浮动汇率制国家满足实际利率平价假说吗——区分贸易品和非贸易品的检验及对中国的启示

本文分别使用总产品价格、贸易品价格和非贸易品价格来构建实际利率,选取了实行浮动汇率制的八个工业化国家作为样本,通过检验两国间实际利率差序列是否平稳来验证实际利率平价(RIP)假说是否成立.实证结果显示,使用贸易品价格构建实际利率时,实际利率平价假说在大多数情况下能被证实,而使用其他两种价格构建实际利率时,该假说在多数情况下被证伪.这样.西方发达国家财政政策和货币政策失效的原因可在一定程度上得到解释,同时,我们的结论也可为中国未来金融改革提供有益的启示.     

Trade liberalization, wage inequality, and endogenously determined nontraded goods

We examine the boundary between traded and nontraded goods as a channel for trade to impact factor prices. In a two-country, two-factor, continuum-good model, tariffs generate a range of nontraded goods. A tariff reduction has a direct effect to expand a country’s import set and an indirect effect through terms of trade to expand its export set. We show that the export expansion can dominate the import expansion, raising the relative demand for the factor intensively used in production. The result is useful in explaining observed rising wage inequality in developing countries following trade liberalization.     

Nontraded goods and optimal foreign investments

The main purpose of the present paper is to discuss the optimal tax policy towards capital movements in the case where nontraded goods exist. We show that, in the case of generic capital, the instability of nontraded goods market in the passive country makes it optimal to subsidize the income from international investments. Furthermore, we show that complete specialization of the passive country invokes the orthodox tax policy of Kemp (1962, 1964, chs. 13 and 14), whether capital is generic or sector-specific.     

Composition of trade flows and the effectiveness of fiscal devaluation

We empirically explore whether the magnitude of the effects of fiscal devaluation, which consists of reducing the employers’ social security contribution rate and increasing the value‐added tax rate, depends on the composition of trade flows. Our sample comprises data on bilateral balances of trade between 28 European Union (EU) Member States and their main EU trade partners over the 2000–14 period. We use robust ordinary least squares regressions, controlling for the country‐pair and time fixed effects, to test whether there are differences in the sizes of relationships between these taxation forms and bilateral trade balances for different types of goods, by distinguishing between: (i) consumer, intermediate and capital goods; and (ii) labour and capital‐intensive goods. Our results show that the overall effectiveness of fiscal devaluation depends on the composition of trade flows. Value‐added tax is more strongly (positively) associated with (bilateral) balances of trade in consumer goods, compared to balances of trade in capital and intermediate goods. The employers’ contribution rate, in contrast, is more tightly (negatively) related to balances of trade in capital goods. The latter finding also holds true for trade balances of labour‐intensive goods compared to balances of capital‐intensive goods.     

美元贬值对中国进出口企业的影响及对策

美元下跌之势难抑,国际外汇市场风险加剧。美元的贬值影响到以美元计价商品进口成本的提高,从而压缩了企业利润水平,容易诱发新一轮的贸易保护和贸易摩擦。人民币采取盯住美元有管理的固定汇率制度,美元贬值使人民币被动贬值。在长期实行的结售汇制定下,企业调整外汇净头寸的能力非常差,汇率波动对净头寸造成的损失是巨大的。中国应加强对未来汇率变动趋势的预测和把握,从根源上铲除被诉反倾销的隐患。     

Fiscal policy and regional inflation in a currency union

Substantial attention has been devoted to inflation differentials within the European Monetary Union, including suggestions that inflation differentials are a policy issue for national governments. This paper investigates the ability of a region participating in a currency union to affect its inflation differential with respect to the union through fiscal policy. In a two-region general equilibrium model with traded and nontraded goods, lowering the labor income tax rate in response to positive inflation differentials succeeds in compressing inflation differentials. Such policies can lead to higher volatility of domestic inflation while leaving the volatility of real output roughly unchanged. Regional fiscal policies also have spill-over effects on the volatility of union-wide and foreign inflation in our model.     

A disequilibrium analysis of the monetary trade model

This paper examines the monetary approach to the balance of payments under fixed exchange rates when domestic prices and wage rates are not fully flexible. This leads to a formulation in the spirit of a ‘disequilibrium analysis’. We analyze alternatively the cases where the prices of nontraded goods or the nominal wage rate are treated as state variables along with the stock of money. The properties of these systems are analyzed from the point of view of the momentary equilibrium and of the dynamic adjustment process.     

