Real dollar exchange rate under the Bretton-Woods and floating exchange-rate regimes

The focus of the paper is on real exchange rates for the dollar over the period 1957 to 1985. Most such exchange rates followed an almost steplike pattern, showing relatively little movement in the late 1950s and 1960s, falling abruptly and then remaining low in the 1970s and finally in the 1980s rising back to levels close to those that prevailed initially. Contrary to much recent commentary, therefore, the period that appears different is not the last five years but the decade that preceded them. An important factor underlying this pattern of exchange-rate movement, according to results presented in the paper, was the behavior of monetary policy and, hence, inflation in the United States. What remains to be established is the precise mechanism linking money and real exchange rates and the (relative) strength of those links.     

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.     

International transmission of inflation under alternative exchange rate regimes: Empirical evidence and its implications

This is a study of the transmission pattern of inflation under alternative exchange rate regimes, fixed and flexible, among the Group of Seven (G-7) countries and their subsets, including four members of the European Union (EU) and two countries from North America. Our key empirical findings are as follows. The price levels of several countries that we found move together as a cointegrated system, forming an equilibrium relationship under both fixed and flexible exchange regimes. Second, the speed of adjustment estimates show that the transmission of inflationary disturbances across countries is less pronounced under the flexible exchange rate regime than under the fixed exchange rate regime. Third, the US was found to be the main producer of inflationary innovations among G-7 countries, whereas the UK was found to be the main producer of inflationary innovations among the EU countries, regardless of exchange rate regime.     

Purchasing power parity and the behavior of prices and nominal exchange rates across exchange-rate regimes

The evidence presented in this paper shows that purchasing power parity as a long-run proposition is indeed a very useful approximation. We see this quite clearly in the panel data for three historical periods examined here – the classical gold standard era from 1870 to 1914, the interwar period from 1921 to 1939, and the period after World War II from 1959 to 1998. Price-level behavior across countries differs in the way that PPP suggests when monetary arrangements differ and is highly similar when monetary arrangements are themselves similar. Inflation rates adjusted for exchange rate changes in general are highly correlated and bear a one-to-one relation to one another within and across the three periods and the varied monetary regimes that prevailed.     

Real exchange rate fluctuations, endogenous tradability and exchange rate regimes

The real exchange rate is driven by fluctuations of the relative price of traded goods and the relative price of nontraded to traded goods. This study explains the variance decomposition of the real exchange rate using a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model of comparative advantage with money. Given interest rate shocks, exchange rate stability reduces the covariance between the two relative prices and raises the contribution of the relative price of nontraded to traded goods. Productivity shocks do not alter the covariance across exchange rate regimes and let the relative price of traded goods drive the real exchange rate.     

Collapsing exchange rate regimes and exchange rate dynamics: Some further examples

This paper extends some recent perfect foresight models of balance of payments crises and exchange rate realignments to a world of smart speculators, sticky prices and restricted international capital movements. The likelihood and timing of a regime collapse are shown to depend upon initial foreign reserve endowments, monitary policy, speeds of market adjustment and future exchange rate policy. These factors are also shown to influence the dynamic behavior of the exchange rate and prices during a transitional period of floating.     

The role of saving and investment in exchange rate determination under alternative monetary mechanisms

We argue that the demand for national currencies depends on existing payment arrangements for imports and exports. Therefore, exchange rate movements depend on these arrangement. As a result, the relationship between exchange rate movements and various macroeconomic aggregates — like saving and investment — depend on what we call the monetary mechanism. These points are explicitly demonstrated by studying two extreme monetary mechanisms, one in which all payments are done with the seller's currency and one in which all payments are done with the buyer's currency.     

Nominal exchange rate volatility,relative price volatility,and the real exchange rate

We model real exchange rate, nominal exchange rate, and relative price volatility using real and nominal factors. We analyze these volatility measures across developing and industrialized countries. We find that the inclusion of nominal factors achieves a sizable reduction in the real exchange rate volatility spread between developing and industrialized countries. In addition, we find that nominal factors matter to real exchange rate volatility in the short run and the long run, and that for developing countries, a higher share of real exchange rate volatility stems from relative price volatility.     

利率、汇率政策牵动房地产价格

要通过利率调整、汇率形成机制改革和其他宏观经济政策的配合。引导房地产价格的合理预期，引导房地产市场过剩的资金分流。     

The size of banking crises in credible fixed exchange rate regimes

Since monetary policy is constrained in fixed exchange rate regimes, we should observe fewer banking crises due to moral hazard in countries with credible currency pegs. However, three countries with seemingly credible pegs in the nineteen-eighties and -nineties, namely China, Hong Kong and Argentina, still suffered crises in their domestic banking sectors. The present note illustrates that bank incentives to take on excess risk still exist in countries with currency peg credibility and that the size of that risk exposure (and thus the potential for crisis) may be positively related to the level of central bank foreign exchange reserves.     

Taxes and dividend policy under alternative tax regimes

This paper examines changes in corporate dividend policy around the introduction of a dividend imputation tax system. This represented a significant change to the Australian tax framework and allows us to test the effect of differential taxation on corporate dividend policy. Consistent with the tax preference for the distribution of dividends, we find dividend initiations, all dividend payout measures and dividend reinvestment plans increased with the introduction of dividend imputation. Similarly we find that gross dividend payouts are more volatile under dividend imputation. Finally, we find that the increase in dividend payout and initiations differs across firms. In particular, we find that the higher the level of available franking tax credits the higher the firm's gross dividend payout and the more likely the firm is to initiate a dividend.     

