Parameter instability, superexogeneity, and the monetary model of the exchange rate

Parameter Instability, Superexogeneity and the Monetary Model of the Exchange Rate. — This paper argues that failure to test for parameter time invariance yields misleading results. Time heterogeneity other than unit roots will make the parameters of the unrestricted system unstable and statistical inference invalid. However, if the instability stems from a particular subset of variables (superexogenous with respect to the parameters of interest), conditioning on them results in a partial model with stable parameters, and standard inferential procedures can then be used. We apply this methodology to test the monetary model of the exchange rate and find that both system and single-equation estimates support it in the case of yen-dollar exchange rate.     

Asian Currency Unit (ACU), deviation indicators and exchange rate coordination in East Asia: A panel-based convergence approach

Employing the panel convergence method of Phillips and Sul (2007) to the nominal deviation indicators of two recent unofficial constructions of an Asian Currency Unit (ACU) index, this paper examines the existence and extent of convergence in the movements of East Asian currencies against the ACU. Empirical results reveal that intra-East Asian exchange rate movements have not converged to form one, cohesive and unified bloc where currencies share homogenous movements, regardless of whether one examines the data on intra-East Asian exchange rate movements before or after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. Instead, a separate number of convergent clubs or blocs in the region have formed in recent years. Finally, and most importantly, we observe at the end of the period of our examination that economies in the region are, generally, converging at different speeds to two opposing poles of convergence, that is, groups of relatively depreciating currencies and, on the other, groups of relatively appreciating currencies.     

Modelling interest rate volatility: Regime switches and level links

Modelling Interest Rate Volatility: Regime Switches and Level Links.— This paper presents a model encompassing the Markov switching model and the model based on a volatility-level link. This encompassing model allows to test these competing classes of volatility models against each other. If is found that both classes capture essential but different features of the interest rate volatility process. A volatility model incorporating both features, i.e., regime switches and level links, clearly outperforms both alternatives. The consequences of this finding, both for volatility prediction and for the selection of the more appropriate theoretical (continuous time) interest rate model, are discussed.     

Misalignments of real exchange rates and the credibility of nominal currency bands

Misalignments of Real Exchange Rates and the Credibility of Nominal Currency Bands. — This paper analyzes a sticky-price target zone model in which realignment risk is modeled endogenously as a function of the degree of real exchange rate misalignments. The implications of the model are used to investigate the credibility of selected nominal ERM exchange rate bands. We find that a lack of credibility of the ERM currency bands occurs mostly in countries with substantial swings and persistent misalignments of real exchange rates. These findings suggest that the major real appreciations in some European bilateral real exchange rates between 1987 and 1992 have been pivotal in triggering the ERM currency crises of 1992 and 1993.     

A re-examination of the forward exchange rate unbiasedness hypothesis

A Re-Examination of the Forward Exchange Rate Unbiasedness Hypothesis. — This paper applies the Phillips and Hansen estimation and inference procedures to re-examine the hypothesis that the forward exchange rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot exchange rate. The results indicate that the 90-day forward exchange rate is not an unbiased predictor. However, the 90-day forward and future spot exchange rates are cointegrated. Only for the U.K. pound/U.S. dollar exchange rate is there an error correction representation. Overall, however, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that risk-averse agents in the forward foreign exchange market form expectations rationally.     

State-space estimation of rational bubbles in the Yen/Deutsche Mark exchange rate

State-Space Estimation of Rational Bubbles in the Yen/Deutsche Mark Exchange Rate. — This paper considers a series that uncovered interest parity predicts to be white noise and inspects it for evidence of stochastic rational bubbles. State-space methods are used that specify a bubble component of the series as an unobserved state. The technique’s effectiveness is demonstrated by Monte Carlo experiments. One span of the series is found in which a stochastic rational bubble specification clearly dominates the white noise specification. It coincides with a period of general financial turm-oil in the associated economies, i.e. Japan and Germany during 1989 and early 1990.     

Restructuring East Asian exchange rate regimes

This paper investigated the degree of misalignment of the East Asian currencies against the U.S. dollar and against the Japanese yen under a de facto dollar-pegged exchange rate regime (January 1995 to May 1997). We found that overvaluation against the yen started in the Malaysian ringgit and the Philippine peso from January 1996 and the Thai baht from June 1996. Although the Indonesian rupiah and the Korean won against the yen were still undervalued in May 1997, degree of misalignment of both currencies narrowed from April 1995. Large withdrawal of Japanese claims after the financial crisis reduced Japanese bank lendings from $123.8 billion to $85.9 billion in end-June 1998. In 1998, Japanese Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to East Asia fell as much as 44% from the previous year. In conclusion the paper stresses the importance of the stability in yen/dollar exchange rate to avoid large volatility in Japanese capital flow.     

