What determines the long-term correlation between oil prices and exchange rates?

In this study, we obtain the long-term correlation between oil prices and exchange rates by employing the dynamic conditional correlation-mixed data sampling (DCC-MIDAS) model. We then identify the factors that influence the long-term correlation using panel data analysis. We find that the long-run correlations between oil prices and exchange rates are negative for all oil-exchange rate markets except Japan. We also find that both inflation and term spread have negative effects, while the risk-free interest rate has a positive effect on the long-term correlation between oil prices and exchange rates. Importantly, the empirical results show that an increase in inflation will significantly damage the real value of the currency itself.     

Britain,EMU and the European economy

In January 1999, 11 member countries of the European Union ‘irrevocably’ locked the foreign exchange values of their currencies to the euro, and they committed themselves to abandon their currencies in favour of the euro in 2002. As a result, these countries ceased to operate independent monetary policies. Monetary policy for the whole euro‐zone became the responsibility of the European Central Bank (ECB), whose primary objective is to maintain a low and stable rate of price inflation for the euro currency. The rules governing Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) were laid down in the treaty of Maastricht in 1992. As conditions for entry to EMU, the treaty specified ‘convergence criteria’ which consisted of upper limits for several macroeconomic aggregates including, notably, a 3 per cent maximum for the ratio of the public sector deficit to GDP and 60 per cent for the ratio of public debt to GDP.1 In February 1998 the 11 applicant countries submitted statistical analyses relating to their satisfaction of these conditions. Despite doubts as to whether some of them had strictly met the conditions, the European Commission deemed them all eligible, and the euro was launched.2 The British government, though more clearly eligible than most other EU countries on the basis of the convergence criteria, decided to defer its decision on entry. In this paper we consider the arguments for and against Economic and Monetary Union, and in particular whether it would be in Britain’s interest to join. We begin with a brief review of the state of the European economy and an analysis of the first year performance of the new Euro currency. 1 Upper limits were also set on the rate of inflation, at 1.5 percentage points above the average inflation rate of the three countries whose inflation was the lowest, and on long term interest rates, at 2 percentage points above the average of the rates prevailing in the three low inflation countries. An additional condition applied to exchange rate stability relative to the EU average for the two years prior to entry.
1 Notable cases were Belgium and Italy with debt to GDP ratios of 122.2 per cent and 121.6 per cent, respectively. Presumably, these countries were allowed membership under Article 104c(2) of the treaty which allows the debt to GDP ratio to be exceeded if ‘. . . the ratio is sufficiently diminishing and approaching 60 per cent at a satisfactory pace’. The reader is left to judge whether Belgium and Italy fell within the ‘spirit’ of this article.
     

THE REAL WAGE GAP

Over the past year a gap has opened up between the growth of manufacturing productivity and that of real wages. This gap cannot persist indefinitely, but it can be closed in many different ways. The best that can happen is that wage settlements fall while output and productivity accelerate. The worst outcome would be continued stagnation of real output and no deceleration of wages, in which case the required productivity improvement would have to come about through renewed labour shedding. There are worrying signs that this has started to happen. An intermediate solution might involve a fall in the exchange rate, with some improvement in competitiveness boosting real output (so that UK producers get a larger share of buoyant consumer spending) and some rise in prices holding back real wages.
We continue to believe that the most likely outcome is a rise in output and a fall in the rate of wage settlements. In our June forecast this occurs despite a fall in the real exchange rate. In these circumstances we expect the growth of unit labour costs to fall back from its current high level so that the current 3 per cent inflation rate becomes a true "core" rate. But a moderate fall in the real exchange rate may prove hard to achieve, especially if the oil price continues to weaken. We therefore explore what would happen if the required depreciation happens more rapidly, so that interest rates have to remain high to prevent it getting out of control. In this case we would expect lower growth and higher inflation than we forecast in June.     

