In this paper, a structural gravity model is presented which features intra-sector heterogeneity in agricultural productivity systematically linked to land and climate characteristics. The "systematic heterogeneity" (SH) gravity model predicts that countries with similar land and climate...

The volatility of the exchange rate under floating rates can be interpreted in terms of approaches that allow for short term price rigidity as well as in terms of models that consider the magnification effect of new information. This paper combines the two approaches into a unified...

The purchasing power parity puzzle relates to the adjustment of real exchange rates. Real exchange rates are extremely volatile, suggesting that temporary shocks emanate from the monetary sector. But the half-life of real exchange rate deviations is extremely large -- 2.5 to 5 years. This...

A sticky-price model is used to motivate a structural VAR analysis of the current account and the real exchange rate for seven major industrialized countries (the US, Canada, the UK, Japan, Germany, France and Italy). The analysis is distinguished from previous work in that it adopts minimal...

This paper investigates the determinants of the real exchange rate using a panel of disaggregated data for the OECD countries. It also marries two literatures - one which uses panel data to measure relationships between changes in exchange rates to changes in the determinants, and the other...

The Balassa-Samuelson model, which explains real exchange rate movements in terms of sectoral productivities, rests on two components. First, for a class of technologies including Cobb-Douglas, the model implies that the relative price of nontraded goods in each country should reflect the...

A decade ago the Economist began an annual survey of Big Mac prices as a guide to whether currencies are trading at the right exchange rates. This paper asks how well the hamburger standard has performed. Although average deviations from absolute Big Mac parity are large for several currencies,...