European monetary union, adjustment, and exchange rate variability

This paper uses a three-country, three-good, factor-specific model of trade with wage rigidities to investigate how European Monetary Union is likely to affect exchange rate variability. Focusing on international macroeconomic adjustment under both exogenous and optimizing monetary policies, it shows that the relative variability (against external currencies) of the euro and a basket of predecessor currencies depends on the relative sizes and specialization patterns of countries and the relative importance of different shocks. Monetary union is likely to decrease (increase) aggregate European exchange rate variability for shocks to industries in which large (small) euro area countries specialize.     

Bi‐currency versus Single‐currency Targeting: Lessons from the Russian Experience

This paper examines how the 2005 shift in Russian exchange rate policy from US dollar (USD) single‐currency to USD–EUR (euro) bi‐currency targeting has impacted domestic interest rates. The finding show that this policy shift has disconnected Russian interest rates from US dollar‐denominated interest rates, while instead linking them to a synthetic interest rate composed of USD and EUR rates at the same proportion as that of these two currencies in the currency basket against which the ruble's exchange rate is set. The Russian experience shows that while the adoption of bi‐currency targeting may help ensure that domestic interest rates are less dependent on the monetary cycle of a single country, these rates are instead likely to reflect financial developments in all countries whose currencies are included in the currency basket. This insight is likely to be relevant for other countries that pursue basket‐targeting policies.     

NEW ESTIMATION OF CHINA'S EXCHANGE RATE REGIME

Abstract. The present paper updates the question: what precisely is the exchange rate regime that China has put into place since 2005, when it announced a move away from the US dollar peg? Is it a basket anchor with the possibility of cumulatable daily appreciations, as was announced at the time? We apply to this question a new approach of estimating countries’ de facto exchange rate regimes, a synthesis of two techniques. One is a technique that has been used in the past to estimate implicit de facto currency weights when the hypothesis is a basket peg with little flexibility. The second is a technique used to estimate the de facto degree of exchange rate flexibility when the hypothesis is an anchor to the US dollar or some other single major currency. Because the RMB and many other currencies today purportedly follow variants of band‐basket‐crawl, it is important to have available a technique that can cover both dimensions, inferring weights and inferring flexibility. The synthesis adds a variable representing ‘exchange market pressure’ to the currency basket equation, whereby the degree of flexibility is estimated at the same time as the currency weights. This approach reveals that by mid‐2007, the RMB basket had switched a substantial part of the US dollar's weight onto the euro. The implication is that the appreciation of the RMB against the US dollar during this period was due to the appreciation of the euro against the dollar, not to any upward trend in the RMB relative to its basket.     

Is East Asia an optimum currency area?

This paper assesses the empirical desirability of the East Asian economies to an alternative exchange rate arrangement (a monetary union) that can potentially enhance the exchange rate stability and credibility in the region. Specifically, the symmetry in macroeconomic disturbances of the East Asian economies is examined as satisfying one of the preconditions for forming an Optimum Currency Area (OCA). We extend the existing literature by improving the methodology of assessing the symmetry shocks in evaluating the suitability of a common currency area in the East Asian economies employing the Bayesian State-Space Based approach. We consider a model of an economy in which the output is influenced by global, regional and country-specific shocks. The importance of a common regional shock would provide a case for a regional common currency. This model allows us to examine regional and country-specific cycles simultaneously with the world business cycle. The importance of the shocks decomposition is that studying a subset of countries can lead one to believe that observed co-movement is particular to that subset of countries when it in fact is common to a much larger group of countries. In addition, the understanding of the sources of international economic fluctuations is important for making policy decisions. The falling share of country specific factor and the rising role of region factor indicate that East Asia has become increasingly favorable for a monetary union. However, the share of country-specific factor that is still significant implies that it could be costly to renounce individual currencies to advance into a monetary union in East Asia.     