Productivity and Inflation: a Paradox

In his Budget speech, Mr. Lawson drew attention to the greatly improved record of productivity growth in UK manufacturing:
"During the 1960s, and again in the 1970s, growth in manufacturing productivity in the UK was the lowest of all the seven major industrial countries in the world. During the 1980s, our annual rate of growth of output per head in manufacturing has been the highest of all the seven major industrial countries."
Ironically this success in regard to productivity may cause a problem in regard to inflation if the UK moves to a fixed exchange rate policy within the EMS. In this Viewpoint we report the consequence of such a move and also describe the possible required rise in the exchange rate if price stability is to be attained. We show that price stability requires the exchange rate to rise (i) to offset world inflation and (ii) to compensate for the productivity gap between the traded and non-traded sectors.     

Testing the purchasing power parity through I(2) cointegration techniques

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the purchasing power parity (PPP) over the post‐Bretton Woods period by providing a time‐series based interpretation of the controversial evidence characterizing the dynamics of real exchange rates. It is shown that the persistence of deviations from the PPP between a set of European countries and the United States may be empirically attributed to the presence of I(2) stochastic trends in prices using Consumer Price Indices. Interestingly, the slow adjustment towards the equilibrium can be modelled through ‘integral‐proportional’ equilibrium correction models and this evidence can be partly reconciled with theories where the inflation rate reduces the markup of profit‐maximizing firms acting on imperfectly competitive markets. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tighter labour markets to finally lift global wages

• Wage growth has been relatively slow since 2007 in advanced economies, but an upturn may be in sight. Slow productivity growth remains an issue but tighter labour markets make a positive response by wages to rising inflation more likely and there are signs that compositional and crisis‐related effects that dragged wage growth down are fading – though Japan may be an exception.
• Overall, our forecasts are for a moderate improvement in wage growth in the major economies in 2017–18, with the pace of growth rising by 0.5–1% per year relative to its 2016 level by 2018 – enough to keep consumer spending reasonably solid.
• Few countries have maintained their pre‐crisis pace of wage growth since 2007. In part this reflects a mixture of low inflation and weak productivity growth, but other factors have also been in play: in the US and Japan wage growth has run as much as 0.5–1% per year lower than conventional models would suggest.
• The link with productivity seems to have weakened since 2007 and Phillips curves – which relate wages to unemployment – have become flatter. A notable exception is Germany, where the labour market has behaved in a much more ‘normal’ fashion over recent years with wage growth responding to diminishing slack.
• ‘Compositional’ factors related to shifts in the structure of the workforce may have had an important influence in holding down wage growth, cutting it by as much as 2% per year in the US and 1% per year in the UK. There are some signs that the impact of these effects in the UK and US are fading, but not in Japan.
• The forecast rise in inflation over the next year as energy price base effects turn positive is a potential risk to real wages. But the decline in measures of labour market slack in the US, UK and Germany suggests wages are more likely to move up with inflation than was the case in 2010–11 when oil prices spiked and real wages fell.

     

Monetary Targets and the World Economy

The dominant obsessions to watchers of the world economy at the moment are the weakness of the US dollar and the fear that the world economy is stagnating. In this ‘Briefing Paper’ we seek to put both events into the same intellectual framework, and to show that they are the consequence of monetary policies which are not logically related to each other, nor to a common objective of bringing world inflation steadily down to an acceptable level. Specifically, the US - which for reasons outlined below can warrant monetary growth rather below the world average if it is to preserve some dollar stability - is showing an above average outturn in its monetary aggregates. Germany and Japan, which can accommodate increases well above the average, are in fact adopting monetary targets which are leading to exchange rate appreciation, arid a reduction in both countries' expectations for real growth. The dangers for the world economy in this situation are very serious, particularly at a time when further dollar devaluation could be risky both from the viewpoint of US inflation wide the dollar's role as the key reserve asset. It could lead at worst to US protectionism and a monetaryled recession, rein forcing the slow growth rates already being widely predicted in 1978 for many other industrial countries. However, we show in this ‘Briefing Paper’ that this is not a necessity outcome of the present situation, given three vital perceptions. The first, required by statesmen as much as by technicians. is that the recent stagnation in European & Japanese output and exchange rate instability are essentially a monetary phenomenon, requiring essentially monetary (rather than fiscal) remedies. The second is acceptance of the need and practicability of some monetary consignation, based on reasonably common objectives among the major countries regarding inflation, bands for exchange rate movement and red rates of growth. the third, at the most practical level, is agreement on the actual monetary numbers which broadly reconcile these objectives and also take account of the very different ‘unwanted’ rates of monetary growth between countries which reflect their different underlying conditions of output, productivity and demand for money. It is the (ambitious) aim of this ‘Briefing Paper’ to substantiate these perceptions and to provide the numbers mound which a consideration of monetary policies can be framed. The numbers are necessarily based on trends established over a number of years and need to be supplemented by detailed understanding of each country's financial status But the monetary targets provided do, in our judgement, embody trade-offs between inflation, growth and exchange rate movements which should broadly satisfy national ambitions, and reset the world economy on a worthwhile growth path during 1978 or 1979.     

