Open Economy Macroeconomic Model Research Articles

Transmission of Nominal Exchange Rate Changes to Export Prices and Trade Flows and Implications for Exchange Rate Policy

We discuss how the welfare ranking of fixed and flexible exchange rate regimes in a New Open Economy Macroeconomics model depends on the interplay between the degree of exchange rate pass-through and the elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods. We identify combinations of these two parameters for which flexible and for which fixed exchange rates are superior with respect to welfare as measured by a representative household's utility level. We estimate the two parameters for six non-EMU European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Sweden, United Kingdom) using a heterogeneous dynamic panel approach.

The real exchange rate of the dollar for a panel of OECD countries: Balassa–Samuelson or distribution sector effect?

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the role of productivity in the behaviour of the real exchange rate of the dollar against the currencies of a group of OECD countries. To do this, a general specification is tested, with particular attention being paid to the breakdown of the productivity variable into tradables, non-tradables and distribution sector productivity. The applied technique relies on the pool mean group estimation methodology proposed by Pesaran et al. [Pesaran, M.H., Shin, Y., Smith, R.P., 1999. Pooled mean group estimation of dynamic heterogeneous panels, Journal of the American Statistical Association 94 (446), 621–634] to obtain error correction models in panels without imposing equal long-run and short-run parameters. The results point to the relevance of differences in the distribution sector productivity for the real exchange rate, especially in those countries that belong to the European Union. These results are in accordance with New Open Economy Macroeconomics models predictions as far as the role of both distribution sector productivity and fiscal expenditure on the real exchange rate are concerned. Journal of Comparative Economics 36 (4) (2008) 620–632.

Macroeconomic Interdependence with Trade and Multinational Activities

AbstractThis paper examines how differences in the integration strategies followed by firms active in foreign markets affect the way productivity and policy shocks spread their effects worldwide. The analysis incorporates costly trade and local sales by multinational firms in a general‐equilibrium open economy macroeconomic model. The mode of foreign market access is found to play a major role in the international business cycle, affecting the dimension of consumption and output spillovers worldwide. We show that despite financial markets being effectively complete, consumption risks may not be fully insured in the world economy as long as multinational firms discriminate prices across markets. Furthermore, cross‐country differences in firms' integration strategies can account for extensive asymmetries in the way country‐specific and global shocks are transmitted in the world economy. We argue that this may have relevant consequences for the welfare implications of monetary and trade policies.

Sharing Money Creation in a Monetary Union

How to share money creation among the members of the European Monetary Union? To address this issue, we construct a two-country New Open-economy Macroeconomics model of an asymmetric monetary union with an incomplete financial market and home bias in consumption. We consider two sharing rules consistent with the current regulations of the European System of Central Banks. First, each participating National Central Bank supplies half of the European Central Bank determined money creation in the monetary union. Secondly, each National Central Bank adapts the national increase in money demand, under the constraint that the total money creation in the union does not exceed the level determined by the ECB for the whole union. We show that the current sharing rule, which ignores countries' heterogeneity, is superior in terms of welfare. The key role of the current account is emphasized. It proves an efficient decentralized mechanism for allocation of money.

Local Currency Pricing versus Producer Currency Pricing: Direct Evidence from German Exporters

AbstractIn new open-economy macroeconomic models, the assumption on the pricing behavior of firms in international trade plays a central role. Whether firms apply producer currency pricing (PCP) or local currency pricing (LCP) crucially affects, for example, the design of optimal monetary policy or the choice of the optimal exchange rate system. However, empirical evidence has so far been mixed and is furthermore mostly of an indirect nature. This paper draws direct evidence on the price-setting behavior of German exporters from a questionnaire-based survey. We find that PCP applies in more integrated markets. Differences between LCP firms and PCP firms mainly exist with respect to the use of mark-ups and in the validity of the law of one price for their respective products.

Using a New Open Economy Macroeconomics Model to Make Real Nominal Exchange Rate Forecasts

In this paper we undertake an out-of-sample evaluation of the ability of a model to forecast the Swedish Krona's real and nominal effective exchange rate, using a cointegrating relation between the real exchange rate, relative output, terms of trade and net foreign assets (or alternatively the trade balance). The cointegrating relation is derived from a theoretical model of the New Open Economy Macroeconomics type. The forecasting performance of our estimated vector error correction model is quite good once the dynamics of the model have been augmented with an interest rate differential.

