Fiscal Policy and Exchange Rates

This paper examines the dynamics of the nominal exchange rate and fiscal deficits in a continuous time optimizing general equilibrium model with OLG. It is shown that alternative financing modes of budget deficits imply different patterns of adjustment along the transitional path towards the steady-state equilibrium. In particular, the respect of public solvency without money financing is not sufficient to avoid the depreciation of the exchange rate in the long-run after a fiscal expansion. In addition, money and tax financing generate opposite intergenerational reallocation of wealth.     

Fiscal Discipline and Exchange Rate Systems

A new 'fiscal' theory of price determination has implications for exchange rate systems and common currency areas. We show that deeper monetary integration requires the discipline of a Ricardian regime ; that is, the government must guarantee fiscal solvency for any sequence of prices or exchange rates. Particularly striking results are that a currency peg is not credible without the discipline of a Ricardian regime, and a common currency area is not viable if fiscal policy in two (or more) of the countries in the union is Non-Ricardian. Interestingly, constraints written into the Maastricht Treaty are sufficient for a Ricardian regime.     

固定汇率、浮动汇率下中国经济政策——人民币升值对我国进出口贸易的影响分析

在当前国内外经济环境不佳的情况下,中美两国就人民币汇率升值问题争议不断。1994年以来中国实行人民币汇率制度改革,在人民币持续升值情况下,并未缓解中美贸易不平衡和减少美国的贸易逆差,中央政府基于国家发展水平就未来货币政策的选择上处于两难境地,期望建立健全"参考一篮子货币进行调节,以市场供求为基础的、有管理的浮动汇率"机制,保持人民币汇率相对稳定,减轻人民币升值对中国经济增长的影响。     

汇率波动对对外投资上市企业价值影响研究

全球经济金融的融合、人民币汇率浮动机制的实施以及人民币升值压力的加剧,势必会给中国对外直接投资企业带来越来越大的影响。以从事直接对外投资的沪深上市公司为样本,通过对传统的Jorion模型进行拓展,研究人民币兑美元、欧元、日元的汇率波动对这些企业价值的影响。结果显示,人民币兑美元、欧元、日元的汇率对企业价值影响最为显著的是人民币兑日元汇率;人民币兑美元升值造成了大部分企业价值的贬损;人民币兑欧元升值给企业价值带来的显著影响呈现出正向、负向共存的特点;而人民币兑日元贬值则给大多数企业价值带来了显著的正向影响。     

Impact of Market‐based Policies and External Fiscal Discipline on Ghana's Inflation

This study investigates the impact of liberalization of the forex exchange and financial sectors and external prudent fiscal management in Côte d'Ivoire on Ghana's inflation. We find that, in the financial sector, there is a case for liberalization, in terms of lowering inflation. However, a quasi‐liberalized system in the sector proves to have a greater potential to reduce inflation in Ghana. In the exchange market, non‐liberalization has the edge over liberalization in reducing inflation in Ghana. However, a quasi‐liberalized system in the sector has a greater potential to lower inflation. There is evidence of a strong intra‐continental transfer of inflation from Côte d'Ivoire to Ghana, but this transmission has been significantly moderated downwards by the implementation of prudent fiscal management in Côte d'Ivoire. We also find that monetary targeting and inflation targeting have deflationary effects, but we cannot claim that this has significantly reduced inflation. The implication of the result is that; a system that achieves the correct balance between the market mechanism and command system in the exchange and financial sectors has a greater potential to lower inflation in Ghana. Also, domestic monetary policies should not only be anchored on internal factors.     

The Impact of Structure and Openness on The Causal Ordering Of Interest,Inflation and Exchange Rates

Journal of Quantitative Economics - In a country with a very large population at low per capita income, the interaction between the price of food and wages is a major determinant of inflation. But,...     

The Hysteretic Effects on the Real Exchange Rates

In this paper we investigate the dynamics developed from the exchange rate relative price relationship using a hysteresis framework. The rationale for such hysteretic effects is in terms of firms' unresponsiveness to the exchange rate changes due to pricing to market-type arguments.The empirical support of these ideas is derived by applying a linear approximation of the hysteretic effects.We conclude that the hysteretic effects are a source of non-linearity, strongly affecting the long-run relationship of exchange rate and prices.     

Endogenous Money,Fiscal Policy,Interest Rates and the Exchange Rate Regime: Correction

This note suggests two corrections that might usefully be made to the analysis in an earlier article with the same title. The corrections have no direct bearing on the original argument (which had to do with disputes about modern money theory, or MMT) but do seem important for the future development of an alternative monetary theory.     

Fixed Exchange Rates and Banking Crises: When Does the Former Prevent the Latter?

Because monetary policy is constrained in fixed exchange rate regimes, banks should expect fewer money‐financed bailouts and therefore manage their risks more carefully when exchange rates are fixed than when they are flexible. It follows that we should observe fewer banking crises in countries with formal currency pegs. The 1990s however are littered with occurrences of banking crises in countries with fixed exchange rates. This paper asks whether banks in those countries could have adopted excess risk expecting money‐financed bailouts or whether their pegs discouraged such moral hazard‐type risks.     

Managed Exchange Rates*

Managed exchange rates have become a tool of macroeconomic stabilization policy. Much of the previous emphasis on parametrically chosen exchange rate regimes has missed the advantages of a strategy of a variable target exchange rate when the central bank tries to maintain equilibrium output in the face of various shocks to the economy. Based on a standard IS-LM-AS macromodel, optimal combinations of exchange rate and money supply changes are found that insulate the economy against all stipulated shocks. However, these combinations vary from one shock to another; therefore recognition signals are necessary. Continuous information on some variables allows the central bank to identify shocks if they can be guaranteed to occur individually, but not otherwise. As a second-best strategy, ‘defensively managed exchange rates’ appear suitable. The paper also discusses some side effects and other practical difficulties of a managed exchange rate as an automatic stabilizer.     