汇率制度选择及其通胀绩效的实证考察——以中东欧转轨国家为例

文章对20世纪90年代中东欧转轨国家汇率制度选择及其通胀绩效进行了实证考察。结果表明,这些国家在从计划经济向市场经济转轨的过程中,采取了几乎所有的汇率制度类型。对于转轨国家而言,汇率制度选择与通胀之间存在着非常密切的关系。在转轨的初期,通胀的压力和宏观经济的稳定性是政府主要考虑的因素,这些国家的政府都把稳定货币作为制定政策的出发点,汇率制度的选择也是围绕稳定货币进行的。这些国家的实践表明,钉住汇率制度反通胀的绩效要超过浮动汇率制度。     

The London Business School with Gower Publishing: Forecast Release: EARNINGS AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE CAR INDUSTRY: THE BEST AND WORST OF BRITISH INDUSTRY

The Chancellor has described the cost in terms of lost output and higher unemployment of getting inflation down as ‘well worth paying’. Yet the trade-off so far is a miserable 1.25 per cent off the underlying rate of growth of earnings for an unemployment increase approaching 600,000, some 2–3 per cent off the underlying rate of inflation for a 3 per cent drop in GDP and a 7 per cent fall in manufacturing output. The question is clear: why is it that in the UK we seem to have to pay such a high price in terms of lost output and higher unemployment to make only modest progress on reducing wage and price inflation? One possible answer is in terms of the NAIRU; another stems from the way in which we measure retail price inflation. Using the example of the car industry as a backdrop, we examine the relationship between unemployment and inflation and ask whether there is a role for government to play in improving the trade-off. Our conclusion is that the present non-interventionist stance is probably appropriate but that the government should be doing more to educate both sides of the wage bargain - a challenge picked up by the Prime Minister in his recent speech to the CBI. This is especially appropriate at the present time, because price inflation is falling but wage inflation is lagging behind. It is not a cut in real wages that is required but an equi-proportionate deceleration in both wages and prices. By joining the ERM, we will ultimately obtain German rates of inflation; low wage settlements would both shorten the time-scale and reduce the unemployment cost of convergence.     

Product Market Competition,Monetary Policy Regimes and Inflation Dynamics: Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries

We empirically analyze the impact of product market competition on the responsiveness of inflation to macroeconomic imbalances. If competition is high the response of inflation to lagged inflation, unemployment and import prices is reduced, while inflation is more responsive to changes in productivity growth in countries in which competition is above the OECD average. Given the (‘good luck’) macroeconomic trajectories of the 1990s–2000s, the structural reforms that made goods markets more competitive improved the ability of OECD economies to smooth (dis)inflationary shocks, while changes in the monetary policy framework had a modest role in taming inflation during the Great Moderation.     