Real Effects of Monetary Policy in New Zealand

AbstractThis article analyses the dynamic effects of unexpected domestic and foreign monetary policy shocks on industrial output in New Zealand based on a new open economy macroeconomic model. Empirical analyses are performed using unrestricted recursive open economy vector autoregressive models involving policy and non‐policy variables for New Zealand and four of its most important trading partners (that is, Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States). The empirical findings are in accord with the qualitative predictions of the conventional monetary transmission mechanism applicable to a small open economy. Consequently, no empirical anomalies are observed in the dynamic behaviour of New Zealand industrial output in response to restrictive monetary innovations of domestic and foreign origin.

Devaluations, Output and the Balance Sheet Effect: A Structural Econometric Analysis

This paper estimates a new open economy macroeconomic model for South Korea to determine the output effect of currency devaluations. Three transmission mechanisms are considered: the expenditure-switching, the balance sheet, and a monetary channel associated to a nominal exchange rate target. Devaluations are defined as an increase in this target. This allows to isolate the effects of an explicit exogenous devaluationary policy shock. Ceteris paribus, a devaluation is found to be expansionary. Output contractions in South Korea should then be associated with a different shock such as an adverse shock on the international interest rate or on export demand.

Exchange Rate Dynamics of New Zealand

This paper examines the exchange rate effects of monetary policy shocks in New Zealand in the framework of the international monetary transmission mechanism. The model variables are suggested by a hybrid New Open Economy Macroeconomic (NOEM) model. Our empirical analysis indicates plausible dynamic behaviour of nominal and real effective exchange rates in New Zealand due to unexpected monetary policy innovations, without any significant anomalies. In all cases, the impact effect of domestic monetary contraction is found to be an appreciation of the nominal and real effective exchange rates.

Currency Appreciation and Current Account Adjustment

A central aspect of the recent debate on global imbalances and the US current account deficit is the role of the exchange rate peg being followed by China and other Asian economies. While one view has stressed the need for Asian currency appreciation, another focuses on the importance of fiscal adjustment and more generally adjustment in relative savings rates in the US and Asian economies. This paper develops a simple two-region open economy macroeconomic model to analyze the alternative impacts of currency appreciation and fiscal adjustment on the current account. We stress a number of structural features of emerging Asian economies that may make currency appreciation an ineffective means of current account adjustment relative to fiscal policy changes. In addition, we note that there may be a welfare conflict between regions on the best way to achieve adjustment.

Currency appreciation and current account adjustment

A central aspect of the recent debate on global imbalances and the US current account deficit is the role of the exchange rate peg being followed by China and other Asian economies. While one view has stressed the need for Asian currency appreciation, another focuses on the importance of fiscal adjustment and more generally adjustment in relative savings rates in the US and Asian economies. This paper develops a simple two-region open economy macroeconomic model to analyze the alternative impacts of currency appreciation and fiscal adjustment on the current account. We stress a number of structural features of emerging Asian economies that may make currency appreciation an ineffective means of current account adjustment relative to fiscal policy changes. In addition, we note that there may be a welfare conflict between regions on the best way to achieve adjustment.

External Constraints on Monetary Policy and the Financial Accelerator

We develop a small open economy macroeconomic model where financial conditions influence aggregate behavior. Our goal is to explore the connection between the exchange rate regime and financial distress. We first show that a calibrated version of the model captures well the behavior of the Korean economy during its financial crisis period of 1997–98. In particular, the model accounts for the sharp increase in lending rates and the large drop in output, employment, investment, and measured productivity. The financial market frictions play an important role, further, explaining roughly half the decline in overall economic activity. We then perform some counterfactual exercises to illustrate how the fixed exchange rate regime likely exacerbated the crisis by tying the hands of monetary policy.

Can the new open economy macroeconomic model explain exchange rate fluctuations?

This paper explores the successes and failures of the new open economy macroeconomics more critically by addressing the performance of the model at all frequencies along the line of Watson's [Watson, M.W., 1993. Measures of Fit for Calibrated Models, Journal of Political Economy 101, 1011-1041] measures of fit. This paper shows that the NOEM model with either PCP or PTM is not successful in generating the spectral density of the selected variables calculated from the data. In particular, the model cannot generate mass spectra of the exchange rates at low frequencies as in the data. It shows that the NOEM model with either separable preference or incomplete asset market cannot generate the typical hump-shaped spectra of exchange rates.

