Does purchasing power parity hold sometimes? Regime switching in real exchange rates

Standard unit root tests are not very powerful in drawing conclusions regarding the validity of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Rather than asking whether PPP holds throughout the whole sample period, we examine, in this study, if PPP holds sometimes by employing Hamilton-type (1989) Markov regime switching models. When at least one of multiple regimes is stationary, PPP holds locally within the regime. There are indeed various reasons that we should expect that the persistence of real exchange rates changes over time. Employing five real exchange rates spanning more than 100 years, we find herein strong evidence that the strength of PPP varies during the sample periods and that there exist stationary regimes in which PPP holds. Throughout the article, we also make comparisons to previous Markov regime switching estimation results by Kanas (2006) on the same data series. The new Markov switching model selection criterion of Smith et al. (2006), which is devised especially for discriminating Markov regime switching models, unambiguously indicates a preference for the Hamilton-type Markov regime switching model employed in this study. We also find that the evidence for PPP is not much different across different nominal exchange rate arrangements.     

中国真实利率的平稳性和区制性:基于马尔科夫区制转换模型

通过引入三种均值方差都可能不同的区制,并基于改进的马尔科夫区制转换模型对1989年2月至2010年4月中国真实利率演变的考察,结果表明不同阶段的真实利率的确存在不同的均值和方差;考虑到区制转换特征之后,真实利率大体平稳,有均值回复趋势。而以往的应用中,忽略了这种区制转换特征可能导致对真实利率预测值的系统性偏差。     

Equality of interest rates revisited: the multi‐country evidence

One influential aspect of international integration of financial markets is the possibility of reducing divergences between domestic interest rates and foreign interest rates or increasing the degree to which yields in different financial markets move together over time. In this study, we investigate the convergence of the real interest rates using the Kalman filter. Applying the modified Hall et al. () approach, we model the risk premium and convergence of real interest rates using the time‐varying parameter estimation techniques. We present evidence of risk premium and convergence for two blocks of countries—The Asian‐Pacific countries including the US, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea and the US‐European group including France, the UK, Germany and the US.     

Fiscal multipliers in good times and bad times

This paper estimates the magnitudes of government spending and tax multipliers within a regime-switching framework for the U.S. economy during the period 1949:1–2006:4. Our results show that the magnitudes of spending multipliers are larger during periods of low economic activity, while the magnitudes of tax multipliers are larger during periods of high economic activity. We also show that the magnitudes of fiscal multipliers got smaller for episodes of low growth, while they got larger for episodes of high growth in the post 1980 period. Analyzing the effects of government spending and taxes on consumption and investment spending indicates that the magnitude of the effects of fiscal shocks on consumption and investment is very small.     

Heterogeneous expectations in the foreign exchange market

In this study a regime-switching approach is applied to estimate the chartist and fundamentalist (c&f) exchange rate model originally proposed by Frankel and Froot (1986). The c&f model is tested against alternative regime-switching specifications applying likelihood ratio tests. Nested atheoretical models like the popular segmented trends model suggested by Engel and Hamilton (1990) are rejected in favour of the multi-agent model. Our findings turned out to be relatively robust when assessing the models sub-sample estimates and out-of-sample performance.JEL Classification: F31, F37, G12, G15 Correspondence to: S. Reitz     

Interest linkages between the US,UK and German interest rates: should the UK join the European Monetary Union?

In light of continuing mixed results in the literature, this paper re‐examines the German Dominance Hypothesis (GDH) and considers whether the UK should join the Eurozone. For this purpose, short‐term interest rate relationships between the UK, Germany, the Eurozone and the USA, for the period January 1982 to June 2007, are studied. The policy implication of a loss of monetary autonomy for the UK in favour of Germany or the European Central Bank (ECB) would give support to the UK joining the EMU as an economic response. From the early 1980s the Bundesbank’s responsibility was to use money growth targets to keep average inflation rate down in the long run. This long run objective suggests that an appropriate methodology for testing the GDH is to test whether the German stochastic trend is a driving stochastic trend. In other words we determine whether a permanent shock to the German interest rate has a permanent effect on the UK interest rate. To this end the structural shocks in a VECM are identified by imposing long‐run restrictions of the type developed in King et al. (1991). We apply the same techniques to testing whether the UK has suffered a loss of monetary autonomy in favour of the ECB.     