HOUSING MARKETS AND THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS: THE COMPLEX DYNAMICS OF A CREDIT SHOCK

We analyze the multiple channels of influence that global financial crisis‐induced credit restrictions had on New Zealand's subnational housing markets. The dynamics caused by the credit shock are compared to those caused by a migration shock, a more common form of housing shock in New Zealand. We focus on the impacts on two outcome variables, house prices and housing supply, within a structural time series model of regional housing markets. Both shocks cause substantial and prolonged cyclical adjustments in each variable. Similar cyclical dynamics could complicate the conduct of macroprudential policies designed to affect bank credit allocation. (JEL E32, E44, R21)     

THE EFFECTS OF ALTERNATIVE EXCHANGE RATE REGIMES ON REAL EXCHANGE RATE VOLATILITY: EVIDENCE BASED ON A NEW DATASET

Do alternative exchange rate regimes affect short‐term real exchange rate volatility differently? The existing empirical evidence is quite mixed with slightly more papers supporting that they do. We show that such lack of consensus is mainly due to current literature limitations regarding the measurement of real exchange rates (RERs), the identification of exchange rate regimes (ERRs), and the control for the incidence of real and nominal shocks. To address these limitations, we construct a novel monthly dataset for 63 countries over the period 1946–2007, which includes market‐determined multilateral RER and a proxy for terms of trade. We find that ERRs indeed affect short‐term real exchange rate volatility differently. While the evidence is generally consistent with Mussa's sticky prices argument, we find that for nonadvanced countries in post‐Bretton Woods there exists a “U‐shape nominal flexibility puzzle of RER.” We also find evidence of a “short‐run RER volatility puzzle.” Having controlled for the incidence of real and nominal shocks, nonadvanced countries' RER volatility remains between 25% and 150% greater than that of the advanced economies. Moreover, the key literature finding that short‐term RER volatility is higher in Bretton Woods (BW) than in post‐Bretton Woods (PBW) for industrialized countries vanishes when using market‐determined multilateral RER instead of official bilateral RER. (JEL F31, F33, F41)     

The changing nature of the real exchange rate: The role of central bank preferences

We investigate the sources of real exchange rate fluctuations. We do so, first, in the context of a DSGE model that explicitly considers the central bank's preferences. Then we estimate SVAR models, where shocks are identified by sign restrictions derived from the DSGE model. We perform this exercise for twelve countries, nine of which have adopted inflation targeting during the period analyzed. In sharp contrast to the previous evidence in the literature, we find that exchange rate (country risk premium) shocks have become the main drivers of real exchange rate dynamics, while real shocks play a less important role. Evidence from the DSGE model reveals that, as the central bank becomes more averse to inflation movements, and cares less about nominal exchange rate fluctuations, the impact of nominal shocks on the real exchange rate tends to increase, while the impact of real shocks decreases. Our results suggest that the adoption of inflation targeting, along with a floating exchange rate, contributes to a shift in the relative importance of demand and country risk premium shocks in determining the RER.     

Gender Analysis of the Policy Responses to High Oil Prices: A Case Study of South Africa

ABSTRACT

The 2007–8 surge in oil prices has created concern about its impacts on poor and vulnerable populations in developing countries. Government management of the energy crisis was shown to be important in reducing adverse impacts. This study uses an applied general equilibrium framework to examine alternative policy and external shocks with the recent surge in oil prices in South Africa through a gender lens. Simulation results show that although the 2007–8 energy crisis contributed to slowing down South African gross domestic product (GDP) growth and reducing employment and earnings, the distributional impact between men and women has been neutral. This neutrality is driven by an increase in capital inflows, which has mitigated the exchange rate depreciation owing to the oil price hike. Without an increase in capital inflows, the crisis would have significantly depreciated the exchange rate and contributed to decreasing women's market opportunities and increasing women's workload as compared to men.     

A NEW METHOD FOR THE ESTIMATION OF CAPACITY UTILIZATION: THEORY AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM 14 EU COUNTRIES

In this paper, we develop a new and at the same time simple method of obtaining a measure of the rate of capacity utilization (CU) which makes use of the structural vector autoregression (SVAR) system of equation estimating technique with long‐run restrictions. The measure of CU that we derive for each of 14 EU countries replicates to a great extent the European Commission's Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN) measure. On closer examination we find that the in‐sample explanatory content with respect to the inflation rate of the SVAR measure exceeds more often than not that of the ECFIN's measure; however, the out‐of‐sample forecasting performance of the two models is approximately equivalent.     

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.     