Devaluations and emerging stock market returns

Stock returns over the 2 years surrounding 24 currency devaluations are examined. Using bootstrapped distributions, returns preceding the devaluation are shown to be significantly below normal, in both dollar and local currency terms. Most of the downturn, however, occurs well before the month of the devaluation. Returns following a devaluation are normal. While industry and company specific effects appear to influence return behavior, only country effects and leverage levels are statistically significant. At the country level, both aggregate economic activity (GDP) and the size of the devaluation are important in explaining return behavior. The stock of foreign debt has little impact on returns. Finally, even though returns appear to anticipate devaluations, they are not statistically significant at predicting the size of the devaluation.     

Current Account Adjustment in the Eurozone: Lessons From a Flexible Price Model

This paper discusses the desired size of the internal devaluation in the Eurozone for a scenario of current account adjustment induced by shifts in relative demand. Based on Obstfeld and Rogoff, I develop a four‐region model of the world economy consisting of the Eurozone‐core, Eurozone‐periphery, United States and Asia. In contrast to most of the existing literature, this model structure enables studying the impact of global current account adjustment on the rebalancing process in the Eurozone. In addition, the model allows for movements of factors of production between tradable and non‐tradable sectors. The results point to the important impact of sectoral reallocation and increases in Asian demand on the size of the internal devaluation as well as on the implied length of the adjustment period.     

Financial dollarization and debt deflation under a currency board

In the late currency board years, Argentina faced a real exchange rate adjustment through price deflation amidst growing devaluation expectations. Using a firm-level panel database to analyze the incidence of these factors on the currency composition of private debt and on firms’ performance, we find that widespread debt dollarization showed no relationship with the firms’ production mix or the ever-changing probability of a nominal devaluation. While relative price changes favored export-oriented firms with the expected impact on sales, earnings and investment, increases in devaluation expectations elicited only a marginal differential response in investment from more financially dollarized firms. Our findings provide support to two criticisms faced by the Argentine currency board in recent years, namely, that by fueling beliefs in an implicit guarantee it stimulated across-the-board debt dollarization and that it could not fully isolate the economy from real shocks, as the feared balance sheet effect was replaced by a gradual but equally deleterious debt deflation effect.     

Bilateral trade effects of fiscal devaluation: Evidence from OECD countries

This paper empirically examines the effects of a fiscal devaluation on bilateral trade. To this end, employers’ social contribution (ESC) and value-added tax (VAT), which stand as the factors that represent typical fiscal devaluation, are embodied within the framework of a gravity model. Fixed effects vector decomposition (FEVD) technique is applied to the empirical models specified within this framework, employing panel data from 22 OECD countries over the 1980–2014 periods. The findings show that the effectiveness of the fiscal devaluation policy seems to alter with respect to how ESC and VAT are measured. Considering the fiscal devaluation policy implemented unilaterally, the policy turns out to be effective in nine countries in the sample.     

Workers' remittances and Dutch Disease in Bangladesh

Workers' remittance is one of the major sources of foreign exchange earnings for Bangladesh in recent years. It accounted for 12% of GDP in 2009 and has colossal socio-economic implications for the country. However, the inflows of foreign exchange earnings can exert adverse effects on the international competitiveness of an economy as postulated by the Dutch Disease theory. Using Johansen Cointegration and Vector Error Correction Model and annual data from 1971 to 2008, this paper investigates the effects of remittances on the external trade competitiveness as measured by the movements of real exchange rate of the country. The results of the study suggest that the influx of workers' remittances significantly appreciates the real exchange rate and deteriorates the external trade competitiveness of Bangladesh. While increased terms of trade indicates similar adverse effects, openness in goods and capital markets and nominal devaluation improve the trade competitiveness of the country. Therefore, greater trade openness and channelling remittances to the priority investment projects can be powerful policy devices to improve the external competitiveness and avert ‘Dutch Disease' in Bangladesh.     

SRI LANKA'S EXPERIMENT WITH DEVALUATION: VAR and ECM Analysis of the Exchange Rate Effects on Trade Balance and GDP

The objective of this study is to empirically analyze the impact of the devaluation of the Sri Lankan currency (rupee) on Sri Lankan trade balance and gross domestic product. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been promoting devaluation as a policy tool for economic growth and stability in LDCs. However, there is substantial research supporting the “J-Curve” effect and contractionary effects on economies due to devaluation, especially for less developed countries (LDCs). The results show a contractionary impact on the Sri Lankan output.     

