, we employ a novel panel GARCH model that accounts for heterogeneity and interdependence across countries. Our main contribution is to shed new light on the inflation targeting credibility hypothesis based on lower inflation and inflation volatility as well as on the correlation between unanticipated inflation shocks within a panel GARCH framework. We find strong evidence of a reduction in the level of inflation that operates from the impact of actual inflation targets in the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand. We also find that the adoption of inflation targeting helped lower inflation volatility in the Philippines and South Korea. Overall, the results suggest that Asian inflation targeting regimes are more credible in terms of reducing the level of inflation than lowering inflation volatility. There is also evidence that the covariance of inflation shocks among inflation targeting and non-targeting countries tends to increase.     

Inflation volatility,economic growth and monetary policy in Bangladesh

This article provides an overview of the trends and movements of CPI-inflation in Bangladesh since the early 1950s and examines the key issues in rule-based monetary policy for price stability, implying low and stable inflation, in this country. Under a fixed exchange rate system, inflation in Bangladesh was moderately high and volatile during the 1950s and 1960s. Since the country’s independence from Pakistan in 1971, inflation in Bangladesh has remained moderately high on average and highly volatile and persistent under a fixed-pegged exchange rate system or under a managed floating system since 2003. Using data from the early 1970s or earlier depending on data availability, the article undertakes both Granger-causality and the structural vector autoregression (SVAR) analysis with two models. The first model is comprised of such variables as inflation, the real interest rate, the real exchange rate and output growth, and the second model is comprised of the volatilities of money growth, real output growth and inflation. Then, based on the empirical findings, the article concludes that a rule-based monetary policy, namely monetary targeting or inflation targeting, remains appropriate for Bangladesh provided that it adopts a more flexible, if not freely floating, exchange rate system. The article suggests that the use of monetary policy to achieve multiple objectives under a fixed-pegged exchange rate system creates a time-inconsistency problem, reduces monetary policy credibility and makes it (monetary policy) ineffective in lowering inflation and its volatility. Low credibility of monetary policy in particular raises inflation persistence. Within the present monetary-policy framework in Bangladesh, the article illustrates how the fixed-pegged exchange rate system has generated money growth volatility in the presence of large-scale inflows of overseas workers’ remittances and readymade garments export earnings. This does not seem to be a concern of the central bank of Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bank); rather, it (Bangladesh Bank) pursues monetary-base targeting to keep inflation low and stable after considering economic growth. The consequent diminishing credibility of monetary policy has kept inflation volatile and persistent, which has adversely affected economic growth.     

Does the exchange rate pass-through into prices change when inflation targeting is adopted? The Peruvian case study between 1994 and 2007

This paper analyzes whether the exchange rate pass-through into prices changed when the inflation targeting scheme was adopted in Peru. First, a simple dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model is simulated, which shows that adopting this scheme induces an increase in exchange rate volatility. Furthermore, applying the theory of the currency denomination of international trade, it is demonstrated that increased exchange rate volatility reduces the share of firms that set their prices in foreign currency. Given that the pass-though has a direct relationship with this share, it is shown that adopting inflation targeting generates a pass-through contraction. Second, we empirically test whether the Peruvian Central Bank’s decision to adopt inflation targeting in January 2002 actually had an effect on the pass-through estimating a time-varying vector autoregressive model which allows for an asymmetrical estimation of the pass-through. It provides parameters for both the pre and post inflation targeting regimes based on the assumption that the transition from one regime to the other is smooth. An analysis of the generalized impulse response functions reveals that the decision to adopt inflation targeting significantly decreased the exchange rate pass-throughs into import, producer, and consumer prices. The results are consistent with economic theory and are robust to the specification of parameters of the model.     

