Do IMF and IBRD Cause Moral Hazard and Political Business Cycles? Evidence from Panel Data

Using panel data for 94 countries in 1975–97, we estimate OLS, 2SLS and GMM regressions to explain IMF and IBRD lending as well as monetary and fiscal policies in the recipient countries. With respect to moral hazard, we find that a country's government budget deficit and its rate of monetary expansion are higher the larger its borrowing potential in the Fund. New net lending of the Bank (relative to GDP) raises monetary expansion but lowers budget deficits of the recipient countries while new net credit from the Fund is associated with less expansionary policies. As for political business cycles, our evidence indicates that new net credits from the IMF are significantly larger prior to elections and that borrowing from the IBRD is significantly smaller after elections.     

Business Cycles and FDI: Evidence from German Sectoral Data

Globalization has affected business cycle developments in OECD countries and has increased activities of firms across national borders. This paper analyzes whether these two developments are linked. We use a new firm-level data set on the foreign activities of German firms to test whether foreign activities are affected by business cycle developments. We aggregate the data by the sector of the reporting firm, the sector of the foreign affiliate, and the host country. Data are annual and cover the period 1989–2002. We find that German outward FDI increases in response to positive cyclical developments abroad and in response to a real depreciation of the domestic currency. JEL no. E3, F23     

Fear of Floating Needn't Imply Fixed Rates: An OCA Approach to the Operation of Stable Intermediate Currency Regimes

The criteria of the theory of optimum currency areas suggest that many countries are not good candidates for either of the poles of genuinely fixed exchange rates or freely floating exchange rates. Thus, many countries should have an interest in intermediate exchange rate regimes. However, in a world of substantial capital mobility most forms of intermediate exchange rate regimes have proven to be highly crisis prone. This essay argues that the unholy trinity paradigm doesn't imply that intermediate exchange rate regimes are inherently unstable, but rather that exchange rate and monetary policies need to be jointly determined. The difficulties of maintaining such consistency are as much political as economic since temporarily pegged or managed rates create a time inconsistency problem. It is argued that OCA theory provides the framework for determining the appropriate weights and limits on the amount of sterilized intervention to maintain the consistency between exchange rate and monetary policies necessary to avoid currency crises. The paper also considers a number of the issues involved in integrating this approach with the literature on open economy aspects of inflation targeting.     

Fundamental equilibrium exchange rates and exchange rate dynamics

This paper examines whether there is a tendency for actual exchange rates to return to their fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEERs) when the latter are estimated based on popular exchange rate models. Co-integration tests and unit root tests are applied. There is little evidence that the exchange rates of Japan and Germany have a reversion to the purchasing-power-parity (PPP) rates or Williamson's FEERs or the underlying external and internal balance (UEI) FEERs.     

The Behavior of the Real Exchange Rate Under Fixed and Floating Exchange Rate Regimes

This article investigates the behavior of real exchange rates under fixed and flexible exchange rates. Using data from both the Bretton Woods and the modern floating periods, we decompose real exchange rate movements into components attributable to supply shocks, real demand shocks, monetary shocks, capital flows shocks, and real oil price shocks. Empirical results show that real demand shocks are an important source of real exchange rate movements under both fixed and flexible rates, while monetary shocks are negligible. Supply and oil price shocks seem to be more important under Bretton Woods, while capital flows shocks seem to explain a relatively higher proportion of real exchange rate movements under the modern floating period.     

German dominance in the European Monetary System: Evidence from money supply growth rates

This paper presents further evidence on ostensible German dominance in the European Monetary System (EMS). A dynamic system of equations is built explaining money growth rates as a function of the EMS countries' money growth rates, the world money growth rate, exchange rate objectives, inflation rates, and real income growth rates. A test of German dominance based upon money growth rates is a test of the hypothesis that the EMS has increased the comovements of money demand between countries in the system. It is found that German independence holds, but other central banks can also be important players in the system in that they can conduct independent monetary policies. Monetary policies in the EMS are best characterized as interactive. Therefore, the strict German dominance hypothesis is rejected. It follows that the EMS has not increased significantly the link between money demand functions in the EMS countries in the hierarchical structure as claimed by the dominance argument.     