Causes of nonlinearities in low-order models of the real exchange rate

This paper investigates the extent to which modern DSGE models, which feature local currency pricing, home bias, nontraded goods, and incomplete markets, can generate nonlinear real exchange rate dynamics that are consistent with those found in the time series literature using data from the current floating period. Our key findings are as follows. First, if the true model can be appropriately characterized as a set of linear equations, then linearity tests that utilize univariate autoregressions of the real exchange rate suffer from an omitted variables problem, which leads them to overestimate the true incidence of nonlinearity. Consequently, studies that fail to control for this problem may spuriously find evidence of nonlinearities in the data, despite the fact that the data generating process may be linear. Second, we propose a strategy that can largely eliminate this distortion. Finally, we find that DSGE models solved using higher order approximations are capable of generating true structural nonlinearities in real exchange rates both asymptotically and in short samples.     

Price behavior in the light of balance of payments theories

The price predictions of the elasticity and monetary theories of balance of payments adjustment are compared with actual price behavior. Price behavior differs more from the relatively demanding monetary approach in that price levels and price movements for GDP as a whole and for specific types of export goods varied substantially even among major industrial countries. As for the elasticity approach, price levels tended to rise with appreciations and fall with depreciations, as expected.     

Devaluation and liberalization in the presence of tariff and quota restrictions: An equilibrium model

The purpose of this paper is to examine and compare the effects of devaluation and trade liberalization policies on a monetary economy which uses quotas in contrast to an economy which uses tariffs. This is done in a general equilibrium framework. The paper also investigates the reasons for coupling liberalization policies with a devaluation.     

An explicit partial‐equilibrium model to justify the Generalized Marshall‐Lerner condition (GML)

Robinson's derivation of the Marshall‐Lerner condition (ML) is more general in that she considers a situation where initially the trade balance is not in equilibrium with the incorporation of the supply curves of exporters. This paper examines a partial equilibrium analysis of a country's imports and exports markets within a theoretical model which considers both the demand and supply sides in these two internationally traded‐goods markets. The aim here is to show explicitly how the Generalized Marshall‐Lerner condition (GML) of Robinson can be obtained. We examined the two effects of the nominal depreciation of the domestic currency on the trade balance: the volume effect and the value effect and how they counterbalance each other. We found that the standard Marshall‐Lerner condition (ML) was not sufficient when the trade balance was initially in deficit and it was also not necessary if the trade balance showed an initial surplus. Moreover, this study provides a new interpretation for Robinson’ sufficiency condition where the trade balance must improve following a nominal depreciation of domestic currency when the elasticity of foreign demand exceeds the ratio of imports to exports. This paper also examines the situation of a small open economy which could not influence the world prices where the foreign demand for exports and the foreign supply of exports are infinitely large. Finally, there is a discussion on two policy implications for exchange rate regulation: the amount of devaluation that is necessary to improve a given trade imbalance as a governments intervention and additional support for the slow improvement of the trade balance in the short run after a devaluation policy known as the J‐Curve effect.     

The Niehans paradox,flexible exchange rates,and macroeconomic stability

This paper re-examines Dornbusch's suggestion that monetary expansion under a floating rate system will not cause a temporary decline in economic activity — the Niehans paradox — because households will cut their saving to maintain consumption spending on domestic goods. Despite this terms of trade effect on saving, it turns out that devaluation in the standard Keynesian model, in which trade flows, however, respond to the exchange rate with a simple distributed lag, produces a temporary decline in economic activity under certain plausible conditions. Consequently, the Niehans paradox still can arise if domestic expenditures respond sluggishly to lower interest rates.     

Real exchange rate targeting and macroeconomic instability

Using an optimizing model of a small open economy, this paper studies the macroeconomic effects of PPP rules whereby the government increases the devaluation rate when the real exchange rate—defined as the price of tradables in terms of nontradables—is below its long-run level and reduces the devaluation rate when the real exchange rate is above its long-run level. The paper shows that the mere existence of such a rule can generate aggregate instability due to self-fulfilling expectations. The result is shown to obtain in both flexible- and sluggish-price environments.     

VALUATION OF CLAIMS ON NONTRADED ASSETS USING UTILITY MAXIMIZATION

A topical problem is how to price and hedge claims on nontraded assets. A natural approach is to use for hedging purposes another similar asset or index which is traded. To model this situation, we introduce a second nontraded log Brownian asset into the well-known Merton investment model with power law and exponential utilities. The investor has an option on units of the nontraded asset and the question is how to price and hedge this random payoff. The presence of the second Brownian motion means that we are in the situation of incomplete markets. Employing utility maximization and duality methods we obtain a series approximation to the optimal hedge and reservation price using the power utility. The problem is simpler for the exponential utility, and in this case we derive an explicit representation for the price. Price and hedging strategy are computed for some example options and the results for the utilities are compared.