By force of demand: Explaining cyclical fluctuations of international trade and government spending

This paper explores the role of demand shocks, as an alternative to productivity shocks, in driving both domestic and international business cycles within the international real business cycle (IRBC) framework. In addition to those well-documented domestic business cycle fluctuations (e.g., the volatility and cyclicality of output, consumption, investment, labor hours, and labor productivity) and international business cycle properties (e.g., the countercyclical net export and the comovement puzzle), this paper focuses on two additional stylized facts in the industrialized countries: the procyclical trade openness (the GDP fraction of trade volume) and the countercyclical government size (the GDP fraction of government spending). Using a parsimonious dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, we show that the model׳s predictions under productivity shocks are not consistent with these facts. Instead, a demand-shock-driven model replicates the above facts while matching other domestic and international business cycle properties. An estimated version of the model confirms the quantitatively important impacts of demand shocks.     

Does financial integration affect real exchange rate volatility and cross-country equity market returns correlation?

Existing empirical studies show that financial integration affects the behavior of average excess returns, cross-country equity market returns (EMR) correlations and real exchange rate (RER) volatility. We employ a recently developed two-country model with recursive preferences, frictionless and complete markets and highly correlated long-run innovations to examine whether full financial integration (i.e. full risk-sharing) affects the US-Canada EMR correlation and the US RER volatility, consistently with existing empirical findings. First, full risk-sharing gives rise to a relatively high RER volatility. Second, it induces very strong positive cross-country EMR correlations. Both quantities are higher than those observed in the US-Canada asset pricing data, and increase as the risk-sharing incentive increases. In contrast, “international consumption quantities” are weakly sensitive to changes in the level of aversion to consumption and utility risk.     

Nonlinear effects of exchange rate volatility on the volume of bilateral exports

In this paper, we investigate empirically the impact of exchange rate volatility on real international trade flows utilizing a 13‐country data set of monthly bilateral real exports for 1980–1998. We compute one‐month‐ahead exchange rate volatility from the intra‐monthly variations in the exchange rate to better quantify this latent variable. We find that the effect of exchange rate volatility on trade flows is nonlinear, depending on its interaction with the importing country's volatility of economic activity, and that it varies considerably over the set of country pairs considered. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pareto weights as wedges in two-country models

In models with recursive preferences, endogenous variation in Pareto weights would be interpreted as wedges from the perspective of a frictionless model with additive preferences. We describe the behavior of the relative Pareto weight in a two-country world and explore its interaction with consumption and the real exchange rate.     

Volatility risk and economic welfare

This paper examines the effects of time-varying volatility on welfare. I construct a tractable endogenous growth model with recursive preferences, stochastic volatility, and capital adjustment costs. The model shows that a rise in volatility can decelerate growth in the absence of any level shocks. In contrast to level risk, which is always welfare reducing for a risk-averse household, volatility risk can increase or decrease welfare, depending on model parameters. When calibrated to U.S. data, the model finds that the welfare cost of volatility risk is largely negligible under plausible model parameterizations.     

Exchange rate volatility and fluctuations in the extensive margin of trade

The existing evidence for exporters׳ entry and exit in response to exchange rate movements is based on either low frequency data or a sample with large devaluations. Using quarterly data of U.S. bilateral trade with 99 countries, this study provides new evidence that the extensive margin of trade fluctuates over the business cycle. First, I show that the extensive margin of exports to the U.S. and the extensive margin of imports from the U.S. are more volatile than the output of almost all trading partners. Next, I find that fixing exchange rates with the U.S. dollar, having a free trade agreement with the U.S., and an increase in country size is significantly associated with the stability of the pattern of trade with the U.S.     

Exchange rate dynamics and their effect on macroeconomic volatility in selected CEE countries

To understand the potential for forming an optimum currency area it is important to investigate the origins of macroeconomic volatility. We focus on the contribution of real exchange rate shocks to macroeconomic volatility in selected Central and Eastern European countries. The contribution of real exchange rate shocks relative to other shocks allows us to evaluate whether the real exchange rate is a source of volatility or a buffer against shocks, as the theory suggests. The identification of the contributions is based on variance decomposition in two-country structural VAR models, which are identified by the sign restriction method. For most of the countries in the sample, shocks are predominantly symmetric relative to their effective counterpart, although the role of non-symmetric shocks is non-negligible. In general, for all the countries considered except Bulgaria and Slovenia, the real exchange rate does not generate large volatility over the business cycle and, with the exception of Bulgaria and Romania, is mostly driven by the non-symmetric shocks. These results are consistent with the real exchange rate having a shock-absorbing nature.     