The Effects of US Macroeconomic Surprises on the Intraday Movements of Foreign Exchange Rates: Cases of USD-EUR and USD-JPY Exchange Rates

This paper characterizes the intraday dynamics of the high frequency US Dollar (USD)–Euro (EUR) and US Dollar (USD)–Japanese Yen (JPY) foreign exchange rates that have been subject to macroeconomic fundamentals. Even though the FIGARCH model with a normality assumption is found to be a good starting point, it appears to be inappropriate to represent the underlying movements of the high frequency returns due to the occurrences of jumps. Hence, this paper relies on the FIGARCH model with the mixture distribution that allows for the time-varying jumps that are determined by the US macroeconomic surprises. This paper generally finds that the US macroeconomic surprises are closely related to the intraday movements in the volatility process of the high frequency returns process through the jumps. In particular, the US macroeconomic surprises appear to affect the movements in the volatility process of the foreign exchange rates asymmetrically depending on the signs of the surprises and spuriously increasing the long memory persistence in the volatility process due to the jumps.     

Fiscal Discipline as a Social Norm: The European Stability Pact

This paper reviews the arguments for and against the “Stability and Growth Pact.” We find the theoretical debate to be inconclusive, as both externality and credibility arguments can be used to yield opposite and plausible conclusions. Empirical evidence in favor of a Pact‐like rule is also scant. We therefore suggest the view that the Stability Pact is a public social norm, that countries obey in order to preserve reputation among the other members of the European Union. Using this extreme—but not implausible—hypothesis, we build a simple model similar in spirit to Akerlof's (1980) seminal work on social norms, and we show that reputation issues may cause the emergence of a stable but inferior equilibrium. Increased heterogenity generally has the effect of further reducing aggregate welfare; we conclude that the problems posed by the Pact/social norm are likely to increase following the enlargement, when a number of countries anxious to prove their “soundness” joined the club.     

中国外汇储备规模与汇率关系的实证研究——基于人民币对国外主要币种汇率的分析

在目前中国外汇储备连年增长、人民币相对美元升值的背景下,运用协整、Granger因果关系检验等时间序列分析方法对外汇储备和人民币对国外主要币种汇率关系进行实证分析.研究结果表明,外汇储备与人民币对国外主要币种汇率之间不具有长期的协整性,但存在从外汇储备到人民币对国外主要币种汇率的单向因果关系.外汇储备的增长会引起人民币对国外主要币种汇率上升,短期内外汇储备的增长会对人民币汇率升值带来一定的压力.中国应考虑对人民币名义汇率的调整,从而缓解人民币的升值压力,抑制外汇储备的增长速度.     

The Volatility of Real Exchange Rates: The Australian Case

This paper presents an empirical investigation into factors underlying the real U.S.-Australian dollar exchange rate. We find that the random walk model of the real exchange rate can be improved by various GARCH specifications. In particular, we find that the estimated risk premium from a GARCH-M model is not robust to model specification. When the model is extended to include the $US/Yen real exchange rate and an index of commodity prices the GARCH-in-mean term is no longer significant. The additional variables seem to account for the increased volatility of the real exchange rate in the post-1983 period. Somewhat surprisingly, we find that changes in the Australian term spread and US-Australian interest rate differential have little or no explanatory power for the real exchange rate.     

Slovakia's Surge: The New System's Impact on Fiscal Decentralisation

Slovakia's transition history long paralleled that of the Czech Republic, but the former adopted bold new reforms early in this decade. This article is a comparative treatment of fiscal decentralisation since 1993 and more recent reforms of public administration, the two efforts representing the foundation of the New System. Czech experience is invoked simply to provide an appropriate benchmark for the evaluation of Slovakia's New System introduced in 2004, including the 19% ‘flat tax’ and other striking measures in local public finance.

The second focus of the article is on the macroeconomic impact of the New System. It is too early to perceive what its long-term effects will be, so this treatment is more tentative. But because one would like to know whether Slovakia's return to an economic growth path is actually a result of the New System and whether this recent growth will persist, these issues are given some consideration.     

Bilateral Exchange Rates and Jobs

We study the labor market effects of realignment in fixed bilateral exchange rates, such as China's peg to the US dollar. We employ the open economy model by de Melo and Robinson to identify the core parameters of the real, trade side of the economy driving the unemployment effects of bilateral exchange rate realignment. A small open economy version of the model is explored analytically and a large multicountry version numerically. Analytics in the small open economy model show that unemployment effects of adjusting of a bilateral peg hinge on the fraction exported to and imported from the trading partner. A larger fraction exported to and a smaller fraction imported from the trading partner make it more likely that revaluation of a trading partner's currency has beneficial effects. Numerics in the large economy model show that Chinese revaluation can generate both positive and negative unemployment effects depending upon underlying parameter values. Adverse unemployment effects can go along with an improving trade balance.     

Collective Perception and Exchange Rates

The authors' research suggests that people search online for information on currency exchange rates and that this information-seeking process can be translated into data on people's interest for a given currency. The authors utilize Google Trends data to capture the level of interest in 3 currency pairs: the euro, the pound sterling, and the Canadian dollar against the U.S. dollar and conduct a multivariate data analysis in the context of vector-autoregressive models. The findings suggest that there is a small but significant impact on collective perception on exchange rates. The authors show that Google Trends data could be an important source of information for investors looking into exchange rate trends.