The dynamics of economic growth,oil prices,stock market depth,and other macroeconomic variables: Evidence from the G-20 countries

This paper examines the linkages between economic growth, oil prices, depth in the stock market, and three other key macroeconomic indicators: real effective exchange rate, inflation rate, and real rate of interest. We employ a panel vector autoregressive model to test Granger causality for the G-20 countries over the period 1961–2012. A novel approach to this study is that we clearly demarcate the long-run and short-run relations between the economic variables. The results show a robust long-run economic relationship between economic growth, oil prices, stock market depth, real effective exchange rate, inflation rate, and real rate of interest. In the long run, real economic growth is found to respond to any deviation in the long-run equilibrium relationship that is found to exist between the different measures of stock market depth, oil prices, and the other macroeconomic variables. In the short run we find a complex network of causal relationships between the variables. While the empirical evidence of short-run causality is mixed, there is clear evidence that real economic growth responds to various measures of stock market depth, allowing for real oil price movements and changes in the real effective exchange rate, inflation rate, and real rate of interest.     

Real exchange rates and nontradables: A relative price approach

In this paper, we study long-run comovements of real exchange rates and relative prices of nontradables and tradables. This approach is complementary to many existing approaches to investigating real exchange rate movements. In many theoretical models of exchange rate determination, the relative prices of nontradables and tradables are linked to the real exchange rates by identities. However, they do not necessarily move with real exchange rates in reality because of many factors. For example, many tradables contain nontradable components in the form of retailing services, so that Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) may not hold for these tradable goods even in the long run. Hence real exchange rates may not move in the direction predicted by theoretical models when the producers of these tradable goods experience changes in productivity. In this paper, we identify time periods, countries and relative price measures for which comovements between real exchange rates and relative prices of nontradables and tradables are observed.     

U.S. real exchange rate fluctuations and relative price fluctuations

Traditional theory attributes fluctuations in real exchange rates to changes in the relative price of nontraded goods. This paper studies the relation between the United States’ bilateral real exchange rate and the associated bilateral relative price of nontraded goods for five of its most important trade relationships. We find that this relation depends crucially on the choice of price series used to measure relative prices and on the choice of trade partner. The relation is stronger when we measure relative prices using producer prices rather than consumer prices. The relation is stronger the more important is the trade relationship between the United States and a trade partner. Even in cases where there is a strong relation between the real exchange rate and the relative price of nontraded goods, however, a large fraction of real exchange rate fluctuations is due to deviations from the law of one price for traded goods.     

National price levels, purchasing power parity, and cointegration: a test of four high inflation economies

The time series properties of exchange rates and wholesale prices from four high inflation countries show some evidence in support of purchasing power parity. Tests for stationarity of real exchange rates and cointegration among price and exchange rate variables are presented for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Israel during the 1970s and 1980s. Error correction models describe the mechanism of adjustment to long-run equilibrium.     

Trade concentration, openness, and deviations from purchasing power parity

Economists have often explained deviations from PPP in terms of random relative price changes. While all countries are subject to such real shock, empirical studies indicate that PPP seems to hold closer for some countries than others. This paper emphasizes two major reasons why we should expect systematic differences across countries in deviations from PPP: (a) the concentration of trade and (b) openness. The more diversified trade, the less susceptible the country to random shocks affecting individual goods, so that shifts in the PPP ratio are lower. The more open the economy, the greater the weight of traded goods in the overall price indices, so that if exchange rates are determined by traded goods prices, yet empirical tests of PPP use national price indices, PPP should hold better in more open economies.     

人民币汇率与我国股价、房价的联动关系研究

近年来,我国人民币汇率形成机制、股票市场和房地产市场发生了巨大变化,人民币汇率和股价、房价之间的信息传导和波动关联备受瞩目。本文采用VAR-MGARCH-BEKK模型,分析了我国人民币汇率、股价和房价之间的联动关系。研究结果表明,从波动的溢出效应来看,人民币汇率的波动率、股票价格的增长率和房地产价格的增长率之间存在非常明显的波动溢出效应;从资产价格的水平影响来看,人民币汇率与股票价格、房地产价格等国内资产价格的水平相关性较弱,而股票价格对房地产价格的影响较明显,并就该结论提出了相关的理论解释和政策建议。     

A fundamental theory of exchange rates and direct currency trades

In this paper we construct a two-country search model to determine the nominal exchange rate between two fiat monies. Our model allows agents to use any currency to trade for goods in all countries. However, search frictions restrict agents’ opportunities for instantaneous arbitrage, and hence make the nominal exchange rate determinate. The nominal exchange rate depends on the two countries’ economic fundamentals, including the stocks and growth rates of the two monies. Direct exchanges between currencies are essential and they imply a nominal exchange rate that is different from the relative price between the two currencies in the goods markets. There are persistent violations of the law of one price and purchasing power parity in equilibrium, despite the fact that prices are perfectly flexible and all goods are tradeable between countries. Nominal and real exchange rates can move together in the steady state in response to money growth shocks.     

