Devaluation and The Balance of Trade: A Synthesis of Monetary and Elasticity Approaches

The elasticities and monetary approaches to balance of trade and balance of payments give different predictions about the effects of changes in exchange rates on the trade balance and balance of payments. This paper, using a theoretical model, supports the arguments that elasticities and monetary approaches to balance of payments are complementary theories since each is merely a fragment of a larger system. It was shown that the short run effects of devaluation are those produced by the elasticities approach and the long run effects are those implies by the monetary approach. [431]     

Structural Balance of Trade Deficits in a Small Open Economy with Exogenous Capital Flows: A Monetary Approach*

This paper presents a ‘structural’ balance of trade model which can be interpreted as combining two major building blocks. The first one is identical to the monetary approach to the balance of payments. The second, which explains the price level, consists of the orthodox Scandinavian model of price and wage determination. It is shown that under these assumptions the balance of trade deficit can be broken down into a structural, an imported, and a ‘home-made’ component. A n empirical illustration of the structural balance of trade model is given for the New Zealand economy.     

Devaluation,Inflation, and the Balance of Payments: A Short-Run Monetary Approach*

In this paper a model is presented to analyze, in a monetary setting, the effects of a once-and-for-all adjustment in the exchange rate in a small economy committed to a fixed exchange-rate system. The effects of such an adjustment are shown to be transitory. After a devaluation the domestic rate of inflation accelerates in relation to the rate of inflation in the rest of the world. The increase in prices reduces the real value of the nominal stock of money and, in order to restore real liquidity to its previous level, foreign-exchange reserves start to flow into the country. However, as monetary equlibrium is reached, the flow of reserves tends to stop and the domestic rate of inflation converges to the world rate.     

Productive Capacity, Product Varieties, and the Elasticities Approach to the Trade Balance

Most macroeconomic models imply that faster income growth tends either to lower a country’s trade balance by raising its imports with little change to its exports or to reduce its terms of trade in order to maintain balanced trade. Krugman (1989 ) proposed a model in which countries grow by producing new varieties of goods. In his model, faster‐growing countries are able to export these new goods and maintain balanced trade without suffering any deterioration in their terms of trade. This paper analyzes the growth of US imports from different source countries and finds strong support for Krugman’s model.     

The Intertemporal Equilibrium Modeling of Intra-EMU and Global Trade Imbalances

The intertemporal equilibrium approach to current accounts analyzed the impacts of respective intra-European Monetary Union (intra-EMU) and Asian-U.S. financial integration between 1999 and 2007 on the intra-EMU current account and global trade imbalances. Moreover, Farmer and Ban (2014) find in a three-country, two-region overlapping generations model that financial integration between both the EMU core and periphery and between Asia and the U.S. induce trade surpluses in the EMU core and Asia, while in the EMU periphery and in the U.S., trade balances become negative when the global economy is dynamically inefficient. In this paper, we first show that in a numerically specified Farmer-Ban model, steady-state trade balance to gross domestic product ratios are too low compared to the empirically observed counterparts. We suggest avenues to ameliorate this problem.     

Another Look at the Underlying Cause of the End of the Bretton Woods System: International Price Differences Perspective

In this study, the sustainability of the Bretton Woods system from the standpoint of purchasing power parity is discussed. The paper uses wholesale price indexes of the group of seven industrialized countries (G‐7) and examines when persistent price disparities among the countries occurred by applying the panel unit root tests. It is found that the price indexes of G‐7 countries began to diverge in the first half of the 1960s. Evidence from international price differences suggests that the price indexes may have signaled the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system before the inflation rate in the USA accelerated.     

外贸乘数法的扩展与中国贸易收支的实证分析

开放经济体系中，当一国的投资、政府支出或者出口增加时，国民收入会因为外贸乘数的作用而成倍地增加。同时，外国收入的变动也会通过乘数效应影响本国的国民收入和贸易收支。结合当前全球经济大环境，运用加入外国收入变量后的外贸乘数分析扩展模型分析表明，中国今明两年的贸易收支顺差仍将减少。要增加国民收入和改善贸易收支，就要促进消费和扩大出口。     

The New UK Monetary Arrangements: A View From the Literature

This paper considers the likely operating characteristics of the new UK monetary arrangements introduced in May 1997. The paper first argues that the time inconsistency of policy is not an issue provided the Bank of England is properly independent. However, the current inflation remit from the Chancellor to the Bank specifies a numerical target for the inflation rate, but does not specify how quickly deviations from the target are to be corrected. It is thus an incomplete contract, and there is a danger that the Bank may choose to stabilise inflation at the cost of excessively volatile movements in output, or vice versa . We estimate the optimal policy frontier for the UK economy and show that in practice it is close to rectangular. Consequently all the Bank needs to assume is that the government's preferences are 'reasonable' in order to know approximately where to locate on this frontier; the incompleteness of the remit therefore need not be a cause for concern.     

Trade Balance and Exchange Rate: Unit Roots, Co-integration and Long Memory in the US and the UK

This paper deals with the relationship between the balance of trade and the exchange rate in the US/UK case. Many authors have studied this issue for many countries, but despite the intensive research, there is still no agreement about the effectiveness of currency devaluation to increase a country's balance of trade. We first analyse the relationship between the two variables using unit roots and co-integration methods, and the results are ambiguous. We try a new approach based on fractional integration. The unit root hypothesis is rejected in case of the trade balance in favour of smaller orders of integration, while this hypothesis is not rejected for the exchange rate. Thus, the two series do not possess the same order of integration. We sort this problem out by taking the exchange rate as an exogenous variable, and including it in a regression model where the residuals might follow a fractionally integrated model.     

Manufacturing and the Trade Balance

When the world shifted to the regime of flexible exchange rates after 1970, economists expected that large trade imbalances would soon disappear. Instead, such imbalances not only persisted but soared in the 1980s and 1990s, in spite of significant changes in important currencies such as the yen, the mark and the dollar. This paper reports that manufacturing importers tend to suffer trade deficits whereas exporters of manufacturing products tend to enjoy trade surpluses. The reason lies in the higher rates of productivity growth experienced by exporters of manufactures.     

Monetary Policy Transparency in the UK: The Impact of Independence and Inflation Targeting

There is a widespread belief that the transparency of UK monetary policy has increased substantially as a result of the introduction of inflation targeting in 1992 and a number of procedural and institutional reforms which accompanied and followed it. Here, money market responses (and other data) are used to test the possibility that improved anticipation of policy moves may be the result of developments other than the institutional reforms popularly cited. We find overwhelming evidence that the switch to inflation targeting itself significantly reduced monetary policy surprises, while subsequent reforms have contributed little. Where we advance substantially on earlier work is to look at the cross‐sectional dispersion of agents’ anticipation. If the benefit of transparency is the elimination of policy surprise, there is little benefit if the averagely correct anticipations of agents conceal a wide dispersion of view.     

美国对华出口管制与美对华贸易逆差:实质与对策

本文运用实证分析方法,对美国对华技术出口管制的历史和现状进行较为系统、深入的分析研究．指出美国对华技术出口管制是造成美对华贸易逆差的主要原因;并就促进美国对华技术出口、实现中美贸易平衡问题,提出了对策和建议。     

货币政策有效性与内外均衡

审慎使用货币政策,对实现"外堵热钱,内防通胀,把好流动性的总闸门"的目标,具有重要意义。本文对货币政策的理论溯源、运行特点及正负效应进行了文献回顾,界定了国内外流动性环境变化对国内货币政策操作的制约和影响,并在结合中国货币供给数据进行实证分析的基础上,提出优化货币政策传导机制的相应政策建议。