International Business Cycles and Exchange Rates

Models of international real business cycles are not able to account for the high volatility of exports, imports, the trade balance, and the terms of trade. By introducing exogenous exchange rate movements in addition to standard technological shocks, the model presented here comes much closer to replicating the relatively high volatility observed in the data while also improving other moments.     

Non‐linearities,Business Cycles and Exchange Rates

This paper conjoins the disparate empirical literatures on exchange rate models and monetary policy models, with special reference to the importance of output, inflation gaps and exchange rate targets. It focuses in on the dollar/euro exchange rate, and the differential results arising from using alternative measures of the output gap for the US and for the Euro area. A comparison of ‘in‐sample’ prediction against alternative models of exchange rates is also conducted. In addition to predictive power, I also assess the various models' plausibility as economic explanations for exchange rate movements, based on the conformity of coefficient estimates with priors. Taylor rule fundamentals appear to do as well, or better, than other models at the 1‐year horizon.     

Inflation and Exchange Rate Regimes in Mexico

The paper presents a version of the exchange-rate-regime model of inflation. Quarterly data from Mexico from 1946 to 1995 are used to estimate and test a simultaneous-equation model for wage inflation, price inflation and industrial production, taking account of the Lucas critique and the statistical properties of the data. The main finding is that, after the fall of the fixed-exchange-rate regime in 1976, there was a Barro–Gordon type inflation bias owing to the inability of policymakers to commit to low inflation. There is no significant evidence of political business cycles in inflation.     

The Tale of Three Amigos: Remittances, Exchange Rates, and Money Demand in Mexico

The author analyzes the relationship between remittances, exchange rates, and money demand in Mexico. He finds that shocks to remittances have a positive impact on domestic money demand. The results also suggest the existence of a bi-directional relationship between remittances and the exchange rate. Furthermore, positive shocks to remittances are found to have a negative impact on Mexico's real exchange rate. This indicates that remittances appreciate the Mexican peso and therefore may impact on the competitiveness of the tradable sector negatively.     

Business Cycles,Economic Crises,and the Poor

This paper examines whether output contractions associated with downturns and crises have an asymmetric effect on poverty. Several potential sources of asymmetry are identified first. A vector auto-regression model (involving the output gap, unemployment, real wages, and the poverty rate) is then used to test whether the initial cyclical position of the economy, and the magnitude of the initial drop in the output gap in a downturn, matter in assessing the impact of output shocks on poverty. Empirical results for Brazil indicate that poverty shows less sensitivity to output shocks when the economy is initially in a downturn.     

The Risk Premium, Exchange Rate Expectations, and the Forward Exchange Rate: Estimates for the Yen–Dollar Rate

The hypothesis that the forward rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot rate has been rejected in many empirical studies. The rejection of this hypothesis could occur because market behavior is inconsistent with rational–expectations or because there exists a risk premium. Equations describing the forward premium and the change in the exchange rate are estimated jointly, and tests of both the rational–expectations and no–risk–premium hypotheses are conducted. Empirical estimates, obtained using quarterly data for the yen–dollar exchange rate, reject the rational–expectations hypothesis and suggest that there exists a time–varying risk premium.     

Inflation and the Exchange Rate: The Role of Aggregate Demand Elasticity

This paper examines the effect of aggregate demand elasticity on the exchange rate when inflation occurs. We discover that both the source of the inflation, whether demand-pull or cost-push, and the elasticity of aggregate demand with respect to the price level, are of consequence for the exchange rate. We obtain two primary conclusions. First, the effect on the exchange rate of cost push inflation is ambiguous and is partially determined by the price level elasticity of aggregate demand. In particular, and assuming that the two examined countries have equivalent aggregate supply elasticities, we conclude that the nation with the less elastic aggregate demand function will see its currency appreciate relative to the other. Second, demand-pull inflation results in an unambiguous increase in the exchange rate but the size of that increase is partially a function of aggregate demand elasticity. Assuming again that two countries have equivalent aggregate supply elasticities, that country with the more elastic aggregate demand will experience currency appreciation.     

汇率变动与我国货币需求非线性误差修正

文章引入汇率变动变量对开放经济条件下我国货币需求函数进行研究.经验结果表明:(1)汇率变动是影响我国长期货币需求稳定的关键因素,且汇率变动对我国货币需求有正向的影响;(2)线性误差修正模型描述我国广义货币需求动态并不合适,非线性误差修正模型则能对广义货币需求的短期动态机制进行较好的解释.     

Business Cycles in Yugoslavia

Although Haiti's 2010 earthquake brought to light the inconceivable poverty existing in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti's struggle for economic development long pre-dated that earthquake. One problem in Haiti is the high level of gender inequity, and we argue that human development theory is the best mode for change. We provide a brief background of Haiti's economic development over the last several decades, along with the status of women's rights and gender-differentiated socioeconomic outcomes. We analyze the ways that policy neglect of gender equity in Haiti has contributed to failed economic development in the past. Finally, we identify ways that other developing countries have successfully incorporated a focus on gender equity in their development strategy, particularly in the face of natural disaster and financial crisis. Our goal is working toward a set of leading practices consistent with institutionalism that can be used in relating gender (in)equality to economic development.     

