Real exchange rates under alternative nominal exchange-rate systems

The paper develops an equilibrium model of the determination of exchange rates, the relative price of nontraded goods, and the current account. The focus is on the effects of various real and nominal disturbances and the conditions under which the nominal exchange-rate system is neutral with respect to real variables in the economy. The model demonstrates an assymetry in the roles of trade and nontraded goods in affecting exchange rates. An econometric investigation of the raltion between the exchange-rate system and the variability of real exchange rates provides some evidence against the neutrality hypothesis.     

Achieving external and internal targets with exchange-rate and interest-rate intervention

This paper analyses how exchange-rate and interest-rate intervention rules can be computed so as to stabilize price and output and real exchange rate in the face of a variety of random shocks. The major finding is that there exist a unique optimal intervention rule for both internal and external targets in the face of all random disturbances except for LM and foreign interest rate disturbances.     

Monetary policy and aggregate volatility

Discretionary conduct of monetary stabilization policy can increase real and nominal aggregate volatility by arbitrary amounts when firms pay limited attention to aggregate shocks. A conservative central banker with stronger preference for price stability eliminates the commitment problem, thereby reduces output and price volatility and gives rise to a policy-induced ‘Great Moderation’. Increased focus on price stability facilitates firms’ information processing and aligns their expectations better with policy decisions. This ‘coordination effect’ reduces aggregate real and nominal volatility. Consistent with empirical evidence, the moderation manifests itself through reduced residual variance in vector autoregressions (VARs) involving macroeconomic variables.     

Structural change and the macroeconomic effects of oil shocks: empirical evidence from the United States and Japan

This paper investigates whether the USA and Japan have become better insulated from oil price disturbances due to more favorable structural conditions: new production technologies allowing greater energy substitution, the development of energy commodity markets, reduced energy-intensity of production, more market-oriented energy policies, and so on. We decompose the influences of oil shocks on real GNP growth and inflation movements in the context of a simultaneous equation model where identification is partly achieved by restricting the long-run dynamics. We find that oil shocks accounted for a greatly reduced fraction of real GNP growth and inflation variance in both countries primarily because of superior insulation characteristics rather than reduced importance of oil disturbances. Our estimates suggest that a similar percentage oil price hike would have exerted about one-quarter the contractionary effect on real GNP and upward push in inflation in the 1980s compared with the previous two decades. (JEL: E31, E32, F30).     

A re-examination on dissecting the purchasing power parity puzzle

The purpose of this paper is to examine the source of a real exchange-rate adjustment based on the impulse-response function constructed from local projections when the true data-generating process (DGP) is unknown. This work extends the local-projection method proposed by Jordà [2005. Estimation and inference of impulse responses by local projections. American Economic Review 95, 161-182] to allow for variables that are I(1) and exhibit cointegration. Our paper shows that nominal exchange-rate adjustments dominate in the reversion toward PPP regardless of a nominal exchange-rate shock or a price shock. It is also shown that the half-life of real exchange rates is close to that of nominal exchange rates. Since these results are consistent with those of Cheung et al. [Cheung, Y.W., Lai, K.S., Bergman, M., 2004. Dissecting the PPP puzzle: the unconventional roles of nominal exchange rate and price adjustments. Journal of International Economics 64, 135-150], we therefore conclude that their main findings are robust to possible misspecifications in the true DGP.     

High exchange-rate volatility and low pass-through

Two specifications of an open-economy model are shown to generate high exchange-rate volatility and low exchange-rate pass-through (ERPT). In the model, price discrimination causes ERPT to be incomplete in both the short and the long run. In the short run, a small amount of nominal rigidities is enough to reduce ERPT sharply; still, exchange-rate depreciation worsens the terms of trade, consistent with the evidence. Possible biases from omitted variables and measurement error in the ERPT empirical literature (due to data limitations) are investigated using model-generated time series. Estimates of ERPT coefficients can be quite different from true parameters, and are sensitive to the shocks driving the economies. Estimates can nonetheless detect key structural features of the models.     