Sign predictions of exchange rate changes: Charts as proxies for Bayesian inferences

Sign Predictions of Exchange Rate Changes: Charts as Proxies for Bayesian Inferences. - One recurrent and controversial feature of high-frequency exchange rate returns is the apparent profitability of simple chartist rules. This paper attests the relevance of these rules for predicting the upward and downward tendencies in speculative prices. First, it is shown by means of a variant to the standard Markov switching model that there are swings in the mean for various weekly exchange rate returns. The paper proceeds by showing that certain chartist rules detect these regime shifts quite accurately. As such, these rules can be interpreted as workable proxies for the Bayesian filtering rule of Hamilton.     

International macroeconomic announcements and intraday euro exchange rate volatility

The short-run reaction of Euro returns volatility to a wide range of macroeconomic announcements is investigated using 5-min returns for spot Euro–Dollar, Euro–Sterling and Euro–Yen exchange rates. The marginal impact of each individual macroeconomic announcement on volatility is isolated whilst controlling for the distinct intraday volatility pattern, calendar effects, and a latent, longer run volatility factor simultaneously. Macroeconomic news announcements from the US are found to cause the vast majority of the statistically significant responses in volatility, with US monetary policy and real activity announcements causing the largest reactions of volatility across the three rates. ECB interest rate decisions are also important for all three rates, whilst UK Industrial Production and Japanese GDP cause large responses for the Euro–Sterling and Euro–Yen rates, respectively. Additionally, forward looking indicators and regional economic surveys, the release timing of which is such that they are the first indicators of macroeconomic performance that traders observe for a particular month, are also found to play a significant role.     

Real financial market exchange rate volatility and portfolio flows

This paper studies the relationship between real financial market exchange rate volatility and US cross-border equity flows. We found strong evidence that causality goes from real financial market exchange rate volatility to equity flows. According to our results, real financial market exchange rate volatility negatively influences purchases of foreign equity. This finding is in line with the portfolio optimization theory. The impact of real financial market exchange rate volatility on sales of foreign equity is also negative. This result can be explained by the theory of behavioral finance which states that investors are reluctant to realize losses of their portfolios. This is why investors decrease sales of assets when riskiness of the assets increases. The impact of real financial market exchange rate on net purchases of foreign equity is positive. It follows from these results that sales of foreign equity decrease more strongly than purchases of foreign equity when riskiness of foreign assets increases.     

A PANEL DATA APPROACH TO THE BEHAVIOURAL EQUILIBRIUM EXCHANGE RATE OF THE ZAR

The question of currency over- or undervaluation is often asked and implies the existence of an equilibrium exchange rate (EER). The aim of this research was to determine the long-term EER of the South African rand using the behavioural equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) methodology. This paper used a panel of data from South Africa's main trading partners to estimate the relationship between the EER and its fundamental determinants using dynamic ordinary least squares (OLS) and fully modified OLS. The average coefficients obtained describe the long-term behaviour of the individual countries' real exchange rates. Substituting the observed fundamental time series into the estimated equation derives the EER for each country and over- and undervaluation can be determined. The results indicated that the fundamental value of the exchange rate was driven by economic growth, the openness of the economy, its foreign reserves, the real gold price and capital expenditure. The exchange rate also fluctuated considerably around its equilibrium level but there is not long sustained periods of over- and undervaluation.     

Has the Canada-US trade agreement fostered price integration?

Has the Canada-US Trade Agreement Fostered Price Integration? — This paper assesses the Canada-US Trade Agreement (CUSTA) from the perspective of market integration. Using monthly data on producer price indices and the exchange rate of both countries for the 1974:1–1996:1 period, a Johansen procedure is used to test for a long-run equilibrium or cointegrated price system among the price series. In addition, to determine whether product markets are converging after the implementation of CUSTA, a Kaiman filter or time-varying parameter analysis is used. Empirical evidence supports the conclusion that CUSTA did not cause price integration or convergence, rather for the two markets convergence and integration were well established prior to CUSTA. The success of CUSTA appears to be in maintaining Canadian access to the US market in the face of rising US protectionism.     

Central bank intervention and exchange rate volatility: Evidence from Japan using realized volatility

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the effectiveness of Bank of Japan's foreign exchange interventions on the daily realized volatility of USD/JPY exchange rates using high frequency data. Following Huang and Tauchen (2005) and Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard, 2004, Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard, 2006, we use bi-power variation to decompose daily realized volatility into two components: the smooth persistent and the discontinuous jump components. We model exchange rate returns, the different components of realized volatility and the central bank intervention using a system of simultaneous equations. We find strong support that interventions by Bank of Japan had increased both the continuous and the jump components of daily realized volatility. This suggests that the interventions by Bank of Japan had increased market volatility which not only caused short-lived positive jumps, but were also persistent over time. We did not find any evidence that interventions were effective in influencing the exchange rate returns for the entire sample period.     

