Same currency,different strategies? The (asymmetric) role of the exchange rate in shaping European agri-food exports

This article uses a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NADRL) model introduced by Shin, Yu, and Greenwood-Nimmo (2014) to assess the role that the exchange rate plays in shaping European agri-food exports after the introduction of the Euro. Although the 10 countries of this study share the same currency (and thus a single nominal exchange rate with the US), cross-country discrepancies of exports’ reactions to exchange rate changes are evident. Moreover, I find that exchange rate changes influence exports asymmetrically in the long run. Euro appreciations are harmful to a lesser extent than Euro depreciations are beneficial for European agri-food exports. The magnitude of this effect is country-specific and varies considerably between individual exporting countries. Exported quantities are less affected by exchange rate fluctuations than export values, which is in line with local currency price stabilization strategies of the exporters. This finding is interpreted as a sign of an incomplete exchange rate pass-through due to strategic (asymmetric) markup adjustments by firms with heterogeneous productivity. Besides that, the outcomes suggest that nonprice competition might be in play in some cases.     

Sources of Real Exchange Rate Fluctuations in the Nordic Countries

In an attempt to move beyond the purchasing power parity hypothesis, this paper addresses two issues. The first concerns the causes of movements in real exchange rates. In contrast to the typical result, supply shocks are found to dominate the long-run variance decompositions for each of the four Nordic countries under study. This suggests that productivity developments are the most important determinant of long-run movements in real exchange rates. A second topic is the relative importance of stationary and non-stationary components of real exchange rates. Also in contrast to previous findings, transitory shocks are more important than permanent shocks for three of the four countries.     

Exchange-rate pass-through and market structure

We consider a situation in whichn firms located in market 1 andm firms located in market 2 each sell a commodity which is homogeneous within each market but may differ between markets. All firms sell on both markets. Each market has its own currency. The market demand functions differ. We give some basic results on the effects of exchange-rate changes and then show the following. When these markets are independent on the cost side (constant marginal costs) and demands are linear, a reduction in the number of firms (which might result from a merger) in market 1 increases the pass-through (of an appreciation of currency 2) in market 1 and decreases the pass-through in market 2. A similar occurrence in market 2 has the opposite effect. We give conditions under which, with identical economies of scope linking the markets, the sign of the price changes will be reversed when the number of foreign firms is small enough compared to the number of local firms. However, such sign reversals cannot occur in the two markets simultaneously.     

Asymmetric impacts of insurance premiums on the non-oil GDP: some new empirical evidence

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we study the influence of insurance premium on the non-oil gross domestic product in Saudi Arabia. We implement the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lags. The results show that the relationships between insurance premiums and non-oil gross domestic product manifest a nonlinear behaviour. In other words, insurance premiums via positive and negative shocks lead to an increase of growth in the non-oil sector in the long term, whereas the lagged level shocks negatively affect the non-oil GDP in the short run. In addition, the examination of the multiplier effect suggests that positive cumulative changes in insurance premiums and inflation can effect much larger changes in non-oil GDP, while shocks in government spending have a symmetric effect on non-oil GDP growth.     

Daily Bundesbank and Federal Reserve Interventions

This paper reports on the results of an empirical investigation into the objectives of daily foreign exchange market intervention by the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve System in the U.S. dollar-Deutsche Mark market. Tobit analysis is implemented to estimate the intervention reaction functions consistently. It is found that an increase in the conditional variance in daily exchange rate returns derived from a GARCH model estimated in the paper, led the Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve to increase the volume of intervention, both in case of dollar-sales and purchases on account of their leaning against the wind policy.We are grateful to the Deutsche Bundesbank, Hauptabteilung Ausland for kindly providing, on a confidential base, the daily data on the official interventions of the Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve, the latter only to the extent that they affected the net foreign position of the Bundesbank. Also, we want to thank Theo Nijman and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Opinions and errors are our own responsibility.     

Exchange rates and perfect competition

The purpose of this note is to demonstrate that the commonly held belief that incomplete and perverse pass-through are incompatible with perfect competition is wrong! To this end, we consider two types of firms both operating in two countries. The demand sides of the markets of the two countries are separated and each type of firm produces its good in one of these countries. We study the effect of an exchange-rate change on the competitive equilibrium prices in each country. When producing for the foreign market causes the same costs as producing for the home market then the law of one price holds and an exchange-rate change is completely offset by price changes. Furthermore, when cost functions neither exhibit economies nor diseconomies of scope between producing for the home and producing for the foreign market then prices move in the right directions in response to an exchange-rate change. However, with general cost structures, even in this simple perfectly competitive model, perverse directions of price changes can result from an exchange-rate change.     

Exchange rate effects on Korea–U.S. bilateral trade: A new look

This study examines the effect of exchange rate fluctuations on Korea׳s trade with the U.S. by taking the roles of exchange rate volatility and third country effects into account. An autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration is applied to estimate bilateral exports and imports of disaggregating 10 industries between Korea and the U.S. We find that Korea׳s major export industries are highly responsive to the bilateral exchange rate, volatility and third country effects in both the long- and short-run, whereas Korea׳s imports are mostly insensitive to changes in those three factors. It is also found that income in both countries plays an important role in influencing the bilateral trade flows in both the long- and short-run.     

Selected transition and Mediterranean countries: an institutional primer on EMU and EU accession

The paper examines the institutional channels through which Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in the European Union (EU) can affect the transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe and three Mediterranean countries that aspire to join the EU.
After describing the current institutional framework for relations between the EU and these countries, the paper considers two categories of institutional implications of EMU. The first stems from the need to satisfy the Maastricht convergence criteria before joining the euro area. Although the Maastricht criteria are not accession criteria, many of the countries reviewed are already formulating their macroeconomic policies in a way that will facilitate convergence toward the Maastricht targets. The second implication stems from the need to adopt the EU's institutional and legal provisions in the area of EMU, such as those referring to the establishment of independent central banks, the prohibition of central bank financing of the government and the liberalization of capital movements. Finally, the paper discusses some of the key policy issues that EMU raises for the countries reviewed, in particular regarding exchange rate policy, capital account liberalization and the possible conflict between growth-enhancing measures and the Maastricht criteria.     

Is the Cyprus Pound Real Effective Exchange Rate Misaligned? A BEER Approach

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the real effective exchange rate of the Cyprus pound is misaligned by generating measures of the equilibrium rate using the Behavioral Equilibrium Exchange Rate (BEER) approach. Several measures of the equilibrium exchange rate were derived and used to check for the existence of exchange rate misalignment. The results suggest that, during the 1990s, the actual real effective exchange rate and the various equilibrium measures generated move closely together and there is no evidence of any significant and persistent misalignment. However, the empirical evidence suggests persistent overvaluation during the 1980s.     

Fiscal Policy and Exchange Rates

This paper examines the dynamics of the nominal exchange rate and fiscal deficits in a continuous time optimizing general equilibrium model with OLG. It is shown that alternative financing modes of budget deficits imply different patterns of adjustment along the transitional path towards the steady-state equilibrium. In particular, the respect of public solvency without money financing is not sufficient to avoid the depreciation of the exchange rate in the long-run after a fiscal expansion. In addition, money and tax financing generate opposite intergenerational reallocation of wealth.