Optimal monetary policy with imperfect common knowledge

This paper determines optimal nominal demand policy in a flexible price economy in which firms pay limited attention to aggregate variables. Firms’ inattentiveness gives rise to idiosyncratic information errors and imperfect common knowledge about the shocks hitting the economy. This is shown to have strong implications for optimal nominal demand policy. In particular, if firms’ prices are strategic complements and economic shocks display little persistence, monetary policy has strong real effects, making it optimal to stabilize the output gap. Weak complementarities or sufficient shock persistence, however, cause price level stabilization to become increasingly optimal. With persistent shocks, optimal monetary policy shifts from output gap stabilization in initial periods following the shock to price level stabilization in later periods, potentially rationalizing the medium-term approach to price stability adopted by some central banks.     

World trade patterns,economic disturbances,and exchange-rate management

This paper construct and analyzes a three-country stochastic model of world trade. the objectives of this paper are to investigate the propagation of economic disturbances worldwide and to analyze the nature of optimal exchange-rate management on the part of a single country faced with monetary and real disturbances accurring in all its trade patterns. The paper analyzes the roles of bilateral trade patterns, the type of underlying stochastic disturbances i.e. monetary vs real and transsitory vs permanent and of the optimality criterion, in determining the optimal exchange-rate regime.     

Modeling exchange rate passthrough after large devaluations

Large devaluations are generally associated with large declines in real exchange rates. We develop a model which embodies two complementary forces that account for the large declines in the real exchange rate that occur in the aftermath of large devaluations. The first force is sticky nontradable-goods prices. The second force is the impact of real shocks that often accompany large devaluations. We argue that sticky nontradable goods prices generally play an important role in explaining post-devaluation movements in real exchange rates. However, real shocks can sometimes be primary drivers of real exchange-rate movements.     

Sources of exchange rate fluctuations: Are they real or nominal?

I analyze the role of real and monetary shocks on exchange rate behavior using a structural vector autoregressive model of the US vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The shocks are identified using sign restrictions on the responses of the variables to orthogonal disturbances. These restrictions are derived from the predictions of a two-country DSGE model. I find that monetary shocks are unimportant in explaining exchange rate fluctuations. By contrast, demand shocks explain between 21% and 37% of exchange rate variance at 4-quarter and 20-quarter horizons, respectively. The contribution of demand shocks plays an important role but not of the order of magnitude sometimes found in earlier studies. My results, however, support the recent focus of the literature on real shocks to match the empirical properties of real exchange rates.     

The Structural Dynamics of U.S. Output and Inflation: What Explains the Changes?

We examine the dynamics of U.S. output and inflation using a structural time-varying coefficients vector autoregression. There are changes in the volatility of both variables and in the persistence of inflation, but variations are statistically insignificant. Technology shocks explain changes in output volatility; real demand disturbances variations in the persistence and volatility of inflation. We detect important time variations in the transmission of technology shocks to output and demand shocks to inflation and significant changes in the variance of technology and of monetary policy shocks.     

Mussa redux and conditional PPP

The extreme persistence of real exchange rates found commonly in post-Bretton Woods data does not hold in the preceding fixed exchange rate period, when the half-life was roughly half as large in our sample. This finding supports sticky price models as an explanation for real exchange rate behavior, extending the classic argument of Mussa (1986) from a focus on short-run volatility to long-run dynamics. Two thirds of the rise in real exchange rate variance observed across exchange rate regimes is attributable to greater persistence of responses to shocks, including greater price stickiness, rather than to greater variance of shocks themselves.     

中国产业结构调整对汇率变动的冲击效应分析

转轨时期中国产业结构的升级可能会影响人民币汇率调整路径。本文运用Blanchard&Quah提出的对结构性冲击影响进行长期约束的方法,在实际冲击与名义冲击的基础上,进一步分析了产业结构调整对人民币汇率的冲击效应。结果表明,产业结构调整是影响人民币汇率变动的一个重要来源,并且产业结构调整对人民币汇率变动的冲击效应具有明显的结构性特征。实际有效汇率和名义有效汇率波动吸收第一、第二、第三产业和非农产业变化冲击的时期大体相同,分别为4、9、10和4个季度(期),但相较于对实际有效汇率的冲击,各产业结构调整对名义汇率的冲击效应更为显著,服务业的发展有利于弱化制造业和农业发展对人民币汇率的升值压力。     

The Lucas hypothesis on the Phillips Curve: Further international evidence

This paper is a further attempt to test the ‘Lucas Hypothesis on the Phillips Curve’ by making cross country comparisons. That hypothesis posits that nominal shocks affect real aggregates only if individuals mistake them for what they are not — movements in real variables. The existence of a trade-off between output and inflation is conditional on economic agents misinterpreting the price movements they observe. Countries with widely fluctuating exogenous shocks will have a more vertical Phillips Curve as their inhabitants sharpen their instrumental to differentiate between real and nominal shocks. Hence cross country comparisons provide fertile grounds to test this hypothesis; if it holds true, we should find a positive correlation between Phillips Curve slopes and the standard deviations of the exogenous shocks. The evidence presented here confirms Lucas's findings.     