Central Bank Intervention and Heterogeneous Exchange Rate Expectations: Evidence from the Daily DEM/US-Dollar Exchange Rate

In this paper we propose a generalisation of the noise trader transmission mechanism to examine the impact of central bank intervention on exchange rates. Within a heterogeneous expectation exchange rate model intervention operations are supposed to provide support for chartist or fundamentalist forecasts, which forces portfolio managers to adjust their foreign currency positions. The empirical examination of the hypothesis is done by applying a Markov regime-switching approach to daily DEM/US-dollar exchange rates and intervention data of the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve from 1979 to 1992. It is shown that chartists profits rose whenever these central banks intervened on the foreign exchange market. This is not true for those who follow a fundamentalist approach.JEL Classification Numbers: F31, C32, E58, G15     

Real Exchange Rates and Fundamentals: Evidence from 15 OECD Countries

In an extended Balassa–Samuelson model, long-run real exchange rates are determined by relative productivity and terms of trade. We present evidence of systematic long-run relationships between these fundamental variables and real exchange rates in a data set covering 15 OECD countries from 1960 to 1996. High relative productivity is associated with real exchange rate appreciations in most cases. There is less support for the hypothesis that the terms of trade affect equilibrium real exchange rates.     

The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Regimes: Evidence from Hong Kong and Taiwan

This paper investigates whether the macroeconomic performance of a small- open economy depends on the choice of exchange rate regimes. Hong Kong and Taiwan - two economies with many similar macroeconomic characteristics, but different in their choices of exchange rate regimes - provide a good setting to study the relation between the choice of exchange rate regime and macro-economic performance. We examine the basic facts of growth and inflation and the coefficients' stability of their vector autoregression (VAR), as well as cyclical characters of other aggregate variables in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Our empiric finding indicates that macroeconomic performance is not systematically related to exchange rate regimes.     

Sociopolitical instability,volatility, and the bid-ask spread: Evidence from the free market for dollars in Poland

This paper provides empirical evidence that the weekly bid-ask spread in the Polish free foreign exchange market is heavily affected by the intensity of sociopolitical unrest in this country. A GARCH model is estimated to study the volatility of the free market for dollars in Poland from the third week of October 1988 to the fourth week of January 1990. This period is interesting and important because it includes social and political events under two different government regimes. Empirical evidence suggests that significant sociopolitical turmoil appears to increase the volatility of the market and consequently create substantial changes in the spread. The results of this paper may represent valuable information for other reforming countries.     

Evidence of long-run purchasing power parity: analysis of real asian exchange rates in terms of the Japanese yen

In this paper we find strong new evidence in favour of the long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis in the bilateral real exchange rates between the Japanese yen and the currencies of the most important southeast Asian economies only when the presence of several possible structural breaks of the series is taken into account. Such evidence for PPP is weaker for these southeast Asian exchange rates with the US dollar, the German mark and the Australian dollar.     

Inflation Expectations and Inflation Uncertainty in the Eurozone: Evidence from Survey Data

This paper uses the European Commission’s Consumer Survey to assess whether inflation expectations have converged and whether inflation uncertainty has diminished following the introduction of the euro in Europe. Consumers’ responses to the survey suggest that inflation expectations depend more on past national inflation rates than on the ECB’s anchor for price stability. Inflation expectations do not converge significantly faster than actual inflation rates. Regarding inflation uncertainty, the data indicate a relationship with country size following the introduction of the euro. This suggests that within EMU, inflation uncertainty may increase in countries that have a smaller influence on ECB policy. JEL no.  D84, E31, E58     

我国外汇储备周期波动与经济周期的实证分析

文章借鉴经济周期的相关理论对外汇储备的波动进行研究,利用H-P滤波法对1979-2009年我国的外汇储备和经济增长的变化进行分析,分别从短周期、中周期和长周期的角度描述了外汇储备增长的周期性波动规律,并总结了外汇储备各周期的特征和外汇储备周期变化与经济周期之间的关系,以方便政策制定者针对不同周期阶段制定科学、合理的应对措施。     

Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Strategies: Evidence from Six Industrialized Countries

In this paper we address the issue whether a switch to inflation targeting can help build monetary policy credibility and can substitute for a track record of low inflation. To this end, we empirically evaluate the success of inflation targeting in Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and investigate to what extent the joint dynamic processes of inflation and nominal interest rates in these three countries have experienced a structural break at the time of the regime switch to inflation targeting. The experience of Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom is matched with the United States, Australia and Germany. We find that the effectiveness of the direct inflation targeting approach to quickly increase low-inflation credibility so far is ambiguous and that this strategy is not clearly superior to intermediate monetary strategies.