Long-run purchasing power parity and asymmetric adjustment in BRICs

The primary aim of this study is an attempt to determine whether the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis holds for those countries that have collectively come to be known as ‘BRICs’, namely, Brazil, Russia, India and China. We use the momentum threshold cointegration tests (advanced by Enders and Siklos, 2001 Enders, W. and Siklos, P. L. 2001. Cointegration and threshold adjustment. Journal of Business Economics and Statistics, 19: 166–76. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to investigate whether any asymmetric adjustment is discernible for BRICs, and show that whilst the Engle–Granger test (which assumes only symmetric adjustment) fails to reveal any cointegrational relationship for BRICs, the threshold cointegration test (with asymmetric adjustment) provides clear evidence of long-run PPP for BRICs, with the notable exception of China. We conclude that asymmetric adjustment of nominal exchange rates plays an important role in eliminating deviations from long-run PPP.     

Regime-switching purchasing power parity in Latin America: Monte Carlo unit root tests with dynamic conditional score

We suggest a Monte Carlo simulation-based unit root test of the purchasing power parity theory for Latin American countries. Under the null hypothesis, we use a Markov regime-switching (MS) model with unit root in the conditional location and MS volatility dynamics. Under the alternative hypothesis, the proposed test incorporates Markov regime-switching autoregressive moving average (MS-ARMA) plus MS volatility dynamics. Under both the null and alternative hypotheses, one of the volatility models estimated is Beta-t-EGARCH, which is a recent dynamic conditional score volatility model. We use data on real effective exchange rate time series for 14 Latin American countries. For each country, we estimate by Monte Carlo simulation the critical values of the unit root test. We provide an economic discussion of the unit root test results and also study the robustness of MS-ARMA plus MS volatility with respect to smooth transition autoregressive models with Fourier function.     

Long-run purchasing power parity with asymmetric adjustment: Further evidence from nine transition countries

In this study, we applied a threshold cointegration test to investigate the properties of asymmetric adjustment on long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) in nine transition countries between January 1995 and December 2008. Although there was strong evidence of long-run PPP for these nine transition countries (i.e., Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Russia), the adjustment mechanism was asymmetric. These results have important policy implications for the nine transition countries included in the study.     

Long-run validity of purchasing power parity and rank tests for cointegration for Central Asian countries

This study finds that Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) holds in the long-run for Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, based on Breitung's (2001 Breitung, J. 2001. Rank tests for nonlinear cointegration. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 19: 331–40. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) rank tests for cointegration. Results from further analysis indicates that nominal exchange rates and relative prices are nonlinearly interrelated. Trade barriers, transportation costs and government intervention in the pricing system in these countries may have resulted in the establishment of the above-mentioned nonlinear relationship.     

Examining world-wide purchasing power parity

We examine long-run PPP between Germany, Great Britain, Japan and the United States over the period 1930–1996 using multivariate cointegration techniques. Bilateral PPP between the four countries is examined in one system (as opposed to e.g. series of trivariate systems). In all of the statistical analysis, asymptotic tests are augmented by parametric bootstrap analogues, whereby we reduce, if not eliminate, the size distortion typically present in small-sample studies. The cointegration analysis provides support for the necessary conditions for PPP (i.e. cointegrating relations are found) but not for the sufficient conditions (i.e., the coefficients in the cointegrating relations are far from what PPP predicts). These results are at odds with results from other studies that also analyze long-horizon data sets.First version received: November 2000/Final version received: February 2003Comments by Stefan Norrbin, Lee Ohanian, Anders Vredin, seminar-participants at Sveriges Riksbank (the central bank of Sweden) and at the Econometric Society European Meeting in Santiago de Compostela are gratefully acknowledged.     

Testing purchasing power parity in a multivariate cointegrating framework

This paper examines a bilateral PPP(Purchasing power parity) relationship between Australia and the 11 major trading countries by means of two alternative econometric techniques-a multivariate cointegrating framework and a band-spectral regression. It is acknowledged that there is no strong evidence that classical PPP holds in all cases. However, the generalized version of PPP holds in all cases, and provides a better explanation of the long-run relations between exchange rates and relative prices.The use of different price indices, i.e CPI and WPI,lead to different estimates and hence different policy implications.     

Sticky prices and purchasing power parity deviations: Empirical implications

This note tests one implication of the hypothesis that purchasing power parity (PPP) deviations are partly caused by different pricing behavior in goods and asset markets. Cross-country regressions of the variance of PPP deviations on the variance of money supply innovations support the hypothesis.     

Home bias and deviations from purchasing power parity

Empirical analysis has produced mixed results in testing for PPP. This note presents a simple model linking home bias towards home-produced tradable goods with deviations from absolute PPP. We show that this bias constitutes a significant determinant of PPP deviations.     

Testing the purchasing power parity in panel data

This paper empirically tests the purchasing power parity (PPP) using panel unit root tests. We employ a battery of panel unit root tests: LM-bar statistic [Testing for unit roots in heterogeneous panels, Working paper, University of Cambridge] is employed to account for serially correlated errors. The statistic proposed by Breitung [Adv. Econom. 15 (2000) 161.] and the KPSS-based statistic of Hadri [Econ. J. 3 (2000) 148.] are also used. In addition, we also employ a SUR estimator to account for possible cross-sectional effect. Data of 45 economies from 1980 to 1999 are used to test the PPP hypothesis. We find that these estimators tend to get supportive results when the data frequency becomes lower, which substantially characterizes the long-run property of the PPP hypothesis.     

