Testing for the effect of current-account ‘news’ on exchange rates: A critique

Dornbusch (1980) has observed a correlation between unexpected exchange-rate changes and unexpected current account balances, which he interprets as evidence in favor of the ‘news’ hypothesis of exchange-rate determination. It is shown here that his test is flawed by simultaneity problem.     

Exchange rates and perfect competition

The purpose of this note is to demonstrate that the commonly held belief that incomplete and perverse pass-through are incompatible with perfect competition is wrong! To this end, we consider two types of firms both operating in two countries. The demand sides of the markets of the two countries are separated and each type of firm produces its good in one of these countries. We study the effect of an exchange-rate change on the competitive equilibrium prices in each country. When producing for the foreign market causes the same costs as producing for the home market then the law of one price holds and an exchange-rate change is completely offset by price changes. Furthermore, when cost functions neither exhibit economies nor diseconomies of scope between producing for the home and producing for the foreign market then prices move in the right directions in response to an exchange-rate change. However, with general cost structures, even in this simple perfectly competitive model, perverse directions of price changes can result from an exchange-rate change.     

Exchange-Rate Pass-Through With Intertemporal Linkages: Evidence At the Commodity Level

This paper argues that the stability of exchange-rate pass-through is not well tested in common econometric specifications of pass-through equations. This is because (a) expected future exchange-rate changes are an important omitted variable in these estimations, and (b) the use of aggregate data complicates inference. Commodity-level estimates obtained from applying the Kalman filter are consistent with the apparent instability in aggregate pass-through. Moreover, by comparing these estimates to actual exchange-rate movements, the observed instability is found to be consistent with forward-looking behavior as posited.     

Leaning Against the Wind: Do Central Banks Necessarily Lose?

A leaning-against-the-wind intervention that has only a temporary effect on the exchange rate and that is not too aggressive can be shown analytically to yield positive expected profits to a central bank even when the exchange-rate process is nonstationary. These profits arise if there are some transitory shocks to the exchange rate. Furthermore, very aggressive intervention will yield positive expected profits eventually when there is a tendency for exchange rates to return to a long-run equilibrium level.     

Inflationary Expectations, Variable Output, and Exchange-Rate Dynamics

This paper develops a model of exchange-rate dynamics characterized by inflationary expectations held with perfect foresight, sticky wages, and sluggish output adjustment. In this framework monetary expansion initially lowers interest rates because of sluggish output and price adjustment but quite surprisingly produces exchange-rate overshooting or undershooting. Moreover, after its initial depreciation in the overshooting case, the domestic currency temporarily appreciates beyond its new long-run equilibrium level. In the undershooting case, the home currency temporarily appreciates away from its new long-run equilibrium level. Finally, the dynamic real exchange rate-real interest rate relationship at times becomes inverse.     

预期到的与未预期到的财政政策冲击及其宏观影响*

本文根据1999-2014年中国宏观经济季度数据,在动态随机一般均衡模型框架下,考察了预期到的与未预期到的财政政策的宏观经济效应及其传导机制。本文研究发现：第一,预期到的与未预期到的财政政策均具有显著的宏观经济效应,二者合起来可以解释3634%的产出波动、1424%的就业波动和618%的物价波动;第二,与未预期到的财政政策直接影响经济均衡系统不同,预期到的财政政策主要是通过影响经济主体关于未来经济状态的信念来改变经济的均衡配置;第三,财政政策的宏观经济效应不仅取决于所选取的政策类型,而且受公众预期的影响。因此,政府不仅应当根据宏观经济目标理性选择财政政策工具,而且需要合理引导公众预期,以增强财政政策的针对性和有效性。     

Terms of trade and the exchange rates of New Zealand and Australia

Effects of the terms of trade on the bilateral exchange rate of New Zealand and Australia and of each of these countries with the USA are evaluated. There is strong evidence of cointegration of the exchange rates and a ration of the respective national price levels when the relative terms of trade of the countries are included in dynamic models. While evidence that the long-run equilibrium relationships satisfy purchasing power parity is mixed, relative improvement of a country's terms of trade results in real appreciation of its currency in all cases. The terms of trade are also found to be exogenous for the parameters of the long-run New Zealand–Australia exchange-rate equilibrium.     

