Real Interest Rates and Home Goods: A Two-Period Model*

Using a simple model of a small open economy which includes traded and non-traded goods and output in two periods, we demonstrate that changes in real interest rates will be associated with changes in real exchange rates. A high real interest rate will encourage consumers to substitute away from present and toward future consumption. To transfer consumption of non-traded goods intertemporally, intersectoral resource flows are required In the simplest model, this in turn requires opposite movements in the real exchange rate over two periods.     

Reconsidering Real Interest Parity for Traded and Nontraded Goods

The goal of this paper is to examine the hypothesis of real interest rate parity by contrasting real interest rates across traded and nontraded goods under flexible exchange rates. We employ panel unit root tests to investigate the stationarity of real interest rate differentials. In particular, empirical results support the mean‐reverting property of real interest rate differentials for interest rates measured in terms of traded goods.     

Inflation-targeting and real interest rate parity: A bias correction approach

This paper investigates whether inflation-targeting influences real interest rate parity (RIP) 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 the downward bias in the panel unit root tests and in the half-life estimates of real interest rate differentials for traded and non-traded goods. The empirical findings differ depending on whether we apply the RMA. More importantly, the empirical results show that as more homogeneous economies become involved in terms of inflation-targeting regime, stronger mean reversion and much a tighter confidence interval are present. Thus, inflation-targeting plays an important role in providing favorable evidence for long-run RIP.     

Half-lives of Deviations from PPP: Contrasting Traded and Nontraded Components of Consumption Baskets

The paper examines the convergence question by contrasting the half‐lives of deviations from purchasing power parity (PPP) across traded and nontraded goods in an exchange rate model with sticky prices. In particular, empirical results show that in most cases the half‐lives of PPP deviations for traded goods are shorter than those for total consumption and for nontraded goods.     

An empirical examination of long-run purchasing power parity using cointegration techniques

This paper presents an empirical analysis of long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) for five major exchange rates using recently developed econometric techniques on the cointegration of economic time series. Our empirical results are extremely unfavourable to the PPP hypothesis as a long-run equilibrium condition, even with an allowance made for measurement error and/or tranportation costs. In particular, we are unable to reject the hypothesis of non-cointegration of the exchange rate and relative prices for any of the countries concerned. Far from finding a stable, long-run proportionality between exchange rates and relative prices, our results therefore suggest that they tend to drift apart without bound.     

Persistence of prices in the Eurozone capital cities: Evidence from the Economist Intelligence Unit City Data

Using the Economist Intelligence Unit City Data, this paper studies price differences in the Eurozone by comparing the prices of individual goods between twelve Eurozone countries. To estimate the persistence of prices, I employ a cross-sectionally augmented panel unit root test that accounts for contemporaneous as well as serial correlation. Based on the test, the estimated half-lives are 13 months for traded goods and 16 months for non-traded goods. Price differences for certain traded goods such as food or cars revert to parity much faster than prices for alcohol. To further refine the persistence estimates, I use the sequential panel selection method to determine the stationarity of individual cross-sections for each good that rejects the unit root. The distribution of stationary cross-sections between the Eurozone countries appears fairly balanced. The half-lives based only on stationary-cross-sections are reduced to 6 months for traded goods and 7 months for non-traded goods.     

Testing the relative purchasing power parity hypothesis: the case of Korea

This study examines the relative purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis using the data from the Korean won–US dollar and the Korean won–Japanese yen foreign exchange markets. We extract proxies for inflation from stock market returns of Korea, the United States and Japan based on the method used by Chowdhry, Roll and Xia in 2005. We explicitly test the relative PPP hypothesis in light of the short-run price volatility using monthly, bimonthly and quarterly data from 1 January 1998 to 31 December 2012. Our findings suggest that the empirical test results from the entire sample period do not support the relative PPP hypothesis. However, the results from the sample period excluding the Asian Financial Crisis period show that the relative PPP hypothesis holds for the Korean won–US dollar market with a moderate magnitude of inflation impact, but not for the Korean won–Japanese yen market. Abrupt changes in exchange rates during the crisis period may have affected the relationship between inflation and exchange rates. This result also suggests that factors other than inflation might have affected the Korean won–Japanese yen exchange rate.     

