This paper examines the external sustainability and competitiveness of Benin’s economy. Balance of payments flows suggest Benin’s external position is sustainable. Large trade and current account deficits are comfortably financed by inflows through the capital and financial...

This Selected Issues Paper and Statistical Appendix for Niger are discussed. The Nigerien economic outlook has been improving since 1999. After a long period of decline in per capita income, growth accelerated through 2007, attaining an annual average of 4 percent, or about 1 percent in per...

We show the importance of a dynamic aggregation bias in accounting for the PPP puzzle. We prove that established time-series and panel methods substantially exaggerate the persistence of real exchange rates because of heterogeneity in the dynamics of disaggregated relative prices. When...

We reassess exchange rate prediction using a wider set of models that have been proposed in the last decade. The performance of these models is compared against two reference specifications-purchasing power parity and the sticky-price monetary model. The models are estimated in first-difference...

This paper provides an exchange rate assessment for sub-Saharan African economies by using methodologies similar to those developed by the International Monetary Fund’s Consultative Group on Exchange Rate Issues. As in the World Economic Outlook (IMF, 2009a), the unbalanced panel dataset...

This paper focuses on assessments of real exchange rates using PPP data and examines their limitations when these are based exclusively on bivariate estimations. It begins by presenting an analytical framework of the real exchange rate that shows that these estimations make many restrictive...

This paper provides a selective overview of nonlinear exchange rate models recently proposed in the literature and assesses their contribution to understanding exchange rate behavior. Two key questions are examined. The first question is whether nonlinear autoregressive models of real exchange...

This papers estimates the equilibrium exchange rate for Armenia using three different approaches: the purchasing power parity (PPP) approach, the behavioral equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach, and the external sustainability (ES) approach. All three approaches suggest that the dram was...

Univariate studies of the hypothesis of unit roots in real exchange rates have yielded consensus point estimates of the half-life of deviations from purchasing power parity of between three to five years. However, least squares-based estimates of half-lives are biased downward. Accordingly, we...

This paper examines whether the real exchange rates of commodity-exporting countries and the real prices of their commodity exports move together over time. Using IMF data on the world prices of 44 commodities and national commodity export shares, we construct new monthly indices of national...