贸易结算货币的新选择:稳定的篮子货币——对“金砖五国”货币合作的探讨

文章研究"金砖五国"货币合作的可能形式,构建了稳定的篮子货币作为贸易结算货币,为货币合作提供政策建议。文章首先考察了汇率之间的关系,认为一种货币的加权几何平均汇率能够消除不同货币表示币值的差异,在此基础上构建了篮子货币指数;其次研究了篮子货币波动最小的货币权重的选取,通过最优化方法获得最优权重;最后模拟计算了"金砖五国"篮子货币的权重,并探讨了如何把篮子货币最优权重转化为具体的货币篮子,同时给出了篮子货币和各国货币之间的汇率关系。     

A re-examination of the impacts of macroeconomic and financial shocks on real exchange rate fluctuation: evidence from G7 and Asian countries

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to investigate the sources of real exchange rate fluctuation by utilizing sign restrictions in structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) method. Under an agnostic identification scheme, the empirical results show that the delayed overshooting puzzle still exists in response to monetary shock even if price puzzle is ruled out by construction. In contrast, all countries experience a significant initial real depreciation, and then gradually appreciate in response to currency risk premium (CRP) shock. This finding is consistent with Dornbusch’s overshooting model. In addition, I examine the importance of investors’ expectations in determining the short-term variations in the real exchange rate. The results indicate that the CRP and expectation shocks obviously outperformed the demand, supply and monetary shocks in terms of explaining the real exchange rate fluctuation.     

Learning,Large Deviations,And Recurrent Currency Crises*

This article studies a version of Obstfeld's (Journal of International Economics 43 (1997), 61–77) “escape clause” model. The model is calibrated to produce three rational expectations equilibria. Two of these equilibria are E‐stable and one is unstable. Dynamics are introduced by assuming that agents must learn about the government's decision rule. It is assumed they do this using a stochastic approximation algorithm. It turns out that as a certain parameter describing the sensitivity of beliefs to new information gets small, the algorithm converges to a small noise diffusion process. The dynamics of exchange rate changes are then characterized using large deviation techniques from Freidlin and Wentzell (Random Perturbations of Dynamical Systems, Second Edition, Berlin: Springer‐Verlag, 1998). These methods describe the sense in which the limiting distribution of exchange rate changes is approximated by a two‐state Markov‐Switching process, where the two states correspond to the two E‐stable equilibria. The model is calibrated to the exchange rate histories of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Currency crises in these countries resemble the predicted “escape routes” of the model. A key feature of these escape routes is that expectations of a devaluation erupt suddenly, without large contemporaneous shocks. This is consistent with evidence showing that crises are often poorly anticipated by financial markets.     

The endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Area criteria in East Asia

The Asian financial crisis in mid-1997 has increased interest in policies to achieve greater regional exchange rate stability in East Asia. It has renewed calls for greater monetary and exchange rate cooperation. A country's suitability to join a monetary union depends, inter alia, on the trade intensity and the business cycle synchronization with other potential members of the monetary union. However, these two Optimum Currency Area criteria are endogenous. Theoretically, the effect of increased trade integration (after the elimination of exchange fluctuations among the countries in the region) on the business cycle synchronization is ambiguous. Reduction in trade barriers can potentially increase industrial specialization by country and therefore resulting in more asymmetry business cycles from industry-specific shocks. On the other hand, increased trade integration may result in more highly correlated business cycles due to common demand shocks or intra-industry trade. If the second hypothesis is empirically verified, policy makers have little to worry about the region being unsynchronized in their business cycles as the business cycles will become more synchronized after the monetary union is formed. This paper assesses the dynamic relationships between trade, finance, specialization and business cycle synchronization for East Asian economies using a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach. The dynamic panel approach improves on previous efforts to examine the business cycle correlations — trade link using panel procedures, which control for the potential endogeneity of all explanatory variables. Based on the findings on how trade, finance and sectoral specialization have effects on the size of common shocks among countries, potential policies that can help East Asian countries move closer toward a regional currency arrangement can be suggested. The empirical results of this study suggest that there exists scope for East Asia to form a monetary union.     

THE CHOICE OF EXCHANGE RATE REGIME AND THE VOLATILITY OF EXCHANGE RATES BEFORE AND AFTER THE ASIAN CRISIS: A COUNTERFACTUAL ANALYSIS*

This paper carries out a counterfactual analysis of the impact of alternative exchange rate regimes on the volatility of the nominal effective exchange rate (NEER) and the bilateral rate against the US dollar for nine East Asian countries, both before and after the Asian financial crisis. Our hypothetical regimes include a unilateral basket peg (UBP), a common basket peg (CBP) and a hard peg against the $US, but in contrast to previous counterfactual exercises which compute the weights for effective exchange rates on the basis of simple bloc aggregates, we apply a more disaggregated methodology using a larger number of trade partners and utilise ARCH/GARCH techniques to better capture the time‐varying characteristics of volatility. Our results suggest that a UBP would minimise effective exchange rate volatility for all countries both before and after the crisis and provides the highest regime gains compared to actual. Although the gains for a CBP are always less than those for a UBP the absolute differences between the two regimes appear to be small. In terms of bilateral exchange rates against the dollar the gains from a UBP or CBP could also be quite significant for the non‐dollar peggers, especially post‐crisis, since a fall in effective instability would be accompanied by a fall in bilateral instability.     