利率期限结构与宏观经济因素的动态相依性——基于VAR模型的经验研究

利率期限结构的变化受到各种宏观经济冲击的影响,宏观经济冲击通过利率期限结构的变化影响到资产收益曲线。文章通过估计和检验结构VAR模型,发现货币冲击、供给冲击和价格冲击都对短期利率产生了持续显著的影响,而对长期利率则没有显著作用效果。宏观经济冲击只对收益曲线的截距参数具有显著影响,而对收益曲线的斜率参数和曲率参数的影响微弱。     

Technological Innovations and the Interest Rate

We build a dynamic general equilibrium model that adds a banking sector to the standard RBC model. We look at the response of the real interest rate to innovations in the banks' technology and in the nonbank firms' technology. While technological innovations in the nonbanking sector put upward pressure on the interest rate, technological innovations in banks exert downward pressure on the interest rate. This implies that, if the technological innovations in banks are strong enough, stochastic simulation experiments generate negative correlations between the real interest rate and current and future values of real output. This is especially significant because negative correlations between the interest rate and output are a key post-war U.S. business cycle fact difficult to replicate in benchmark dynamic models.     

Seasonality patterns in tanker spot freight rate markets

The aim of this paper is to investigate the existence and nature of seasonality (deterministic or stochastic) in tanker freight markets and measure and compare it across sub-sectors and under different market conditions (expansionary and contractionary) for the period January 1978 to December 1996. The existence of stochastic seasonality is rejected for all freight series while results on deterministic seasonality indicate increases in rates in November and December and decreases in rates from January to April. Seasonality is found to be varying across markets depending on vessel size and market condition. Seasonality comparisons under different market conditions, an issue investigated for the first time in the econometrics literature using Markov Switching models, reveal that seasonal rate movements are more pronounced when the market is recovering compared to smaller changes when the market is falling. This is well in line with the low and high elasticity of supply expected in expansionary and contractionary periods of shipping markets. The results have implications for tactical shipping operations such as budget planning, timing of dry-docking, vessel speed adjustments and repositioning. As expected, the out-of-sample forecasting performance of these Markov Regime Switching models is lacking somewhat, a result which is thought to be a consequence of having to predict ‘states’ simultaneously with mean values.     

Comparisons of robust tests for shifts in trend with an application to trend deviations of real exchange rates in the long run

We study the finite sample properties of tests for structural changes in the trend function of a time series that do not require knowledge of the degree of persistence in the noise component. The tests of interest are the quasi-Feasible Generalized Least Squares (FGLS) procedure by Perron and Yabu (2009b Perron, P and Yabu, T. 2009b. Testing for shifts in trend with an integrated or stationary noise component. Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 27: 369–96. [Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) and the weighted average of the regression t-statistics by Harvey et al. (2009 Harvey, DI, Leybourne, SJ and Taylor, AMR. 2009. Simple, robust, and powerful tests of the breaking trend hypothesis. Econometric Theory, 25: 995–1029. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), both of which have the same limit distribution whether the noise component is stationary or has a unit-root. We analyse the finite sample size and power properties of these tests under a variety of Data-Generating Processes (DGPs). The results show that the Perron–Yabu test has greater power overall. With respect to the size, the Harvey–Leybourne–Taylor test exhibits larger size distortions unless a moving-average component is present. Using the Perron and Yabu procedure to test for structural changes in the trend function of long-run real exchange rates with respect to the US dollar indicates that for 17 out of 19 countries, the series have experienced a shift in trend since the late nineteenth century.     

当前宏观经济条件下加息政策的效应分析

2007年上半年的主要宏观经济数据显示,目前我国经济流动性过剩问题更加突出,"三过"问题不断交织,物价上涨压力不断加大.围绕这些问题,部分经济学家认为经济过热现象不断显现,加息已在所难免;而另一部分人则认为中国经济并不存在过热问题,只是投资分布不合理,加息并不能解决当前的问题.本文结合这两种观点,分析加息政策的效应,并提出对这一问题的相应看法.     

通货膨胀不确定性及其对宏观经济的影响

利用马尔科夫范式转换模型分析了1985年1月到2009年7月我国通货膨胀的状态转换特征,并考察了与之伴随的不确定性及其对我国主要宏观经济变量的影响,发现通货膨胀不确定性仅对消费波动有显著影响,对投资和净出口的影响不显著,且方差不确定性和均值不确定性分别导致了消费波动增大与减小.通货膨胀不确定性凸显了宏观调控的重要性,积极、有效、透明的政策能够减少消费所面临的不确定性,保证居民消费的稳定和可持续增长,将有助于扩大内需,促进我国经济增长.