Real exchange rate persistence and monetary policy rules

The objective of this paper is to analyze the effects of alternative monetary rules on real exchange rate persistence. Using a two-country stochastic dynamic general equilibrium with nominal price stickiness and local currency pricing, we will show how the persistence of purchasing power parity deviations can be related to a monetary theory of these deviations. When monetary policy lean against the wind, there is no relationship of proportionality between the time during which prices remain sticky and the persistence of the response of the real exchange rate: in this case high nominal price rigidity is not sufficient, per se, in generating any persistence following a monetary shock. Moreover, we emphasize the role of interest rates smoothing policies and relative price stickiness within countries in understanding the relationship between the real exchange rate and monetary shocks. With reasonable parameters values, a wide range of monetary policy rules can generate real exchange rate autocorrelations around the ones observed in the data.     

Emerging floaters: Pass-throughs and (some) new commodity currencies

In spite of early skepticism on the merits of floating exchange rate regimes in emerging markets, 8 of the 25 largest countries in this group have now had a floating exchange rate regime for more than a decade. Using parsimonious VAR specifications covering the period of floating exchange rates, this study computes the dynamics of exchange rate pass-throughs to consumer price indices. We find that pass-throughs have typically been moderate even though emerging floaters have seen considerable nominal and real exchange rate volatilities. Previous studies that set out to estimate exchange rate pass-throughs ignored changes in policy regimes, making them vulnerable to the Lucas critique. We find that, within the group of emerging floaters, estimated pass-throughs are higher for countries with greater nominal exchange rate volatilities and that trade more homogeneous goods. These findings are consistent with the pass-through model of Floden and Wilander (2006) and earlier findings by Campa and Goldberg (2005), respectively. Furthermore, we find that the Indonesian Rupiah, the Thai Baht and possibly the Mexican Peso are commodity currencies, in the sense that their real exchange rates are cointegrated with international commodity prices.     

Asset Prices,News Shocks,and the Trade Balance

We analyze the relationship between asset prices and the trade balance estimating a Bayesian VAR for a broad set of 38 industrialized and emerging market countries. To derive model‐based identifying restrictions, we model asset price shocks as news shocks about future productivity in a two‐country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. Such shocks are found to exert sizable effects on the trade balance. Moreover, the effects are highly heterogeneous across countries. For instance, following a news shock that implies on impact a 10% increase in domestic equity prices relative to the rest of the world, the U.S. trade balance will worsen by up to 1.0 percentage points, but much less so for most other economies. We find that this heterogeneity appears to be linked to the financial market depth and equity home bias of countries. Moreover, the channels via wealth effects and via the real exchange rate are important for understanding the heterogeneity in the transmission.     

The effect of real rates of interest on housing prices

During the late 1970s, U.S. house prices were appreciating rapidly even though mortgage interest rates were climbing. Recently, interest rates have eased but prices have moderated. This study examines the role of appreciation expectations in overcoming the negative effects of nominal mortgage interest rates on house prices. Expectations of future appreciation are important determinants of house sales prices, remaining influential during periods of declining and moderating real prices, not just when prices are rising. The real rate of interest, as viewed by the homebuyer, is the mechanism for affecting change in housing price levels. Because the nominal interest rate is slow to reflect changes in expectations, these real rates vary over time. This ebb and flow of real interest rates appears to explain market price levels. Nominal rates play a role as well, primarily in the formation of appreciation expectations.     

Exchange Rates and the Conversion of Currency‐Specific Risk Premia

How do the risk factors that drive asset prices influence exchange rates? Are the parameters of asset price processes relevant for specifying exchange rate processes? Most international asset pricing models focus on the analysis of asset returns given exchange rate processes. Little work has been done on the analysis of exchange rates dependent on asset returns. This paper uses an international stochastic discount factor (SDF) framework to analyse the interplay between asset prices and exchange rates. So far, this approach has only been implemented in international term structure models. We find that exchange rates serve to convert currency‐specific discount factors and currency‐specific prices of risk – a result linked to the international arbitrage pricing theory (IAPT). Our empirical investigation of exchange rates and stock markets of four countries presents evidence for the conversion of currency‐specific risk premia by exchange rates.     

The price of gold and the exchange rate

This paper examines the theoretical relationship between the major exchange rates and the prices of internationally-traded commodities. In the empirical section, the case of gold is analyzed using forecast error data. Among other things, it is found that, since the dissolution of the Bretton Woods International monetary system, floating exchange rates among the major currencies have been a major source of price instability in the world gold market and, as the world gold market is dominated by the European currency bloc, appreciations or depreciations of European currencies have strong effects on the price of gold in other currencies.     