The Robertson connection between the natural rates of interest and unemployment

The paper explores the connection between the natural rates of unemployment and interest first put forward in the literature by Dennis Robertson in the 1930s. This looks at monetary dynamics in the business cycle and assesses the Robertsonian contribution to developments in macroeconomics before and after Keynes's General Theory. Robertson showed how unanticipated price level changes affect supply and demand in the labour market, as well as the saving–investment process in the credit market. Robertson's approach to economic policy was that of getting the relations right between cyclical changes in prices, output and employment and their long-run equilibrium values over time.     

Intertemporal Solvency in the Small Open Economy of Australia

This paper employs cointegration and multicointegration analysis to explore the issue of external solvency in the small open economy of Australia. Results indicate that in the fixed exchangerate era exports and imports are multicointegrated while in the more recent floating exchange-rate period the series do not share a conventional long-run equilibrium relationship. The results are consistent with intertemporal external solvency in the early period and insolvency more recently. Sustainability criteria are reviewed. Indications are that low saving and investment rates may inhibit Australia's abiliry to sustain persistent external imbalances, however, recent fiscal adjustments may work to abate this problem.     

Tail Estimates and the Ems Target Zone*

Characteristically, distributions of exchange-rate returns are fat-tailed. We use a nonparametric tail-index estimator based on extreme value theory for seven EMS currencies between April 1979 and October 1991. We find that the behavior of the Belgian franc, the Danish Krone, the French franc, and the Italian lira has become significantly less fat-tailed over time. We attribute this to the decline in the exchange-rate variance as observed in the EMS, which according to the target-zone literature should lead to a convergence of fixed exchange-rate behavior to that of floating rates. A comparison of tail estimates for the Deutsche mark and dollar exchange rates supports this notion.     

On investment and exchange-rate movements

We investigate the ways in which permanent exchange-rate changes may affect investment by influencing domestic and foreign revenue, the cost of imported variable inputs and the investment price of imported capital goods. We find that the revenue and investment-price channels have a quantitatively greater effect on investment than the cost channel. The negative effect of the revenue channel, which affects the marginal profitability of capital, outweighs the positive effect of the investment-price channel, which affects the marginal cost of capital, implying that exchange-rate appreciation has a net negative influence on investment. The estimation results are robust to different approaches to extracting the permanent components of exchange rates.     

Exchange rates and bertrand oligopoly

The impact of exchange-rate changes on industrial prices seems ambiguous. Incomplete and even perverse pass-through has been observed: the import prices in the depreciating country decrease while those in the appreciating country increase. To explain these counterintuitive price reactions we consider a situation of international Bertrand competition: two firms, based in different countries, are selling in both countries simultaneously. The profit-maximizing duopolists set the prices for their products in each of the two markets which are segmented on the demand side. We then study the qualitative effect of an exogenous exchange-rate change on the Bertrand-Nash equilibrium. Under the strong assumption of linear demand and cost functions we have normal exchange-rate pass-through. However, allowing for more general cost structures in this simple static model enables us to show that the import prices in both countries might move in counterintuitive directions.     

Monetary Policy in the Open Economy Revisited: Price Setting and Exchange-Rate Flexibility

This paper develops a welfare-based model of monetary policy in an open economy. We examine the optimal monetary policy under commitment, focusing on the nature of price adjustment in determining policy. We investigate the implications of these policies for exchange-rate flexibility. The traditional approach maintains that exchange-rate flexibility is desirable in the presence of real country-specific shocks that require adjustment in relative prices. However, in the light of empirical evidence on nominal price response to exchange-rate changes—specifically, that there appears to be a large degree of local-currency pricing (LCP) in industrialized countries—the expenditure-switching role played by nominal exchange rates may be exaggerated in the traditional literature. In the presence of LCP, we find that the optimal monetary policy leads to a fixed exchange rate, even in the presence of country-specific shocks. This is true whether monetary policy is chosen cooperatively or non-cooperatively among countries.     

Industrial structure,competitiveness, and trade

This paper examines the effect of sector-specific growth on real exchange rates, competitiveness, and the trade balance. Growth and accumulation in export- and import-competing industries exert their primary effect on the trade balance, while the direct effect of accumulation in non-tradables is on the real exchange rate. Thus, exchange-rate policies that are incompatible with non-tradables equilibrium are bound to fail. Furthermore, growth policies with strong biases toward tradables are often inferior to more balanced strategies, due to their adverse implications for real-exchange- rate movements and the trade balance.     