Valuation effects and long-run real exchange rate dynamics

This paper uses the Johansen test for cointegration to check the prediction of a portfolio balance model that predictable valuation effects are associated with a saddle-path dynamic relationship between the net foreign asset position and the real exchange rate. The analysis uses newly constructed quarterly series on the net foreign position as a percentage of the nominal gross domestic product, together with data on real effective exchange rate indices for a sample of developed countries which borrow in their own currency. The results indicate that the net foreign asset position and the real exchange rate are not cointegrated for all the countries in the sample. The rejection of saddle-path dynamics suggests that predictable valuation effects are quantitatively small in developed countries. The rejection of cointegration suggests that the net foreign asset position is not a determinant for long-run real exchange rates in developed countries.     

The behaviour of the real exchange rate: Evidence from regression quantiles

We test for mean reversion in real exchange rates using a recently developed unit root test for non-normal processes based on quantile autoregression inference in semi-parametric and non-parametric settings. The quantile regression approach allows us to directly capture the impact of different magnitudes of shocks that hit the real exchange rate, conditional on its past history, and can detect asymmetric, dynamic adjustment of the real exchange rate towards its long run equilibrium. It, therefore provides a detailed mapping of the real exchange rate behaviour, while being a robust alternative to previous unit root tests. The latter is confirmed by a simulation analysis comparing the power of the alternative tests. As concerns the real exchange rate, our results suggest that large shocks tend to induce strong mean reverting tendencies in the exchange rate, with half lives less than one year in the extreme quantiles. Mean reversion is faster when large shocks originate at points of large real exchange rate deviations from the long run equilibrium. However, in the absence of shocks no mean reversion is observed. Finally, we report asymmetries in the dynamic adjustment of the RER.     

Consumption,government spending,and the real exchange rate

Using panel structural VAR analysis and quarterly data from four industrialized countries, we document that an increase in government purchases raises output and private consumption, deteriorates the trade balance, and depreciates the real exchange rate. This pattern of comovement poses a puzzle for both neoclassical and Keynesian models. An explanation based on the deep-habit mechanism is proposed. An estimated two-country model with deep-habits is shown to replicate well the observed responses of output, consumption, and the trade balance, and the initial response of the real exchange rate to an estimated government spending shock.     

US exports and time-varying volatility of real exchange rate

The effect of exchange rate volatility on trade is a controversial issue in international economics. Despite a widespread view that an increase in exchange rates volatility reduces trade, there is no real consensus on the direction or the size of the exchange rate volatility–trade level linkages. This paper investigates the relationship between US trade volume and exchange rate volatility using cointegration and error-correction models. We use conditional variances of the real effective exchange rate (REER) series modeled as a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (GARCH) process to measure the exchange rate volatility. The cointegration results indicate a significant negative relationship between US export volume and exchange rate volatility. The short-run dynamics of the relationship, however, show that the effects of both real exchange rates and exchange rate volatility are insignificant.     

Expectations of future income and real exchange rate movements

We show that changes in expectations of future income driven by exogenous factors (such as the discovery of oil and an increase in global demand for natural resources) can cause movements in the real exchange rate (RER) in excess of, and sometimes even in the opposite direction to, what one would expect given the changes in current income. We provide both a theoretical model and empirical evidence of this. In particular, we show that the signing of numerous production sharing agreements (PSAs) between the government of Azerbaijan and foreign oil companies in 1994–1998 fueled expectations of higher future incomes, resulting in a considerable appreciation of the RER. Some of these PSAs subsequently failed or ran into difficulties, which led to a downward revision of expected future income and a depreciation of the RER in 1999–2003, even though the current income started to rise, due to an increase in the current oil revenue.     

Technical trading,monetary policy,and exchange rate regimes

The paper extends and empirically tests the noise trader exchange rate model of Jeanne and Rose (2002). We introduce technical trading in the exchange market as a source of noise and explicitly incorporate monetary and exchange rate policy. With these modifications, it is possible to directly test the model's prediction of an U-shaped relation between exchange trend and volatility. We find strong empirical evidence supporting the implications of the model. As a corollary, we develop a measure of excess exchange rate volatility and categorize exchange rate regimes based on the de facto behavior of the exchange rates.     

Technical trading,monetary policy,and exchange rate regimes

The paper extends and empirically tests the noise trader exchange rate model of Jeanne and Rose (2002). We introduce technical trading in the exchange market as a source of noise and explicitly incorporate monetary and exchange rate policy. With these modifications, it is possible to directly test the model's prediction of an U-shaped relation between exchange trend and volatility. We find strong empirical evidence supporting the implications of the model. As a corollary, we develop a measure of excess exchange rate volatility and categorize exchange rate regimes based on the de facto behavior of the exchange rates.     

The real exchange rate in the long run: Balassa-Samuelson effects reconsidered

Historical data for over hundred years and 14 countries is used to estimate the long-run effect of productivity on the real exchange rate. We find large variations in the productivity effect across four distinct monetary regimes in the sample period. Although the traditional Balassa-Samuelson model is not consistent with these results, we suggest an explanation of the results in terms of contemporary variants of the model that incorporate the terms of trade mechanism. Specifically we argue that changes in trade costs over time may affect the impact of productivity on the real exchange rate over time. We undertake simulations of the modern versions of the Balassa-Samuelson model to show that plausible parameter shifts consistent with the behavior of trade costs can explain the cross-regime variation of the productivity effect.