A Bayesian Model Comparison for Trend‐Cycle Decompositions of Output

We compare a number of widely used trend‐cycle decompositions of output in a formal Bayesian model comparison exercise. This is motivated by the often markedly different results from these decompositions—different decompositions have broad implications for the relative importance of real versus nominal shocks in explaining variations in output. Using U.S. quarterly real GDP, we find that the overall best model is an unobserved components model with two features: (i) a nonzero correlation between trend and cycle innovations and (ii) a break in trend output growth in 2007. The annualized trend output growth decreases from about 3.4% to 1.2%–1.5% after the break. The results also indicate that real shocks are more important than nominal shocks. The slowdown in trend output growth is robust when we expand the set of models to include bivariate unobserved components models.     

The Quantitative Importance of News Shocks in Estimated DSGE Models

We estimate a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with several frictions and both unanticipated and news shocks, using quarterly U.S. data from 1954 to 2004 and Bayesian methods. We find that unanticipated shocks dominate news shocks in accounting for the unconditional variance of output, consumption, and investment growth, interest rate, and the relative price of investment. The unanticipated shock to the marginal efficiency of investment is the dominant shock, accounting for over 45% of the variance in output growth. News shocks account for less than 15% of the variance in output growth. Within the set of news shocks, nontechnology sources of news dominate technology news, with wage markup news shocks accounting for about 60% of the variance share of both hours and inflation. We find that in the estimated DSGE model (i) the presence of endogenous countercyclical price and wage markups due to nominal frictions substantially diminishes the importance of news shocks relative to a model without these frictions, and (ii) while there is little change in the estimated contributions of technology news when we restrict wealth effects on labor supply, the contributions of nontechnology news shocks are relatively more sensitive.     

Economic determinants of the nominal treasury yield curve

Macroeconomic shocks account for most of the variability of nominal Treasury yields, inducing parallel shifts in the level of the yield curve. We develop a new approach to identifying macroeconomic shocks that exploits model-based empirical shock measures. Technology shocks shift yields through their effect on expected inflation and the term premium. Shocks to preferences for current consumption affect yields through their impact on real rates and expected inflation. For both shocks, the systematic reaction of monetary policy is an important transmission pathway. We find little evidence that fiscal policy shocks are an important source of interest rate variability.     

Money shocks and deviations from purchasing power parity

This paper applies the island-economy framework of Phelps (1970) to a small open economy under a flexible exchange rate to study the effects of nominal (and real) disturbances on the purchasing power parity relation. Incomplete information about the aggregate state of the economy (and informational differences between agents) implies that a monetary shock that has finite variance can induce deviations from purchasing power parity while also affecting production, consumption and the current account. The real effects of money, however, become smaller as the variance of money gets larger. A type of ‘Lucas slope effect’ of money on deviations from purchasing power parity is obtained.     

Anticipated and unanticipated disturbances: The dynamics of the exchange rate and the current account

The pattern of correlation between the exchange rate and the current account is investigated in the context of an econometric portfolio-balance model with rational expectations. While exchange-rate appreciation (depreciation) is positively correlated with current account surpluses (deficits) in response to unanticipated disturbances, there can be either positive or negative correlation in response to anticipated disturbances. Using maximum likelihood methods, the model is estimated and the response to anticipated disturbances is simulated using data from the current flexible exchange-rate period. The exchange rate and the current account are found to be positively correlated in response to anticipated disturbances for Japan and the United States, and negatively correlated for Germany and the United Kingdom.     

Interest rates and exchange rates: Some new empirical results

This paper presents indirect evidence on the behavior on the real interest rate by studying the correlations between changes in nominal interest rates and in exchange rates. These correlations are examined both before and after October 6, 1979. The empirical evidence supports the views that monetary shocks affect the real rate and that the change in Fed monetary policy on October 6 led to greater variation in the real rate.