Disaggregate productivity comparisons: sectoral convergence in OECD countries

International comparisons of productivity have used exchange rates or purchasing power parity (PPP) to make output comparable across countries. While aggregate PPP holds well in the long run, sectoral deviations are persistent. It raises the need for a currency conversion factor at the same level of aggregation as the output that is compared. Mapping prices from household expenditure surveys into the industrial classification of sectors and adjusting for taxes and international trade, I obtain an expenditure-based sector-specific PPP. Using detailed price data for up to 8 years between 1970 and 1999, I test whether the sectoral PPPs adequately capture differential changes in relative prices between countries. They work well for agriculture and the majority of industrial sectors, but not for most service sectors and for manufacturing sectors that produce differentiated products. Using the most appropriate conversion factor for each industry, productivity convergence is found to be taking place in all but a few industries for a group of 14 OECD countries. The latter results are robust to the base year used for the currency conversion.     

Dynamic relationship between stock prices and exchange rates for G-7 countries

There are two major findings from our time-series estimations. First, we find that there is no long-run significant relationship between stock prices and exchange rates in the G-7 countries. This result interfaces with Bahmani-Oskooee and Sohrabian’s (1992) finding, but contrasts with the studies that suggest there be a significant relationship between these two financial variables. Our second finding is that the short-run significant relationship has only been found for one day in certain G-7 countries. For instance, currency depreciation often drags down stock returns in the German financial market, but it stimulates the Canadian and UK markets on the following day. However, an increase in stock price often causes currency depreciation the next day in Italy and Japan. In addition, we also find that the record of stock price and the value of the dollar cannot be depended on when predicting the future in the US, either in the short-run or long-run.     

Monetary policy in open economies: Practical perspectives for pragmatic central bankers

This paper reviews and interprets some of the key policy implications that flow from a class of DSGE models for optimal monetary policy in the open economy. The framework suggests that good macroeconomic outcomes in open economies are possible by focusing inflation targeting that is implemented by a Taylor type rule, a rule that in equilibrium is reflected in the exchange rate as an asset price. Optimal monetary policy will not be able deliver a stationary (‘stable’) nominal exchange rate – let alone a fixed exchange rate or one that remains inside a target zone – because, absent a commitment device, optimal monetary can’t deliver a stationary domestic price level. Another feature in the data for inflation targeting countries that is consistent with monetary policy via Taylor type rule is that it will tend push the nominal exchange rate in the opposite direction from PPP in response to an ‘inflation’ shock—the ‘bad news god news’ result of Clarida and Waldman (2008. Is Bad News about Inflation Good News for the Exchange Rate. In: John Campbell, (Ed.), Asset Prices and Monetary Policy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press), Clarida and Waldman (2014. Bad News About Inflation is Good News for the Nominal Exchange Rate Under Optimal Monetary Policy: DSGE Theory and a Decade of Empirical Evidence). This is so even though in the long run of these models the nominal exchange rate must in expectation obey PPP.     

Further Evidence on PPP Adjustment Speeds: the Case of Effective Real Exchange Rates and the EMS*

Two different approaches intend to resolve the ‘puzzling’ slow convergence to purchasing power parity (PPP) reported in the literature [see Rogoff (1996) , Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 34.] On the one hand, there are models that consider a non‐linear adjustment of real exchange rate to PPP induced by transaction costs. Such costs imply the presence of a certain transaction band where adjustment is too costly to be undertaken. On the other hand, there are models that relax the ‘classical’ PPP assumption of constant equilibrium real exchange rates. A prominent theory put together by Balassa (1964, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 72) and Samuelson (1964 Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 46) , the BS effect, suggests that a non‐constant real exchange rate equilibrium is induced by different productivity growth rates between countries. This paper reconciles those two approaches by considering an exponential smooth transition‐in‐deviation non‐linear adjustment mechanism towards non‐constant equilibrium real exchange rates within the EMS (European Monetary System) and effective rates. The equilibrium is proxied, in a theoretically appealing manner, using deterministic trends and the relative price of non‐tradables to proxy for BS effects. The empirical results provide further support for the hypothesis that real exchange rates are well described by symmetric, nonlinear processes. Furthermore, the half‐life of shocks in such models is found to be dramatically shorter than that obtained in linear models.     