A fractional cointegration approach to empirical tests of PPP: New evidence and methodological implications from an application to the Taiwan/US dollar relationship

A Fractional Cointegration Approach to Empirical Tests of PPP: New Evidence and Methodological Implications from an Application to the Taiwan/ US Dollar Relationship. —This paper applies a relatively new concept of fractional cointegration to shed some light on the validity of purchasing power parity as a long-run equilibrium condition, using the Taiwan/US dollar exchange rate. Findings suggest that, while standard tests of cointegration fail to support cointegration between nominal exchange rates, domestic and foreign prices, the fractional cointegration analysis permits deviations from equilibrium to follow a fractionally integrated process and hence captures a much wider class of parity or mean-reversion behaviour. The paper concludes by indicating areas in which fractional cointegration will be a particularly appropriate technique to unearth previously unfounded temporal characteristics.     

Real wages,investment and employment: New evidence from West German sectoral data

Real Wages, Investment and Employment: New Evidence from West German Sectoral Data. — Non-separable capital adjustment costs imply that investment directly affects the demand for labour and therefore justify not only the lagged dependent variable but also the presence of investment expenditures or Tobin’s valuation ratio Q in labour demand estimation. On this basis, the authors estimate a very parsimonious specification of demand for blue-collar workers in a panel of 32 West German industries. They find much larger short-run real wage employment elasticities than previous research, and robustly significant positive effects of investment or Tobin’s Q on labour demand.     

SOUTH AFRICA'S EXPORT PERFORMANCE: DETERMINANTS OF EXPORT SUPPLY

This paper presents both a comparative analysis of South Africa's export structure and performance and an econometric investigation of the determinants of export volumes. The paper finds that the improved growth and diversification of South African manufactured exports during the 1990s lag those of East Asia and a few other resource‐based economies. This performance in part reflects relatively low world growth in resource‐based products, but factors that affect the profitability of export supply, such as the real effective exchange rate, infrastructure costs, tariff rates and skilled labour, are also shown to be important. Export demand and the ability to compete in the export market on the basis of price are not found to be a major constraint to export growth.     

Credit policy,real exchange rate volatility and moral hazard

We extend the well-developed theoretical literature on unconventional credit policy from a closed economy to a small open economy. Consistent with the literature, we find that credit policy has positive effects on output and consumption by raising investment demand. In terms of expanding output, it is more effective to extend government credit to banks than to the goods-producing sector because for each unit of credit supplied to banks, banks - through leverage - can supply greater than one unit of intermediation to firms. We find the welfare implications are ambiguous and depend on the type of policy chosen. A policy of providing funds to goods-producing firms tends to be welfare-improving because it dampens the responses of all variables after a negative shock, including the real exchange rate. However, providing government assistance to the banking sector may be a costly policy because it encourages greater risk-taking on part of banks, leading to higher bank leverage. All else equal, this increases the volatility of the economy, raising the variances of consumption and of the real exchange rate, which is welfare-deteriorating. We interpret this as indicative of the problem of moral hazard associated with a policy of providing support to failing banks.     

FINANCIAL AND MONETARY AUTONOMY AND INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN SOUTH AFRICA AND THE OTHER SACU COUNTRIES

The paper uses cointegration and error correction modelling techniques together with tests of weak exogeneity, and monthly interest rates for the period 1990 to 2005, to examine the degree of financial and monetary autonomy and interdependence between South Africa and the other Southern African Customs, Union (SACU) countries. The results reveal a high level of dependence of the other SACU countries' financial systems on South Africa's financial system, which suggests that a monetary unification with a single central bank (South African Reserve Bank) and monetary policy for the union is feasible.     

Does purchasing power parity survive political shocks in South Africa?

Does Purchasing Power Parity Survive Political Shocks in South Africa? — The objectives of the paper are to examine the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis for the South African economy during the period 1975–1994 using high-frequency data. The analysis is conducted both for the entire period and also for different subperiods in order to take into account possible structural changes. For the rand/ dollar exchange rate, the authors find on the basis of a unique long-run cointegrating relationship that there is significant evidence supporting the PPP hypothesis for the entire period. The use of nonlinear least squares and Johansen-Juselius procedures is made to reach the above conclusion.     

The Swedish real exchange rate under different currency regimes

This paper presents evidence on the behaviour of the Swedish real exchange rate relative to Germany under different currency regimes during the period 1973:1–2001:4. The results suggest that the real exchange rate is cointegrated with Swedish and German productivity, which is consistent with Balassa (1964) and Samuelson (1964). In the short run, the exchange rate regime has mattered for the dynamics of the real exchange rate. Deviations from long-run equilibrium have been adjusted more quickly when the nominal exchange rate has been allowed to float freely. JEL no. C22, E31, F41