The research addresses three methodological questions that are central to effective exchange rate and macroeconomic management: what are the determinants and how to model the real exchange rate (RER), how to estimate its equilibrium level, and how to quantify the likely impact of misalignment on...

When univariate methods are applied to real exchange rates, point estimates of autoregressive coefficients typically imply very slow rates of mean reversion. Rogoff (1996) discusses that the remarkable consensus of 3-5 year half-lives of purchasing power parity (PPP) deviations is found among...

Looking closely at the PPP argument, it states that the currencies purchasing power should not change when comparing the same basket goods across countries, and these goods should all be tradable. Hence, if PPP is valid at all, it should be captured by the relative price indices that best fits...

This paper examines the impact of trade costs on real exchange rate volatil- ity. We model two channels endogenously in a Ricardian framework: (i) non- tradability and (ii) heterogeneous suppliers of traded goods. The ¯rst channel is examined by constructing a two-country Ricardian model of...

In spite of the concerns about "twin deficits" (fiscal and current account deficits) for the U.S., empirical evidence suggests that “twin divergence” is a more regular feature of the data: when the fiscal accounts worsen, the current account improves and vice versa. We thus study empirically...

The reduction of macroeconomic vulnerability in emerging markets is now at the core of the research agenda. Liability dollarization plays a vital role in the understanding of vulnerability and its implications (from a general equilibrium perspective) have been addressed in the literature via the...

A common feature of numerous studies on early warning systems (EWS) of currency crisis is the use of an index of exchange market pressure, defined as a weighted average of the rate of depreciation, the monthly percentage changes in international reserves, and sometimes the inclusion of the...

Nominal exchange rates are remarkably volatile. They ordinarily appear disconnected from the fundamentals of the economies whose currencies they price. These facts make up a classic puzzle about the international economy. If prices do not respond fully to changes in the nominal exchange rate,...

Abstract Recent financial crises showed that emerging countries are extremely vulnerable to sudden swings in international capital flows. In these countries, commonly, periods of relative tranquility, characterized by substantial capital inflows and real GDP growth, are followed by periods when...