House Prices, Housing Investment and Demography Forecasts from the LBS/Abbey National Model of the UK Housing Market

A new housing sector has been incorporated into the London Business School model. This article outlines the new housing model, summarizes the research which has gone into its construction, and presents a forecast of the UK housing market. Using the new housing model, we forecast a moderate recovery in the housing market in the later part of 1991 and 1992. This recovery is however short-lived and does not result in such high rates of house price increase as previous house price booms (Chart 1).
Cuts in interest rates following entry to the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS prompt a recovery in house prices from the middle of 1991. House price inflation then peaks with an increase in average UK house prices in 1992 of 11 per cent over the previous year. Increases in real personal disposable income are modest, by the standards of the 1980s, and for this reason the recovery does not develop the momentum of previous house price booms. House price inflation moderates again in 1993 falling back to around 7 per cent. Housing starts and housing investment recover only slightly from their present depressed levels.
the recovery in house prices is weaker than that foreseen in our April Forecast Release. This is because real personal disposable income is now forecast to grow more slowly during 1991. Sterling's membership of the ERM is followed by a fall in interest rates, but it is the timing of interest rate cuts rather than their magnitude which differs from the earlier forecast. The changed profile of interest rates has altered the house price forecast only marginally.     

LOWER OIL PRICES AND THE UK ECONOMY

Demand for oil remains weak, and OPEC production is running ahead of quota in most member countries, so the possibility that oil prices could fall in the near future has increased. In this Forecast Release we examine the medium-term impact on the UK economy of lower oil prices. We find that, if the government does not intervene to protect the exchange rate, there is an immediate stimulus to output growth. The inflation rate, though, is 1–2 percentage points higher after three years.     

The Hungarian exchange rate and inflation over the transition

The relationship from inflation and the real exchange rate to the rate of depreciation of the exchange rate for Hungary is investigated over 1991m6–2002m2. Evidence is found that prior to the adoption of the pre-announced crawl in 1995 depreciation responded to inflation. After the adoption of the crawl inflation is dominated by a trend that indicates the rate of depreciation to be diminishing over time. This trend is interpreted as being deterministic, as a consequence of the gradual reductions in the rate of official devaluations. In both periods depreciation was found to respond to the real exchange rate in ways that limited real appreciations of the currency.     

INFLATION: PLUS ÇA CHANGE

The quantity theory of money is an enduring idea, which shows in many guises. At its heart is a truth. Government borrowing is the root of inflation and a source of market distortions. Although two centuries have passed since David Ricardo explained how state debt leads inevitably either to taxation or to currency debasement, that truth is little understood. All manner of scapegoats – rising import prices, ‘excessive’ wage demands, high interest rates – are usually nothing more than symptoms of excessive government borrowing.     

Oil prices and exchange rates in oil-exporting countries: evidence from TAR and M-TAR models

The paper studies the long-run relation and short-run dynamics between real oil prices and real exchange rates in a sample of 13 oil-exporting countries. The purpose of the study is to examine the possibility of Dutch disease in these countries. Tests of cointegration using threshold and momentum-threshold autoregressive (TAR and M-TAR) models suggest the possibility of the disease in 3-out-of 13 countries??Bolivia, Mexico and Norway. For these countries, we also find that (a) oil prices have a long-run effect on the exchange rates; and (b) exchange rates adjust faster to positive deviations from the equilibrium; and (c) there is no evidence of short-run causality between real exchange rates and real oil prices in either direction. Over all, these findings suggest a weak link between oil prices and real exchange rates and thus limited evidence in favor of the Dutch disease.     

Forecast Summary

Short-term economic prospects for the UK will depend critically on what happens to oil prices and on the government's response to any changes. Our central case assumes that North Sea oil averages £20 a barrel for the remainder of the year and that the government holds the sterling index at about 74. In the Focus we also examine the sensitivity of the forecast to changes in oil prices. The willingness of the government to let the exchange rate fall in response to the fall in oil prices means that we still expect GDP to grow by about 21/2. per cent in 1986 and we expect inflation to fall below 4 per cent by the middle of the year. Lower oil prices generate a faster growth of world output; the UK benefits from this and we are forecasting growth of nearly 3 per cent in 1987 with inflation falling further.