Public Infrastructures, Public Consumption, and Welfare in a New-Open-Economy-Macro Model

This paper focuses on the trade-off faced by governments in deciding the allocation of public expenditures between productivity-enhancing public infrastructures and utility-enhancing public consumption. From the modeling point of view, the paper augments a standard New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model by introducing productive public infrastructures. The results show that a temporary increase in the domestic stock of public capital financed by a reduction in public consumption reduces domestic welfare in the short run because the temporary gains from higher productivity do not compensate domestic residents for the utility loss due to lower public consumption. If the policy shift is permanent domestic utility is likely to increase, while foreign residents suffer short-run welfare losses but benefit from welfare gains in the long run. This analysis implies that a permanent domestic reallocation of public spending might result in a virtuous global technological cycle.

Exchange rate pass-through to domestic prices: Does the inflationary environment matter?

The paper tests a hypothesis suggested by J. Taylor [2000. Low inflation, pass-through, and the pricing power of firms. European Economic Review 44 (7), 1389–1408] that a low inflationary environment leads to a low exchange rate pass-through to domestic prices. To test this hypothesis, the paper derives a pass-through relation based on new open-economy macroeconomic models. A large database that includes 1979–2000 data for 71 countries is used to estimate this relation. There is strong evidence of a positive and significant association between the pass-through and the average inflation rate across countries and periods. The inflation rate, moreover, dominates other macroeconomic variables in explaining cross-regime differences in the pass-through.

Euro-Dollar Real Exchange Rate Dynamics in an Estimated Two-Country Model: What is Important and What is Not

We use a Bayesian approach to estimate a standard two-country New Open Economy Macroeconomics model using data for the United States and the euro area, and we perform model comparisons to study the importance of departing from the law of one price and complete markets assumptions. Our results can be summarized as follows. First, we find that the baseline model does a good job in explaining real exchange rate volatility but at the cost of overestimating volatility in output and consumption. Second, the introduction of incomplete markets allows the model to better match the volatilities of all real variables. Third, introducing sticky prices in Local Currency Pricing improves the fit of the baseline model but does not improve the fit as much as introducing incomplete markets. Finally, we show that monetary shocks have played a minor role in explaining the behavior of the real exchange rate, while both demand and technology shocks have been important.

Exchange Rate Pass-Through in the Euro Area

Exchange rate pass-through in a set of euro area prices along the pricing chain is examined in this paper. First, a vector autoregression (VAR) approach is used to analyze the joint time-series behavior of the euro exchange rate and a system of area-wide prices in response to an exchange rate shock. Second, the impulseresponse functions from the VAR estimates are used to identify-in a "new openeconomy macroeconomics model"-the key behavioral parameters that best replicate the pattern of exchange rate pass-through in the euro area. A key finding is that traded goods-both extra-area exports and imports-behave as though they are predominately priced in euros. The area-wide findings are compared with those for other major industrial economies. [JEL F41, F31, E31]

Fiscal Policy in the New Open Economy Macroeconomics and Prospects for Fiscal Policy Coordination

Abstract. This paper reviews the literature on the effects of fiscal policy in new open economy macroeconomics (NOEM) models, complementing it with additional results that attempt to clarify the importance of the exchange rate regime (fixed or flexible) and of the type of policy (balanced budget or debt‐financed). Fixed exchange rates only seem to postpone the costs from the short to the long run, but the type of policy is crucial in determining the welfare impact of fiscal expansions. The paper also reviews the recent literature on fiscal policy coordination and shows that there is already some evidence that the gains from coordination in this area can be potentially large but draw attention to the need for reflecting more on the role of fiscal policy as a stabilization tool and on possible interactions between fiscal and monetary policy.

Transmission of Exchange-Rate Variations in an Estimated, Small Open-Economy Model

This paper addresses the transmission of exchange-rate variations in an estimated, small open-economy model. In contrast to the standard set-up of New Open Economy Macroeconomics models, imported goods are treated here as material inputs to production. The resulting model structure is transparent and tractable while also able to account for imperfect pass through of exchange-rate shocks. The model is estimated with Bayesian methods on German data and the key finding is that a substantial depreciation of the nominal exchange rate leads to only modest e ects on CPI-inflation. An extended version of the model reveals that relatively small weight is placed on foreign consumption.

The Macroeconomics of International Financial Trade

A driving factor in any open-economy macroeconomics model is the degree of international financial integration. This suggests that understanding the sources of the recent explosive growth in cross-border asset trade and the impact of the upscaling in gross and net international investment positions on key open-economy macroeconomic variables such as the trade balance and the real exchange rate is critically important for policy analysis. Accordingly, the goal of this paper is to highlight some of the main results emerging from this fast-expanding research field.