Evidence on the purchasing power parity in a panel of cities

Evidence is provided on the PPP hypothesis using a sample of 50 Spanish cities for a long time period through the application of panel data unit root tests. Although results suggest non-rejection of the PPP, short-run deviations – as measured by half-lives – indicate that real factors might be causing a slow rate of convergence to a common price index, even in highly integrated economies.     

A cointegration analysis of purchasing power parity: 1973–96

This paper tests the purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis for five industrial countries using cointegration and error-correction modeling. The cointegration test indicated that for all countries the PPP hypothesis holds in the long run but not in the short run. Further, the errorcorrection models suggested that deviations of the actual exchange rate from its long-run PPP value were corrected in subsequent periods. Finally, the high frequency monthly data models did a better job of tracking the turning points of the actual data than the low-frequency quarterly and yearly models.     

Further evidence on purchasing power parity and country characteristics

Using data from 76 countries, this paper investigates the relationship between country characteristics and the validity of purchasing power parity (PPP). Several interesting results are obtained based on dollar-based exchange rates. First, PPP holds for Africa and Latin America. Further, PPP tends to be supported for countries with high or moderate openness, low growth rates, high inflation rates and high nominal exchange rate volatility, respectively. Second, a single country characteristic seems inadequate to account for the validity of PPP. Third, PPP is supported if countries satisfy at least two characteristics of supporting PPP simultaneously. Finally, the main results of the paper are robust when the numeraire currency changes from the US dollar to Japanese yen.     

Testing the relative purchasing power parity hypothesis: the case of Korea

This study examines the relative purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis using the data from the Korean won–US dollar and the Korean won–Japanese yen foreign exchange markets. We extract proxies for inflation from stock market returns of Korea, the United States and Japan based on the method used by Chowdhry, Roll and Xia in 2005. We explicitly test the relative PPP hypothesis in light of the short-run price volatility using monthly, bimonthly and quarterly data from 1 January 1998 to 31 December 2012. Our findings suggest that the empirical test results from the entire sample period do not support the relative PPP hypothesis. However, the results from the sample period excluding the Asian Financial Crisis period show that the relative PPP hypothesis holds for the Korean won–US dollar market with a moderate magnitude of inflation impact, but not for the Korean won–Japanese yen market. Abrupt changes in exchange rates during the crisis period may have affected the relationship between inflation and exchange rates. This result also suggests that factors other than inflation might have affected the Korean won–Japanese yen exchange rate.     

Re-examination of the long-run purchasing power parity: further evidence from Turkey

In this article, we re-examine the empirical validity of the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) theory for the Turkish economy. For this purpose, an empirical model is constructed using some contemporaneous estimation techniques such as multivariate co-integration and vector error correction methodology. Our estimation results reveal that the PPP can strongly be supported as a long-run stationary steady-state relationship for the Turkish economy.     

Revisiting purchasing power parity in Latin America: sequential panel selection method

This study applies the Sequential Panel Selection Method (SPSM), proposed by Chortareas and Kapetanios (2009) to test the validity of long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) in a sample of 15 Latin American countries using monthly data spanning from December 1994 to February 2010. SPSM classifies the whole panel into a group of stationary and nonstationary series. In doing so, we can clearly identify how many and which series in the panel are stationary processes. Empirical results from the SPSM using the Panel KSS unit root test (Ucar and Omay, 2009) with a Fourier function which accounts for any structural break in the data indicate that PPP holds in many of the Latin American countries studied.     

Unit roots and purchasing power parity: another kick at the can

Lopez et al. (2005 Lopez, C, Murray, C and Papell, D. 2005. State of the art unit root tests and purchasing power parity. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 37: 361–9. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) demonstrated that single-equation unit-root tests cannot provide conclusive evidence of whether real exchange rates are stationary because inference depends critically on the lag-lengths used to construct the test statistics, a result reinforced by a recent work by Sweeney (2006 Sweeney, D. 2006. Mean reversion in nominal G-10 exchange rates. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 41: 685–708. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The purpose of this article is to revisit the issue, first demonstrating the necessary conditions under which this approach of testing for Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is appropriate.     

The purchasing power parity puzzle is worse than you think

The ‘‘purchasing power parity puzzle’’ is the difficulty of reconciling very high short-term volatility of real exchange rates with very slow rates of mean reversion. The strongest evidence of slow mean reversion comes from least squares estimates of first-order autoregressive models of the long-horizon dollar-sterling real exchange rate. Using median-unbiased estimation methods, we show that these methods underestimate the half-lives of PPP deviations, and thus overestimate the speed of mean reversion. When the specification is amended to allow for serial correlation, the speed of mean reversion falls even further. This makes resolution of the purchasing power parity puzzle more problematic.First version received: May 2003/Final version received: July 2004We thank Lutz Kilian, James Lothian, Mark Taylor, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Threshold cointegration and purchasing power parity in the pacific nations

The paper uses a threshold cointegration methodology to explore the properties of long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) in the Pacific nations. Using Japan and the USA as base countries, it is shown that long-run PPP holds for most Asian countries but that the adjustment mechanism is asymmetric. In contrast to symmetric error-correction models, it is found that asymmetric adjustments of nominal exchange rates play an important role in eliminating deviations from long-run PPP.