Fluctuations in the foreign exchange market: How important are monetary policy shocks?

We study the effects of U.S. monetary policy shocks on the bilateral exchange rate between the U.S. and each of the G7 countries. We also estimate deviations from uncovered interest rate parity conditional on these shocks. The analysis is based on a structural vector autoregression in which monetary policy shocks are identified through the conditional heteroscedasticity of the structural disturbances. Unlike earlier work in this area, our empirical methodology avoids making arbitrary assumptions about the relevant policy indicator or transmission mechanism in order to achieve identification. At the same time, it allows us to assess the implications of imposing invalid identifying restrictions. Our results indicate that the nominal exchange rate exhibits delayed overshooting in response to a monetary expansion, depreciating for roughly ten months before starting to appreciate. The shock also leads to large and persistent departures from uncovered interest rate parity. Variance-decomposition results indicate that monetary policy shocks account for a non-trivial proportion of exchange rate fluctuations.     

A pattern‐based approach to extract REA value models from business process models

Business models are economic models that describe the rationale of why organizations create and deliver value. These models focus on what organizations offer and why. Business process models capture business activities and the ways in which they are accomplished (i.e. their coordination). They explain who is involved in the activities, and how and when these activities should be performed. This paper discusses the alignment between business models and business process models. It proposes a novel systematic method for extracting a value chain (i.e. business model) expressed in the Resources, Events, Agents (REA) ontology from a business process model expressed in Business Process Model and Notation?. Our contribution is twofold: (1) from a theoretical standpoint we identified a set of structural and behavioural patterns that enable us to infer the corresponding REA value chain; (2) from a pragmatic perspective, our approach can be used to derive useful knowledge about the business process and serve as a starting point for business analysis.     

Has exchange rate pass-through really declined? Evidence from Canada

Several empirical studies suggest that exchange rate pass-through has declined in recent years among industrialized countries. Results for Canada also indicate that import and consumer prices have become less responsive to exchange-rate movements in the 1990s. These findings are based on reduced-form regressions that are typically motivated by partial-equilibrium models of pricing. This paper uses instead a structural, general-equilibrium approach to test the premise that exchange rate pass-through has decreased in Canada. Our approach consists in estimating a dynamic stochastic general-equilibrium model for Canada over two sub-samples, which cover the periods before and after the adoption of inflation targeting by the Bank of Canada. We then use impulse-response analysis to assess the stability of exchange rate pass-through across the two sub-samples. Our results indicate that pass-through to Canadian import prices has been rather stable, while pass-through to Canadian consumer prices has declined in recent years. Counterfactual experiments reveal that the change in monetary policy regime is largely responsible for this decline.     

Durable goods, inter-sectoral linkages and monetary policy

Durable goods pose a challenge for standard sticky-price models because the near constancy of their shadow value and their apparent price flexibility lead to perverse and counterfactual economic implications, such as the tendency of the durables and nondurables sectors to move in opposite directions following a monetary policy shock. This paper introduces input-output interactions and limited input mobility into an otherwise standard sticky-price model with durable and nondurable goods. The extended model generates substantial aggregate effects and positive sectoral comovement following a monetary policy shock, even when durable goods have flexible prices. The latter result is consistent with empirical evidence on the sectoral effects of monetary policy.     

Why does private consumption rise after a government spending shock?

Abstract.  Some recent empirical evidence suggests that private consumption is crowded-in by government spending. This outcome violates neoclassical macroeconomic theory, according to which the negative wealth effect brought about by a rise in public expenditure should decrease consumption. In this paper, we develop a simple real business cycle model where preferences depend on private and public spending, and households are habit forming. The model is estimated by the maximum-likelihood method using U.S. data. Estimation results indicate a strong Edgeworth complementarity between private and public spending. This feature enables the model to generate a positive response of consumption following a government spending shock. In addition, the impulse-response functions generated by the estimated model are generally consistent with those obtained from a benchmark vector autoregression.     

Habit formation and the persistence of monetary shocks

The dynamic effects and relative importance of monetary shocks in the US business cycle are studied using a sticky-price dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with habit formation and capital adjustment costs. The model is estimated via maximum likelihood using data on output, real money balances, and the nominal interest rate. Econometric results indicate that the model has a strong internal propagation mechanism that can explain the persistent and hump-shaped response of US output and consumption to monetary shocks.     

Nominal rigidity, desired markup variations, and real exchange rate persistence

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic general-equilibrium sticky-price model that accounts for real exchange rate persistence. The key feature of the model is the dependence of the firm's desired markup on its relative price. Desired markup variations exacerbate the nominal rigidity that results from the exogenously imposed frictions in the goods market. The model is estimated by the maximum-likelihood method using Canadian and U.S. data. The estimated model successfully replicates the properties of the Canada-U.S. bilateral real exchange rate. In particular, the model closely matches the persistence found in the real exchange rate series. More importantly, this is achieved with a plausible duration of price contracts and a moderate convexity of the demand function.     

THE TRANSMISSION OF MONETARY POLICY IN A MULTISECTOR ECONOMY*

This article constructs and estimates a sticky‐price, Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model with heterogeneous production sectors. Firms in different sectors vary in their price rigidity, production technology, and the combination of material and investment inputs. In particular, firms buy inputs from all sectors using the actual Input–Output Matrix and Capital Flow Table of the U.S. economy. By relaxing the standard assumption of symmetry, this model allows idiosyncratic sectoral dynamics in response to monetary policy shocks. The model is estimated by the Generalized Method of Moments using sectoral and aggregate U.S. time series.