Credit and Business Cycles

This paper presents two dynamic models of the economy in which credit constraints arise because creditors cannot force debtors to repay debts unless the debts are secured by collateral. The credit system becomes a powerful propagation mechanism by which the effects of shocks persist and amplify through the interaction between collateral values, borrowers' net worth and credit limits. In particular, when fixed assets serve as collateral, I show that relatively small, temporary shocks to technology or wealth distribution can generate large, persistent fluctuations in output and asset prices.
JEL Classification Numbers: E32, E44     

中国转型期的信贷波动与经济波动

本文基于1981-2002年的季度数据,考察了在经济转轨的不同阶段我国信贷波动的特征,并通过时差相关分析和Granger因果关系检验,分析了信贷波动与经济周期波动的相互关系.结果表明,总体上信贷波动与经济周期波动基本同步,信贷扩张和收缩是产生经济周期波动的显著影响因素,但这种影响从20世纪90年代中期开始有所下降,同时,信贷波动的内生性开始显现.     

Balance Mechanics and Business Cycles

Abstract

Many mainstream business cycle theories were not able to cope with the financial crisis theoretically. With his concept of balance mechanics, the German economist Wolfgang Stützel developed a framework for comparing different theories of business cycles which helps to understand the reasons for this inadequacy. This paper works out Stützel’s considerations and his four “model cases” of cycles more systematically and shows how the theories of the business cycle Stützel mentioned are related to theories discussed today. Modern business cycle theories did not cover all “model cases” and therefore had a blind spot.     

混频数据、投资冲击与中国宏观经济波动

使用中国数据估计DSGE模型时,由于缺乏季度的支出法消费、投资数据,一般使用月度的社会消费品零售额、固定资产投资数据加总作为替代。本文利用这一数据对DSGE模型进行贝叶斯估计,发现参数估计结果会出现系统性偏差;而使用年度的支出法消费、投资数据进行估计,模型的样本外预测绩效总体更优。基于这一结果,将年度频率的支出法投资、消费数据与季度频率的GDP、货币、通胀数据相结合,同时又结合投资品价格的年度(1992—1997年)、半年度(1998—2002年)和季度(2003—2016年)数据,对模型重新估计并进行方差分解。结果表明:中国产出波动的最主要解释因素是与投资相关的冲击,其次为货币政策冲击、持久性技术冲击和外生需求冲击。     

资本账户、法定汇率制度与事实汇率制度

文章对资本账户开放程度以及法定与事实汇率制度之差异的共同决定过程进行了研究。文章以世界各国自布雷顿森林体系崩溃以来的相关数据为基础,利用离散变量联立方程模型进行计量经济学分析。经验分析的结果表明,资本账户的开放程度,对于法定与事实汇率制度的差异有显著影响,但后者对前者的影响并不显著。此外,无论是资本账户的开放程度,还是法定与事实汇率制度的差异,都存在显著的状态依赖性。     

Business Cycles, Heuristic Expectation Formation, and Contracyclical Policies

We develop a simple Keynesian‐type business cycle model in which agents use simple heuristics to predict national income. To be precise, the agents either form (destabilizing) extrapolative expectations or (stabilizing) regressive expectations, a decision which depends on the rules forecasting performance in the recent past. As it turns out, an unending evolutionary competition between the rules may generate endogenous complex business cycles. We also explore the effectiveness of some common governmental intervention strategies. Our model suggests that policy makers may be able to stabilize output fluctuations, yet due to system immanent nonlinearities this may prove to be quite difficult.     

Business Cycles: Theory, Evidence and Policy Implications

This paper looks at recent advances in the study of aggregate fluctuations. The emphasis is on three prominent areas of research: the stochastic growth model, economies which exhibit macroeconomic complementarities and models that emphasize heterogeneity. Each section of the paper outlines the theory, examines relevant empirical evidence and then discusses some policy implications of the analysis.     

Income Tax and Endogenous Business Cycles

This paper investigates the dynamic implication of balanced–budget rules. We introduce public goods to an overlapping generations model with production and assume that public goods in each period are financed by the labor income taxes. We show that in our model, if the cost of providing public goods is financed by lump–sum taxes, endogenous fluctuations would never occur. But in cases where the government adopts proportional taxes, periodic and chaotic equilibria can exist.     

Monetary Policy Rules and Business Cycles

Basic features of business cycle properties under both exogenous and endogenous monetary policy rules are examined in calibrated dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with nominal rigidities (the nominal wage contract model, the monopolistic competition model with price adjustment costs and a combination of these models). The experiments show that the difference in business cycle features under exogenous and endogenous monetary policy rules is as large as the change generated by introducing nominal rigidities (and monetary disturbances). This result suggests that, for monetary business cycle research, developing a proper way to incorporate endogenous monetary policy rules may be as important as developing new transmission mechanisms of monetary policy disturbances.