Does money have a role in the inflation process? Evidence from Australia

Inflation, defined as a sustained increase in the price level, is considered a monetary phenomenon, as it can be explained within the framework of money‐demand and money‐supply relationships. In the extant literature, money growth is shown to remain causally related to inflation across countries and over time, irrespective of the exchange rate regime and stability of the money‐demand function. Nevertheless, emerging literature suggests a diminishing role of money in the conduct of monetary policy for price stability, especially under inflation targeting. Monetary policy in Australia under inflation targeting since 1993 is an example of policy that denies a relationship between money growth and inflation. The proposition that money does not matter insofar as inflation is concerned seems odd in both theory and the best‐practice monetary policy for price stability. This paper uses annual data for the period 1970–2017 and quarterly data for the period 1970Q1–2015Q1. It deploys both the Johansen cointegration approach and the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration approach to investigate for Australia whether money, real output, prices and the exchange rate (non‐stationary variables) maintain the long‐run price‐level relationship that the classical monetary theory suggests in the presence of such stationary variables as the domestic and foreign interest rates. As expected, the empirical findings for Australia are consistent with the classical long‐run price‐level relationship between money, real output, prices and the exchange rate. The error‐correction model of inflation confirms the presence of a cointegral relationship among these variables; it also provides strong evidence of a short‐run causal relationship between money supply growth and inflation. On the basis of a priori theoretical predictions and empirical findings, the paper draws the conclusion that the monetary aggregate and its growth rate matter insofar as inflation is concerned, irrespective of the strategy of monetary policy for price stability.     

Exchange rates and asymmetric shocks in small open economies

We study the stabilizing properties of exchange rates in five small open economies during to periods of floating exchange rates and inflation targeting. In the cases of Sweden and Canada, the nominal exchange rates behave in a stabilizing manner. Most exchange rate movements emanate from the exchange rate itself and are hence not responses to fundamental shocks. However, these non-fundamental shocks have only negligible effects on output and inflation. Our findings indicate that exchange rates display some stabilizing properties but can mainly be characterized as disconnected from the rest of the economy. We would like to thank Nils Gottfries and participants at seminars at Uppsala University and the Riksbank for helpful advice and useful comments. Post gratefully acknowledges financial support from Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser.     

Inflation targeting in emerging economies: Panel evidence

This paper shows there is no evidence that the inflation targeting regime (IT) improves economic performance as measured by the behavior of inflation and output growth in developing countries. The control of common time effects results in less negative and less significant IT impacts on inflation, inflation volatility and output growth volatility than previously found in the literature. Additionally, our analysis shows robust evidence of lower output growth during IT adoption. On balance, although lower long-run mean inflation signals that the central banks of emerging economies with inflation targeting are more inflation-averse, the costs of disinflation have not been lower than under other monetary regimes.     

Exchange rate volatility and export performance: a cointegrated VAR approach

During the last decades Norwegian exporters have–despite various forms of exchange rate targeting–faced a rather volatile exchange rate which may have influenced their behaviour. Recently, the shift to inflation targeting and a freely floating exchange rate has brought about an even more volatile exchange rate. We examine the causal link between export performance and exchange rate volatility across different monetary policy regimes within the cointegrated Vector Autoregression (VAR) framework using the implied conditional variance from a Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model as a measure of volatility. Although treating the volatility measure as either a stationary or a nonstationary variable in the VAR, we are not able to find any evidence suggesting that export performance has been significantly affected by exchange rate uncertainty. We find, however, that volatility changes proxied by blip dummies related to the monetary policy change from a fixed to a managed floating exchange rate and the Asian financial crises during the 1990s enter significantly in a dynamic model for export growth–in which the level of relative prices and world market demand together with the level of exports constitute a significant cointegration relationship. A forecasting exercise on the dynamic model rejects the hypothesis that increased exchange rate volatility in the wake of inflation targeting in the monetary policy has had a significant impact on export performance.     

On the reduced macroeconomic volatility of the Australian economy: Good policy or good luck?

The Australian economy has experienced various changes in macroeconomic conditions over the past four decades. These changes have been associated with reduced volatility in key macroeconomic variables: CPI inflation, real GDP and the TWI measured real exchange rate. In light of this fact, my objective in this paper is to determine whether this reduction is associated with good policy or good luck. To this end, I estimate a time varying structural VAR model that is identified with theoretically consistent sign restrictions from a small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. The primary result is that both non-systematic and systematic monetary policy have changed over the past four decades. In particular, non-systematic responses of inflation, real GDP and the exchange rate have increased since the adoption of a flexible exchange rate in 1983, while systematic responses of the cash rate to inflation have experienced various changes in intensities, exhibiting a trend towards a more passive behaviour since the 2007/08 financial crisis. Taken together, these results suggest that the reduction in macroeconomic volatility is associated with good policy.     