Exchange rate volatility and Spanish-American commodity trade flows

A number of recent studies have tested the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade flows, particularly for individual commodities, for various country pairs. These have found that risk can increase as well as decrease trade, but that oftentimes industries are not affected. This study examines trade between the United States and Spain over the period from 1962 to 2009, for 131 U.S. export industries and 88 import industries. We find that exchange rate volatility has short-run and long-run effects in only a fraction of the cases, but that exports respond more to increased uncertainty than imports do. In all, only 35 of the 74 U.S. export industries are affected (11 positive, 24 negative), whilst only three out of 37 import industries have positive coefficients and 11 have negative ones. We find no evidence that durable or nondurable goods are more likely to respond to volatility, whilst small industries or specialized goods might show more of a positive response.     

The exchange rate system and macroeconomic fluctuations in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper, we investigate the sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries with particular attention to the exchange rate system. We use a structural Vector Autoregression (VAR) model with limited capital mobility and long run restrictions to identify the shocks. Supply and terms of trade shocks tend to dominate output movements in the CFA and non-CFA countries alike. However, terms of trade shocks tend to influence the CFA zone to a greater extent and there seems to be a higher influence of demand shocks on output and the real exchange rates in the non-CFA countries.     

货币错配、汇率升值和经济波动

本文在考虑当前东亚各国普遍存在的资产型货币错配情况下,将Ber-nanke等(1999)模型推广到小国开放经济中,分析了由外生冲击导致的汇率升值影响经济的传导路径,以及这种影响程度所取决的因素。研究发现,当一个国家存在资产型货币错配时,汇率升值降低企业净值,并通过金融加速器机制提高企业的外部融资成本,进而影响企业的投资和产出。模型的数值模拟结果表明,升值导致的产出下降幅度与该国的货币错配程度和金融加速器效应直接相关。当该国货币错配程度较高,金融加速器效应显著时,外部冲击导致的升值可能使经济陷入流动性陷阱。     

Growth and real business cycles in Vietnam and the Asean-5. Does the trend shock matter?

We examine Vietnam’s economy in comparison with its closest trade partners. We show that capital accumulation has been the primary growth engine since the start of its transition to the pro-market economy in 1986 – the Doi Moi. We also show that the cyclical behavior of its macro aggregates is similar to that of its ASEAN-5 peers and other developing countries. We extend the standard small open economy RBC model by considering habit persistence and government consumption, which allows a close match of the moments of the growth variables. At the business cycle frequency, transitory productivity shocks account for approximately one-half of Vietnam’s output variance, while country risk and non-transitory productivity shocks account to close to one-fifth each. Regarding the Solow residual’s volatility, we find that the trend component merely accounts for 12 % of this variance in Vietnam, while in Thailand it is only 6 %. These findings refute the “the cycle is the trend” hypothesis in Aguiar and Gopinath (2007) and align with the hypotheses in García-Cicco et al. (2010) and Rhee (2017), where the stationary component is overwhelmingly dominant. We claim that technological progress and productivity-enhancing measures are fundamental for Vietnam’s economy to sustain high growth.     

Risk aversion and business cycles: An empirical analysis

Unlike investors, who tend to maintain highly-diversified portfolios, private entrepreneurs usually lack access to complete risk-pooling for idiosyncratic risks, thus more directly internalize the cost of volatility. Risk aversion, however, modifies the optimal contract between entrepreneurs and lenders by incorporating the risk premium that entrepreneurs demand for the uninsurable risk: the private equity premium. Consequently, real shocks tend to be amplified as changes in entrepreneurs’ net worth affect the private equity premium and so the rental rate of capital, investment and output. This theoretical framework suggests that economies where the private entrepreneurial sector is a relatively larger, and therefore more vulnerable to uninsurable risk, all else equal, should present higher volatility. I test this prediction by (1) conducting a simple reduced-form analysis that shows that output volatility is negatively associated with the relative importance of the corporate vs. the privately-held sector; and (2) estimating the model's structural parameters. Intuitively, countries where private entrepreneurs are predominant and so risk aversion is likely to impose stronger impacts, positive risk aversion coefficients should be found. Results suggest that risk aversion is empirically more relevant for economies like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Korea, Mexico and Thailand than for Canada, France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S.     

The Impact of Exchange Rate Volatility on International Trade Flows

Despite the best efforts of economists, a basic paradox as to the impact of exchange rate volatility on trade flows remains unresolved at both the theoretical and empirical level. This paper surveys the vast literature in the area in an attempt to identify major issues which have contributed to the development of the debate and examine whether any general direction for consensus may be found.     