Oil price shocks and their transmission mechanism in an oil-exporting economy: A VAR analysis informed by a DSGE model

This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of oil price shocks and the oil shock transmission mechanism in an oil-exporting country, Canada. We use a structural VAR with sign restrictions that comes from a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to jointly identify oil price, domestic supply and U.S. and domestic monetary policy shocks. This identification strategy not only controls for reverse causality from the Canadian and U.S. macroeconomic conditions to the real oil prices, but more importantly, it also allows for contemporaneous interactions between the Canadian and U.S. variables. We find that oil shocks have a stimulative effect on Canadian aggregate demand, appreciate the Canadian dollar, improve the terms of trade and reduce real wages. Foreign disturbances, including innovations in oil prices and the U.S. interest rate, have a significant influence on Canadian economic activities. Our counterfactual analysis indicates that the reaction of the U.S. interest rate as an indirect transmission channel for oil price shocks plays a moderate role in explaining the real exchange rate and inflation, but has negligible impacts on the Canadian output and interest rate.     

Is the relationship between prices and exchange rates homogeneous?

Empirical tests of purchasing power parity (PPP) are implicitly based on the conditions of symmetry and proportionality of the price coefficients. We investigate a separate condition, which we term homogeneity. Specifically, while there may be factors that drive a wedge between prices and exchange rates, when these factors are held constant we would expect a change in exchange rates to be associated with a proportional, or homogeneous, change in prices. To test for the existence of homogeneity in prices, we conduct two experiments. First, we apply a time-varying-coefficient procedure to nine euro-area countries as well as the euro area as a whole during the (monthly) sample period, 1999:M1 to 2011:M3. Second we apply the same procedure to the same group of countries, plus Canada, Japan and Mexico, over the longer period, 1957:M4 to 2011:M3. We find that averages of the price coefficients, corrected for specification biases, are uniformly homogeneous in the long run, providing strong support for PPP.     

Evaluation of Black-Scholes and GARCH Models Using Currency Call Options Data

This paper empirically examines the performance of Black-Scholes and Garch-M call option pricing models using call options data for British Pounds, Swiss Francs and Japanese Yen. The daily exchange rates exhibit an overwhelming presence of volatility clustering, suggesting that a richer model with ARCH/GARCH effects might have a better fit with actual prices. We perform dominant tests and calculate average percent mean squared errors of model prices. Our findings indicate that the Black-Scholes model outperforms the GARCH models. An implication of this result is that participants in the currency call options market do not seem to price volatility clusters in the underlying process.     

Analysis of DJIA,S&P 500, S&P 400, NASDAQ 100 and Russell 2000 ETFs and their influence on price discovery

This study examines the temporal behavior of price discovery in the spot, ETF and futures markets of the DJIA, S&P 500, S&P 400, NASDAQ 100 and Russell 2000. We document an increasing trend in the price discovery metrics of exchange traded funds for all indexes but the DJIA. Contrary to past studies, our findings show that the spot market rather than the futures market leads the price discovery. The arbitrage process that links exchange traded funds to spot prices, and not the futures prices might explain the results. This daily arbitrage that ensures exchange traded funds prices equal net asset values appear to promote spot market price discovery especially with the popularity of exchange traded funds in more recent years. We additionally document that the temporal behavior of the exchange traded funds price discovery metric affects differently price discovery in the spot and futures markets across indexes.     

Intermediate inputs and international trade: An analysis of the real and monetary aspects of a change in the price of oil

This paper studies the effects of a change in the price of a traded intermediate input on the real and monetary sectors of a fully-employed small open economy. The real side of the model examines the relationship between the pricee of the input and relative factor and commodity prices, the pattern of trade and the levels of production in various industries. The monetary side focuses on the dynamics of the nominal exchange rate and the stock of traded assets, with particular emphasis on the role of changes in real income and asset values that result from this disturbance.     

Nominal exchange rate volatility,relative price volatility,and the real exchange rate

We model real exchange rate, nominal exchange rate, and relative price volatility using real and nominal factors. We analyze these volatility measures across developing and industrialized countries. We find that the inclusion of nominal factors achieves a sizable reduction in the real exchange rate volatility spread between developing and industrialized countries. In addition, we find that nominal factors matter to real exchange rate volatility in the short run and the long run, and that for developing countries, a higher share of real exchange rate volatility stems from relative price volatility.     

Can interest rates really control house prices? Effectiveness and implications for macroprudential policy

This paper investigates how changes in the central bank policy and retail mortgage rates affected real housing prices in New Zealand during the period 1999–2009. We find that real interest rates are significantly and positively related to real housing prices, indicating that increases in the policy rate may not be effective in depressing real housing prices. By testing interest rates, we also find some evidence of housing price bubbles. Our findings suggest that the central bank could have limited housing price bubbles if it had started to intervene in the housing market prior to 2003. Our results set international exemplars for using policy rates or macroprudential tools to cool the housing market, where the extent of policy rate adjustments is limited by internal or external economic factors.