Evaluating inflation targeting as a monetary policy objective for India

This study formulates a small open economy model for India with exchange rate as a prominent channel of monetary policy. The model is estimated using the Instrumental Variable-Generalized Methods of Moments (IV-GMM) estimator and evaluated through simulations. This study compares different cases of domestic and CPI inflation targeting, strict and flexible inflation targeting, and simple Taylor type rules. The analysis highlights the unsuitability of simple Taylor-type monetary rules in stabilizing the Indian economy and suggests that discretionary optimization works better in stabilizing this economy. There seems to be a trade-off between output gap stabilization and exchange rate stabilization in flexible domestic inflation targeting and CPI inflation targeting respectively. However, flexible domestic inflation targeting seems a better alternative from an overall macro stabilization perspective in India where financial markets are still not sufficiently integrated to ensure quick transmission of interest rate impulses and existence of rigidities in the economy.     

Exchange rate pass-through in the Asian countries: does inflation volatility matter?

This paper presents a nonlinear relationship between exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) and inflation volatility. Through the lens of a threshold framework, we uncover a clear evidence of near to one ERPT to consumer prices once inflation volatility crosses a threshold level of 4.17. Clearly, there are significant differences in the degree of ERPT between the high and low inflation volatility in the inflation targeting (IT) and non-IT Asian countries.     

Monetary policy and commodity terms of trade shocks in emerging market economies

Commodity terms of trade shocks have continued to drive macroeconomic fluctuations in most emerging market economies. The volatility and persistence of these shocks have posed great challenges for monetary policy. This study employs a New Keynesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to evaluate the optimal monetary policy responses to commodity terms of trade shocks in commodity dependent emerging market economies. The model is calibrated to the South African economy. The study shows that CPI inflation targeting performs relatively better than exchange rate targeting and non-traded inflation targeting both in terms of reducing macroeconomic volatility and reducing the losses of a non-benevolent central bank. However, macroeconomic stabilisation comes at a cost of increased exchange rate volatility. The results suggest that the appropriate response to commodity induced exogenous shocks is to target CPI inflation.     

LINKAGES BETWEEN EXCHANGE RATE POLICY AND MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

Using a sample of 104 countries, we study macroeconomic performance from 1973 to 2007. We examine GDP growth, inflation rate, growth volatility and inflation volatility, and their response to a ‘words versus deeds’ measure of exchange‐rate policy, which is obtained by interacting a country's de jure and its de facto policy. For non‐industrialized countries, the highest growth rates and the lowest inflation volatility are associated with countries that pursue fear of floating policy, whereas countries that pursue a matched float policy (de jure and de facto floating) have the highest inflation rates but the lowest GDP volatility.     

Political democratization, economic liberalization, and growth volatility

This study empirically investigates the effects of political and economic liberalization on growth volatility using a difference-in-difference method for a sample of 158 countries over the 1970-2005 period. The results show that, when examined separately, economic liberalization leads to a significant reduction in volatility while democratization is not followed by a decrease in growth volatility. For countries that undertake only one liberalization, opening up the economy to international trade reduces volatility in growth; becoming a democracy, on the other hand, seems to increase macroeconomic instability. For countries that implement both political and economic liberalizations, no statistically significant effect on volatility is detected. These results serve to provide additional support for the policy recommendation that developing countries should liberalize their economy first and then consider political liberalization.     

Inflation targeting and real exchange rates: A bias correction approach

This paper examines whether inflation targeting (IT) influences purchasing power parity (PPP) by a bias correction approach under cross-sectional dependence. The recursive mean adjustment (RMA) method proposed by So and Shin (1999) and Shin and So (2001) is employed to correct a downward bias in half-life estimates of real exchange rates. More importantly, the empirical results show that IT lowers variability of real exchange rates and plays an important role in providing favorable evidence for long-run PPP.     