The effect of exchange rate volatility on U.S. bilateral trade with Africa: A symmetric and asymmetric analysis

The impact of exchange rate volatility on U.S. trade with the world or on U.S. trade with major partners has been assessed by many researchers, but none have considered the case of U.S. trade with African nations. We fill this gap by assessing the symmetric and asymmetric impact of the real bilateral exchange rate volatility between the U.S. dollar and each African partner’s currency on the U.S. trade flows with each of the 20 partners from Africa. We found asymmetric short-run effects of exchange rate volatility on almost all U.S. exports to and imports from each of the 20 countries. In addition, significant long-run asymmetric effects were discovered in the case of U.S. exports to 15 countries and U.S. imports from 12 countries. Our findings are partner-specific.     

Asset prices with non-permanent shocks to consumption

Most standard asset-pricing models assume that all shocks to consumption are permanent. We relax this assumption and allow also for non-permanent shocks. In our specification, the long-run mean of consumption growth is constant; consumption levels are subject to short-run deviations from their long-run trend. The implications of our model are dramatically different from those obtained in the prior literature. A canonical and parsimonious asset pricing model with CRRA preferences and non-permanent shocks can reproduce the equity premium, high return volatility and return predictability with a coefficient of relative risk aversion below ten. This finding suggests that non-permanent shocks can play an important role in explaining asset pricing puzzles.     

Obstfeld and Rogoff׳s international macro puzzles: a quantitative assessment

Obstfeld and Rogoff (2001) propose that trade frictions lie behind key puzzles in international macroeconomics. We take a dynamic multicountry model of international trade, production, and investment to data from 19 countries to assess this proposition quantitatively. Using the framework developed in Eaton et al. (2016), we revisit the puzzles in a counterfactual world without trade frictions in manufactures. Removing these trade frictions goes a long way toward resolving a number of puzzles. The dependence of domestic investment on domestic saving falls by half or disappears entirely, mitigating the Feldstein and Horioka (1980) puzzle. Changes in nominal GDPs in U.S. dollars become less variable across countries and line up with changes in real GDPs as much as with real exchange rates, mitigating the exchange rate disconnect puzzle. Less dramatically, changes in consumption become more correlated across countries, mitigating the consumption correlations puzzle and changes in real exchange rates become less variable across countries, mitigating the relative purchasing power parity puzzle.     

Economic policy uncertainty and stock market sector time-varying spillover effect: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the volatility spillover effect among the Chinese economic policy uncertainty index, stock markets, gold and oil by employing the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive (TVP-VAR) model. Three main results are obtained. Firstly, the optional consumption, industry, public utility and financial sectors are systemically important during the sample period. Secondly, among the four policy uncertainties, the uncertainty of fiscal policy and trade policy contributes more to the spillover effect, while the uncertainty of monetary policy and exchange rate policy contributes less to the spillover effect. Thirdly, during COVID-19, oil spillovers from other sources dropped rapidly to a very low point, it also had a significant impact on the net volatility spillover of the stock market. This paper can provide policy implication for decision-makers and reasonable risk aversion methods for investors.     

The effects of foreign exchange and monetary policies in Russia

This paper examines the effects of Russian foreign exchange and monetary policies under conditions of abundant natural resources during the period 1999–2011 using structural VAR models. The results suggest that monetary policy shocks, which are identified as money supply disturbances, have a persistent effect on real output, and more than half of the volatility in real output can be explained by changes in the money supply. Furthermore, the analysis reveals that stock prices are a more significant transmission channel of monetary policy than bank loans.     

LONG‐RUN RISKS IN THE TERM STRUCTURE OF INTEREST RATES: ESTIMATION

This paper estimates a model in which persistent fluctuations in expected consumption growth, expected inflation, and their time‐varying volatility determine asset price variation. The model features Epstein–Zin recursive preferences, which determine the market price of macro risk factors. Analysis of the US nominal term structure data from 1953 to 2006 shows that agents dislike high uncertainty and demand compensation for volatility risks. Also, the time variation of the term premium is driven by the compensation for inflation volatility risk, which is distinct from consumption volatility risk. The central role of inflation volatility risk in explaining the time‐varying term premium is consistent with other empirical evidence including survey data. In contrast, the existing long‐run risks literature emphasizes consumption volatility risk and ignores inflation‐specific time‐varying volatility. The estimation results of this paper suggest that inflation‐specific volatility risk is essential for fitting the time series of the US nominal term structure data. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Uncertainty-driven labor market fluctuations

This paper explores uncertainty shocks as a driving force in a search and matching model of the labor market. Uncertainty takes the form of a noisy component in a firm׳s initial signal about job productivity. Greater uncertainty dampens job creation by increasing the risk of making the costly mistake of investing in jobs that will turn out to be unprofitable. Thus, uncertainty shocks can cause labor market downturns: lower vacancy rates, lower job-finding rates, and higher unemployment. Numerical simulations examine the level of volatility and the cross-correlations and autocorrelations of key U.S. labor market indicators that result from fluctuations driven by changes in uncertainty.