Non-Traded Goods and Real Exchange Rate Fluctuations: A Structural VAR Analysis

Real exchange rate variance decompositions indicate that only a small fraction of real exchange rate movements can be attributed to changes in the relative price between traded and non-traded goods. This paper argues that those exercises, by ignoring the nature of the shocks behind real exchange rate changes, may be inadequate to measure the relative importance of non-traded goods prices. Instead, it proposes using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model to study the effects of shocks to the relative supply and relative demand for non-traded goods on the real exchange rate. The SVAR model is identified via long-run restrictions and is estimated for a group of advanced economies. The results indicate that for some countries, relative supply shocks can be a significant source of real exchange rate fluctuations.     

Purchasing power parity as an approximation to the equilibrium exchange ratio

Purchasing power parity (PPP) is re-examined in models with trade impediments and intermediate products that are not traded. A distinction is made between ‘local consumption PPP’ and ‘total consumption PPP’. These are tested on several data sets, with largely negative results.     

Testing the presence and the absence of purchasing power parity: results for fixed and flexible regimes

Recent empirical studies concerning purchasing power parity (PPP), using the concept of cointegraton, have tested the null hypothesis of the absence orthe presence of PPP. The disadvantage of using either of these approaches is that the conclusion is ambiguous when not rejecting the null: the result could be due to either the null hypothesis being true or by the low power of the test and lack of information in the data. Therefore, there is substantial information to be gained by applying both approaches within the same study. This study uses the ordinary DF test with PPP as the alternative hypothesis and a recently suggested test by Kwiatkowski et al. (1992) with PPP as the null. The tests are applied to four major industrial countries real exchange rates, each split into four different samples, including fixed as well as flexible exchange rate regimes. The absence of PPP cannot be rejected while the presence can be rejected.     

A testing of the purchasing power parity hypothesis using a vector autoregressive model

The paper examines the hypothesis of purchasing power parity relations and the hypothesis of interest rates parity relations between the Japanese yen and the US dollar in a four-dimensional VAR (4-VAR) model, using the statistical technique developed by Johansen and Juselius (1992). The paper demonstrates that the so-called symmetry restriction on the PPP relationship holds not in a 3-VAR model but in the 4-VAR model, which indicates that a correct specification of the sampling distribution of data is important. The interest rates parity relation also holds in the 4-VAR model. The one-step prediction based on the ECM representation with such long-run relations outperforms the random walk model. These results are similar to those under the exchange rate control period (January 1974 to December 1980), which support the inclusion of this period in a whole sample period (January 1974 to December 2001).The author is very grateful to the referees and the editor of the journal for their variable and helpful comments. The first draft of the paper was presented at the autumn meeting of Japan Society of Monetary Economics in Oct 1999. The author is thankful to Eiji Ogawa for his helpful comments. The research was supported by Grant-in-Aid 13630104 of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan and the Nomura Foundation for Social Science in 2000.First version received: March 2001/Final version received: April 2003     

Monopoly,intermediate goods and the pure theory of international trade

Conclusion In a model with two traded good sectors between which intersectoral flows of intermediate goods are allowed and with a monopolized non-traded good sector, the wage rate in terms of two traded goods increases and the rental of capital in terms of two traded goods decreases when the price of relatively more labor intensive traded good sector increases, though nothing definite can be said about the direction of change in the wage rate and rental in terms of the non-traded good. When prices of traded goods are kept constant and labor and/or capital increase(s), output of the non-traded good sector increases provided that the non-traded good is not inferior, having income elasticity of demand less than unity. The factor intensity condition for the traded goods is in general not sufficient for the validity of the Rybczynski theorem to hold with respect to net outputs of the traded goods. We have derived sufficient conditions for the magnification effect to be observed with respect to net outputs of the traded good sectors. Specifically, we have shown that the factor intensity condition (23) is sufficient for the magnification effect to prevail when only labor increases.     