Creative Destruction, Investment Volatility, and the Average Age of Capital

In this article, a new numerical procedure is used to compute the equilibrium of a vintage capital growth model with nonlinear utility, where the scrapping time is nonconstant. We show that equilibrium investment and output converge nonmonotonically to the balanced growth path due to replacement echoes. We find that the average age of capital is inversely related to output, which is consistent with recent micro evidence reinforcing the importance of the embodied question. We also find that an unanticipated permanent increase in the rate of embodied technological progress causes labor productivity to slowdown in the short run.     

Exchange-Rate Uncertainty and Economic Performance

Some models support the notion that exchange-rate uncertainty promotes economic growth while others suggest that exchange-rate uncertainty slows growth. Most empirical work supports the latter hypothesis, leading policymakers to strive for more stable exchange rates. The authors question the appropriateness of the methodology usually employed, and variables constructed to measure the impact of exchange-rate uncertainty on growth. They use an alternative approach and find no discernable impact of exchange-rate uncertainty on economic performance as captured by production.     

Government spending and the exchange rate

This paper investigates the effects of govenment spending on real and nominal exchange rates within the context of an open economy equilibrium rational expectations model. The model predicts that both real and nominal exchange rates appreciate in response to anticipated and unanticipated increases in government spending. Empirical evidence from Germany for the period 1975:2–1989:4 provides some weak support for the predictions of the model.     

Anticipated and unanticipated money: a case study of Malaysia

The paper tests the LSW proposition that unanticipated policy changes affect real economic variables by using Malaysian data over the period 1970:1–1990:4. The empirical evidence changes in fiscal policy and balance of payments do not affect real output, thus lending support to the proposition. On the other hand, anticipated monetary policy and inflation influence output in the short-run, lending support to Mishkin's views of the economy and rejecting the LSW proposition. In addition, the long-run neutrality proposition is not supported by the data. Moreover, unanticipated changes in inflation do influence real output in the short-run lending support to the LSW proposition. However, unanticipated changes in monetary policy, balance of payments and fiscal policy do not influence real output, lending support to the classical view of the economy and rejecting the LSW proposition. Furthermore, the Monetarist's view that inflation is a monetary phenomenon is rejected. The findings also show that unanticipated movements of money supply contribute significantly to the inflation rate. The Chow test shows that the coefficients remain stable over the period of study.     

人民币汇率的非均衡分析与汇率制度的宏观效率

在现行制度背景下 ,本文从我国外汇市场经济主体微观行为出发 ,建立了我国的外汇需求和供给函数 ;进而分析了市场的均衡和非均衡态势 ,讨论了人民币汇率稳定运行态势后面的微观行为原因。分析发现 :1 .人民币汇率的非均衡是必然的和经常的 ,不能形成市场均衡汇率。在此背景下形成的现实汇率势必是扭曲的汇率 ,由此导致外汇资源的配置扭曲以及相应的真实资源配置扭曲。 2 .在汇率的稳定和调节机制上 ,当前汇率制度类似于“可调整的盯住汇率制” ,我国汇率制度因此具有固定汇率制的特征 ,但不具备固定汇率制的汇率稳定机制———稳定的汇率预期。 3 .现行汇率制度构成对汇率政策的严重制约 ,调节国际收支不得不倚重于直接管制政策的运用 ;货币政策丧失了独立性 ,加剧宏观经济的波动。这种低效率表明 ,我国当前汇率制度及其微观市场安排急待改革。     

The long-run relationship between import flows and real exchange-rate volatility: The experience of eight European economies

This paper provides new evidence on the long-run relationship between imports and exchange-rate volatility in eight European countries. The period examined is 1973:2 through 1995:1. Cointegration analyses are based on Johansen's (1992, 1995) approach and robust single-equation methods. In conformity with theoretical considerations, the major results show that exchange-rate volatility has a significant negative effect on the volume of imports of six countries whereas for Greece and Sweden, it is positive and significant. These findings are reasonably robust in terms of measures of exchange-rate volatility, different estimation methods and membership in the European Exchange-rate Mechanism (ERM). Therefore, it can be argued that exchange-rate volatility will have significant effects on the allocation of resources by market participants and that policy-makers can no longer rely on an import demand with only conventional variables for long-term international trade planning, forecasting and policy formulation.