Macroeconomic shocks and stock market returns: the case of Korea

This study examines the effects of macroeconomic shocks on key macro variables, including stock market returns in Korea, using the structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model. We suggest a three-variable SVAR model incorporating inflation, output growth and stock returns. We adopt a nonzero z-ratio restriction for the long-run identifying assumption to allow for economically meaningful relationships among variables. While our results support the negative (positive) relation of demand (supply) shocks to stock returns, we also find that demand shocks influence stock market variance more significantly than supply shocks do. The sub-period analysis finds that global market fluctuations during the global financial crisis have relatively little effect on Korean stock market performance. We also examine a generalized five-variable model that includes the foreign exchange rate and interest rate, confirming the results from the three-variable case.     

EXCHANGE RATE,EXPECTED PROFIT AND CAPITAL STOCK ADJUSTMENT: JAPANESE EXPERIENCE

This paper empirically investigates the impact of exchange rate shocks on capital stock adjustment in the Japanese industry. An intertemporal optimization model is developed, in which an individual corporation in an open economy adjusts its capital stock according to Tobin's q. By explicitly considering the marginal q, the transmission mechanism from real exchange rate shocks to investment dynamics is examined based on the Vector Autoregressive model. Empirical evidence suggests that the depreciation of the Japanese yen increases the expected profitability of the firm and stimulates investment, especially in the machinery sector.     

Oil currencies in the face of oil shocks: what can be learned from time-varying specifications?

While the oil currency property is clearly established from a theoretical viewpoint, its existence is less clear-cut in the empirical literature. We investigate the reasons for this apparent puzzle by studying the time-varying nature of the relationship between real effective exchange rates of five oil exporters and the real price of oil in the aftermath of the oil price shocks of the last two decades. Accordingly, we rely on a time-varying parameter VAR specification, which allows the responses of real exchange rates to different oil price shocks to evolve over time. We find that the reason of the mixed results obtained in the empirical literature is that oil currencies follow different hybrid models in the sense that oil countries’ real exchange rates may be driven by one or several sources of oil price shocks that furthermore can vary over time. In addition to structural changes affecting oil countries, structural changes arising from the oil market itself through the various, time-varying sources of oil price shocks are found to be crucial.     

CURRENCY AREAS AND MONETARY COORDINATION*

We integrate a monetary search model into open‐economy macro to analyze the gains from coordinating on inflation. Search frictions and local congestion lead to a determinate exchange rate between two currencies. Relative prices deviate from the law of one price. Because the deviations depend on the cross‐country differential in money growth, each country is tempted to inflate to exploit the deviations. Policy coordination reduces inflation and improves welfare for all countries. In contrast to traditional models, the gains from coordination continue to exist even after each country optimally sets a direct tax on the foreign use of the country's currency.     

Temporal causality and the dynamics of judicial appellate caseload,real income and socio-economic complexity in Australia

This paper shows that, during the 1970s and 1980s, MENA economies were characterized by a significant overvaluation of their currency. This overvaluation has had a cost in terms of competitiveness. To determine the degree of overvaluation of the MENA currencies, an indicator of misalignment was developed based on the estimation of an equilibrium exchange rate (Edwards, Exchange Rate Misalignment in Developing Countries, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1988). The empirical work was based on a panel of 53 developing countries, ten of which are MENA economies. Although overvaluation decreased in the 1990s, probably due to flexibilization of the exchange rate regime in some MENA countries and to better macroeconomic management in others, misalignment remained higher than in other regions. This may be explained by the MENA countries’ delay in adopting more flexible exchange rates, as well as in reforming their economies. In terms of competitiveness, the estimation of an export equation has shown that manufactured exports have been significantly affected by the overvaluation of the MENA currencies. Countries that already had a more diversified economy benefited more from the decreased overvaluation in the 1990s. These countries also saw a continuous rise in diversification of their manufactured exports, resulting from the significant decline in exchange rate misalignment.