Should Estonia euroize?

Estonia has been operating a currency board arrangement tied to the deutschemark, now the euro, since 1992. Optimal currency area considerations, policy orientation and the flexibility of prices and wages in Estonia support a case for monetary union with the eurozone. But the European Union requires Estonia to wait until EU accession and subsequent Eurosystem accession before it can adopt the euro. In the meanwhile, gains expected from euroization — lower and more stable interest rates, lower transactions costs in trade and increased transparency, all of which would promote trade, investments and economic growth — would be forgone. In this context, the paper raises the question, should Estonia go ahead and euroize now? JEL classification: E42, E58, F33.     

Anticipated foreign military threat, arms accumulation, and the current account in a small open economy

This paper examines the effects of an anticipated foreign military threat on consumption, the home weapons stock, and net foreign asset position in a small open economy. If the utility function is separable between butter and guns, the economy decreases both butter and guns when the news arrives, accumulates foreign assets prior to the foreign threat realization, and increases guns as the foreign threat realizes. If the utility function is nonseparable between butter and guns, the economy may have two dynamic responses. The first is similar to the separable case, except that consumption exhibits a discrete jump when the foreign threat realizes. The second is that the economy increases both butter and guns on impact, decumulates foreign assets prior to the foreign threat implementation, but either increases or decreases guns as the foreign threat realizes.     

Exchange-rate pass-through and market structure

We consider a situation in whichn firms located in market 1 andm firms located in market 2 each sell a commodity which is homogeneous within each market but may differ between markets. All firms sell on both markets. Each market has its own currency. The market demand functions differ. We give some basic results on the effects of exchange-rate changes and then show the following. When these markets are independent on the cost side (constant marginal costs) and demands are linear, a reduction in the number of firms (which might result from a merger) in market 1 increases the pass-through (of an appreciation of currency 2) in market 1 and decreases the pass-through in market 2. A similar occurrence in market 2 has the opposite effect. We give conditions under which, with identical economies of scope linking the markets, the sign of the price changes will be reversed when the number of foreign firms is small enough compared to the number of local firms. However, such sign reversals cannot occur in the two markets simultaneously.     

State tourism in China and USA

Schuchat, Molly G., “State Tourism in China and USA,” Annals of Tourism Research, October/December 1979, VI(4):425–434. This paper discusses the experiences available to most visitors to the Peoples Republic of China and to those visitors to the United States of America who are cultural exchange grantees. In the United States the Department of State contracts out the programming and direction of its officially invited guests to non-profit agencies that work in cooperation with a nationwide network of local volunteers. Almost all visitors to China, no matter who paid for their trip, were treated as official guests of the country, until 1978. It is only in the last year that they have been considered tourists at all. The range of contacts and experiences offered in both countries have a great deal of similarity. One focus of the paper is on what these guests (or any others not so similarly shepherded) are able to learn of countries not their own through exposure to public life. The material was gathered on visits to China in January, 1977 and September, 1978, and in interviews with programming and interpreting staffs, volunteers and grantees in Washington, D.C.     

人民币汇率定价的逆周期因子：启用时间、驱动因素与实施效果*

本文对2017年5月—2019年9月期间人民币汇率定价过程中逆周期因子的使用进行了测算，并构建非限制性VAR模型分析了中国央行两次启用逆周期因子的驱动因素和实施效果。研究发现：第一，相对于官方公布时间，两次逆周期因子调节均呈现出提前开始和滞后结束的情况，且调整幅度呈现逐渐收窄的趋势；第二，第二次逆周期因子的调节幅度大于第一次；第三，人民币汇率波动是第一次逆周期因子调节的主要驱动因素，而离岸在岸汇价差和汇率政策不确定性是第二次逆周期因子调节的主要驱动因素；第四，两次逆周期因子调节均对人民币汇率波动产生了抑制作用，但加剧了离岸市场人民币贬值预期。     

汇率风险套期比率确定方法的比较与评析

套期比率确定方法可大致分为基于回归技术和基于均值/方差理论的套期比率确定方法两类。采用新的计量分析工具来研究不完备市场中的套期保值,以及带“摩擦”的金融市场中的套期保值,将会成为现代套期保值理论新的理论领域。     

The Policy Challenge with Floating Exchange Rates: Turkey’s Recent Experience

This paper evaluates the developments in the Turkish economy in light of the Central Bank of Turkey’s (CBT) policies during a recent period of floating exchange rate system (March 2001–July 2003). It is found that the CBT was effective in containing volatility and reducing the average inflation rate while there was a strong recovery of output. However, there are accumulated risks in the economy. Particularly, the extreme appreciation of the Turkish lira during this period and the record level of real interest rates give the impression that the current state of the economy is fragile. Unless the government accelerates the structural reform process and pursues sound fiscal policies to reduce the public sector borrowing requirement and the debt ratio, an adverse shock to the system may trigger a reversal of fortune.     

ARDL Approach to the Exchange Rate Overshooting in Taiwan

This paper re-examines Dornbusch’s (1976) sticky-price monetary model to exchange rate determination by employing both conventional Johansen’s (1988, 1990, 1994) maximum likelihood cointegration test and the ARDL Bound test by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) for the monthly data of Taiwan over the period 1986:01 ∼ 2003:04. Ambiguous results are found for the long-run equilibrium relationship between the NTD/USD exchange rate and macro fundamentals. With the advantage that ARDL Bound test incorporates both I(1) and I(0) series, we conclude our empirical evidence that there is no long-run equilibrium relationship between exchange rates and macro fundamentals. Moreover, for the short-run dynamic response, the result from the ARDL-UECM-MAIC (1, 10, 10, 8, 10) setting supports the overshooting of currency depreciation as pre-described by Dornbusch (1976). However, this overshooting phenomenon does not exist the current month, but one month after.JEL Classification: C32, B22, E44     

International Asset Excess Returns and Multivariate Conditional Volatilities

This paper constructs a multivariate model in relating multi-asset excess returns to their conditional variances. Applying weekly data to investigate the foreign-exchange risk premium, the evidence from a multivariate GARCH model shows that the foreign-exchange excess returns are significantly correlated with economic fundamentals such as the real interest-rate differential, long-short interest-rate spread differential, and equity-premium differential. The evidence also suggests that foreign-exchange excess returns are not independent of the conditional variances of these fundamental variables, supporting the time-varying risk-premium hypothesis.     

Business Cycles and FDI: Evidence from German Sectoral Data

Globalization has affected business cycle developments in OECD countries and has increased activities of firms across national borders. This paper analyzes whether these two developments are linked. We use a new firm-level data set on the foreign activities of German firms to test whether foreign activities are affected by business cycle developments. We aggregate the data by the sector of the reporting firm, the sector of the foreign affiliate, and the host country. Data are annual and cover the period 1989–2002. We find that German outward FDI increases in response to positive cyclical developments abroad and in response to a real depreciation of the domestic currency. JEL no. E3, F23