The Impact of Traded Goods Prices on the New Zealand Economy*

Recent empirical work in Australia and New Zealand reveals a diversity of estimates of the dynamic response to changes in traded goods prices. Similarly, there is conflicting evidence as to whether relative purchasing power parity is a characteristic of models estimated from data. In this paper it is argued that a reduced form approach to empirical modelling is appropriate for New Zealand's particular circumstances. The resulting model is simulated in a novel way, with results that argue against the use of a simple traded/non-traded goods distinction in the analysis of foreign price impacts on New Zealand. Purchasing power parity is, however, consistent with the results.     

Further evidence on purchasing power parity and country characteristics

Using data from 76 countries, this paper investigates the relationship between country characteristics and the validity of purchasing power parity (PPP). Several interesting results are obtained based on dollar-based exchange rates. First, PPP holds for Africa and Latin America. Further, PPP tends to be supported for countries with high or moderate openness, low growth rates, high inflation rates and high nominal exchange rate volatility, respectively. Second, a single country characteristic seems inadequate to account for the validity of PPP. Third, PPP is supported if countries satisfy at least two characteristics of supporting PPP simultaneously. Finally, the main results of the paper are robust when the numeraire currency changes from the US dollar to Japanese yen.     

Taylor rules and equilibrium determinacy in a two-country model with non-traded goods

We analyze a relation between interest rate controls and equilibrium determinacy using a two-country model featuring traded and non-traded goods. In addition, parameters of preference and production may differ between the two countries. We find that macroeconomic stability strongly depends on such heterogeneity including monetary policy, and that it is easier to generate determinate equilibrium under perfect liberalization of the economy, but to operate monetary policy in the economy with non-traded goods.     

An empirical examination of long-run purchasing power parity as theory of international commodity arbitrage

An empirical analysis of long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) as a theory of international commodity arbitrage between UK and US prices and the sterling/US dollar exchange rate for the period 1975–1980 is presented. Econometric techniques concerning the cointegration of economic time series are applied to a sample of 35 manufactured commodities which in 1977 constituted approximately a quarter of the net output of all manufacturing industry in Great Britain. Our results are extremely unfavourable to the PPP hypothesis as a stable long-run proportionality between exchange rates and disaggregated prices.     

Purchasing power parity and dynamic error correction: Evidence from Asia Pacific economies

This study investigates the validity of purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis as a long run equilibrium condition for thirteen Asia Pacific economies using a generalized error correction model. The results of the generalized dynamic specification appear to support PPP for more countries than do standard tests for unit roots. Out of the thirteen bilateral exchange rates, evidence of PPP is found for only one (the Mexican peso/U.S. dollar rate) under traditional tests for unit roots, while seven of them support PPP under the generalized dynamic error correction model. It appears that one of the factors that lead standard tests for unit roots to fail to detect evidence of PPP may be the undue restrictions imposed on the model specification.     

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.     

The ‘real’ explanation of the PPP puzzle

This article shows that global financial markets cannot, by themselves, achieve net transfers of financial capital and real interest rate equalization across countries and that the integration of both global financial markets and global goods markets is needed to achieve net transfers of capital and real interest rate equalization across countries. Thus, frictions (barriers to mobility) in one or both of these markets can impede the net transfer of capital between countries, produce the Feldstein and Horioka (1980) finding of high-saving-investment correlations and prevent real interest rates from being equalized across countries. Moreover, frictions in global goods markets can explain why real exchange rates deviate from purchasing power parity (PPP) for extended periods of time and can therefore also explain the PPP puzzle. Consequently, we are able to resolve two of Obstfeld and Rogoff’s (2000) ‘6 major puzzles in macroeconomics’ with essentially the same explanation.     

Geographic price dispersion in retail markets: Evidence from micro-data

Using an extensive micro-price data of 266 retail goods and services across US, EU and OECD cities between 1990 and 2005, we study characteristics of geographic dispersion of deviations from the Law of One Price. We find that the magnitude of price dispersion is a function of the characteristics of both the type of good and set of locations under examination. Higher share of non-traded inputs and lower tradability of goods are both found to contribute to geographic price dispersion, with the former typically dominating in explanatory power. The role of tradability of good in accounting for the price dispersion is more significant as we move beyond an economic geography, while non-traded input level matters relatively more if we move to the interior of this geography. Our evidence suggests that the models of real exchange rates should incorporate the classical distinction between traded inputs and local inputs as well as a role for relative markups and traditional trade costs.