Testing a theoretical model of mortgage demand on UK data

This study explores whether the long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis holds for selected real exchange rates from Turkish economy during the period 1982M1–2003M12. In addition to conventional unit root tests, five different unit root test procedures have been applied including efficient point-optimal tests, extended M tests and GLS-detrended variants of DF tests, to four monthly real exchange rate series defined in terms of both producer and consumer price indices. The countries analysed are the USA, the UK, Germany and Italy which are major trade partners of Turkey. Mixed evidence is found for the long-run PPP hypothesis when real exchange rate is defined in terms of German DM and Italian Lira. However, the empirical analysis reveals that the PPP hypothesis holds strongly in the long-run for the UK£ and US$ based real exchange rates series using either PPI or CPI. In corroboration with other studies in the literature, the bias correlated half-life estimates suggest relatively faster speeds of adjustment supporting the view that the deviations from the PPP rate dissipate rather quickly for relatively high inflation countries.     

Exchange rate volatility and the demand for money in the U.S.

This paper examines the effect of changes in the level and volatility of exchange rates on the demand for money. It hypothesizes that exchange rate volatility exerts a negative influence on money demand separate from the effect of the level of exchange rates. Using U.S. data covering the period from 1974.1 to 1990.4, it is found that, regardless of whether the adjustment process is modeled as an error-correction or a partial-adjustment model, exchange rate volatility is negatively related to the demand for real M2 balances. This relationship is found to be more pronounced when exchange rates are expressed in real terms. The results imply that money demand responds to both the volatility of domestic prices relative to foreign prices and to the volatility of nominal exchange rates. Little evidence is found in support of the hypothesis that the level of exchange rates exerts a significant influence on money demand.     

Monetary Policy in Russia: Identifying exchange rate shocks

Russian monetary policy has failed persistently to achieve sustained low inflation, both in absolute terms and relative to the peer group of countries similarly exiting from Soviet-style central planning. This paper explores the reasons for this state of affairs by analysing the kind of monetary policy that has been pursued by the central bank during the period 1995 to 2009. Our contribution is to search for a possible transmission channel between the real interest rate, inflation rate, exchange rate, output growth and foreign reserve growth, after having controlled for the effect of oil price inflation. Using a vector autoregressive model in error-correction form and using sign restrictions methodology, we show that the monetary authorities’ failure to abate double-digit inflation appears to be driven by the policy of exchange rate targeting, as reflected in our identified exchange rate shocks.     

International co-movements of real and financial economic variables

This study presents a first attempt at investigating whether the international co-movements of real economic activity conform to the same international co-movements of financial activity. This study tests the international co-movements of real economic activity, on the one hand, and financial variables such as stock returns, interest rates, inflation rates and risk premiums, on the other hand. We employ a dynamic correlation model on data from OECD countries for the period 1980–2010. Our findings demonstrate that international stock markets co-react in accordance with the underlying international economic forces. We also document three other results. First, the correlation among countries with respect to real economic activity is statistically positive, but the level of this correlation is lower than that of financial variables. Second, there is a significant increase over time in the international correlation level with respect to the financial variables. Finally, the creation of the Euro Monetary Union and the adoption of an inflation targeting policy in many countries have increased the international correlation of all of the financial variables tested. The article concludes with two implications from these findings: (1) predictions in the context of international portfolio diversification, and (2) policy making at the fiscal and monetary levels.     

Exchange rate volatility and exports from East Asian countries to Japan and the USA

The purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of exchange rate volatility on exports in four East Asian countries (Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Thailand). Specifically, this article aims at determining whether the bilateral real exchange rate volatility between an East Asian country and its trading partner negatively affects the exports of the East Asian country. Considering the dominant roles of the USA and Japan as trading partners of those East Asian countries, this article focuses on the quarterly export volumes of East Asian countries to the US and Japan for the period from 1981 to 2004. Except for the case of Hong Kong's exports to Japan, cointegration tests and estimations of error correction models indicate exchange rate volatility has negative impacts on exports either in the short-run or in the long-run, or both. On the other hand, the real GDP of importing countries and depreciation of real bilateral exchange rates turn out, in general, to have positive effects. Of special interest is the finding that the impact of the exchange rate volatility does not show any stylized differences depending on whether the importing country is Japan or the USA, even though dollar invoicing dominates in East Asia.