The effects of U.S. monetary policy on Colombia and Panama (2002–2007)

I study the economies of Colombia (floating exchange rate) and Panama (dollarized) to illustrate how the monetary policy of a large economy can export capital structure distortions to small open economies that follow different exchange rate regimes. The paper contributes to the literature on international business cycles in two ways. First, it adds to recent research that extends the Mises–Hayek business cycle theory to an international context. Second, most current research abstracts from effects on the production structures of emerging market economies when analyzing the transmission of monetary policy shocks. This paper seeks to fill this gap by studying structural effects of U.S. monetary policy on the economies of Colombia (floating exchange rate) and Panama (dollarized).     

Comments on “Pareto weights as wedges in two-country models” by D. Backus,C. Coleman,A. Ferriere and S. Lyon

Backus, Coleman, Ferriere and Lyon study how the formulations of preferences and shocks affect the behavior of macroeconomic and financial aggregates in a simple endowment economy with no frictions. Their exercise could be considered as a first step of a rich research program that can further our understanding of international business cycles. After discussing the fundamental propagation mechanisms in standard international business cycle models, I put their contribution in a broader context. I conclude with a summary of possible research questions to be explored in future work.     

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.     

Solving the multi-country real business cycle model using a Smolyak-collocation method

We describe a sparse-grid collocation method to compute recursive solutions of dynamic economies with a sizable number of state variables. We show how powerful this method can be in applications by computing the non-linear recursive solution of an international real business cycle model with a substantial number of countries, complete insurance markets and frictions that impede frictionless international capital flows. In this economy, the aggregate state vector includes the distribution of world capital across different countries as well as the exogenous country-specific technology shocks. We use the algorithm to efficiently solve models with up to 10 countries (i.e., up to 20 continuous-valued state variables).     

World,country, and sector factors in international business cycles

Do sector-specific factors common to all countries play an important role in explaining business cycle co-movement? We address this question by analyzing international co-movements of value added (VA) growth in a multi-sector dynamic factor model. The model contains a world factor, country-specific factors, sector-specific factors, and idiosyncratic components. We estimate the model using Bayesian methods for 30 disaggregated sectors in the G7 economies for the 1974–2004 period. Our findings show that, although there is a substantial role for sector-specific factors, fluctuations are dominated by country-factors. The world factor appears to play a minimal role because, when using aggregate data, the world factor captures both the factor common to all countries and industries and the factor common to the same industry across countries. We then examine how these factors evolved as globalization deepened over the past two decades. Our results suggest that business cycles at a disaggregate level have not become more synchronized internationally. This is mainly driven by a substantial fall in the volatility of world shocks during the globalization period, rather than a lower sensitivity of sectoral growth to world factors. Our results also reveal that world factors appear to be more important for industries with a higher level of international vertical integration.     

中、美、日实际均衡汇率模型的构建及实证研究

本文基于BEKK-MGARCH模型建立了中、美、日三国的实际均衡汇率方程和方差方程,对1994年以来中国、美国和日本的实际均衡汇率及其波动溢出效应进行了深入细致的分析。结果表明:三个国家的实际均衡汇率受其经济基本面因素的影响不同,人民币实际均衡汇率还受到了美元和日元实际汇率的影响;中美、中日、美日之间的联动关系存在显著的ARCH和GARCH效应。     

Do terror attacks affect the dollar-pound exchange rate? A nonparametric causality-in-quantiles analysis

While much significant research has been done to study the effects of terror attacks on stock markets, less is known about the response of exchange rates to terror attacks. We suggest a non-parametric causality-in-quantiles test to study whether (relative) terror attacks affect exchange-rate returns and volatility. Using data on the dollar-pound exchange rate to illustrate the test, we show that terror attacks mainly affect the lower and upper quantiles of the conditional distribution of exchange-rate returns, while misspecified (due to nonlinearity and structural breaks) linear Granger causality test show no evidence of predictability. Terror attacks also affect almost all quantiles of the conditional distribution of exchange-rate volatility (except the extreme upper-end), with the significance of the effect being particularly strong for the lower quantiles. The importance of terror attacks is shown to hold also under an alternative measure of volatility and for an important emerging-market exchange rate as well.     

A GUIDED TOUR OF THE MARKET MICROSTRUCTURE APPROACH TO EXCHANGE RATE DETERMINATION

Abstract.  We propose a critical review of recent developments in exchange rate economics which have offered a novel approach to exchange rate determination. This new strand of research, the market microstructure approach to exchange rates, is motivated by some very stark empirical evidence, relating exchange rate dynamics to the imbalance in the sequence of purchases and sales of foreign currencies in the markets for foreign exchange. Through our review we outline the results this new strand of research has achieved alongside its open questions and future challenges.     

Enterprises＇ foreign exchange risk management in the floating exchange risk era

Since the foreign exchange reform on July 21^st 2005, the flexibility of RMB exchange rate has becoming big, so has the foreign exchange risk. How to effectively manage foreign exchange risk has become an emergent task to enterprises. This paper introduces the method of foreign exchange forecast which is the base of foreign exchange risk management, and then deeply discusses different measures of managing the risk.     

外汇收支情况表编制的工作底稿法

外汇收支情况表,是外商投资企业外汇资质年检的主要报表。不少外商投资企业会计人员对此表编制感到生疏。本文参照现金流量表和合并财务报表的工作底稿法,设计一套外汇收支情况表编制的工作底稿法。该方法与外汇收支情况表编制的调整分录法相似,但比调整分录法更为系统、明晰,且编制工作量不大,特介绍于下,以供业内人士参考。