The relationship between international payments and the real exchange rate—the “transfer problem”—is a classic question in international economics. We use new data on countries’ net external positions together with real exchange rate data to shed light on this question. We present a...

The paper describes six different methodologies that have been used to assess the equilibrium values of exchange rates and discusses their limitations. It applies several of the approaches to data for the United States as of 2006, illustrates that different approaches sometimes provide...

This paper employs newly constructed measures for productivity differentials, external imbalances, and commodity terms of trade to estimate a panel cointegrating relationship between real exchange rates and a set of fundamentals for a sample of 48 industrial countries and emerging markets. It...

Based on the Johansen cointegration estimation methodology, much of the long-run behavior of the real effective exchange rate of South Africa can be explained by real interest rate differentials, GDP per capita (both relative to trading partners), real commodity prices, trade openness, the...

Episodes of increased global risk aversion, also known as risk-off episodes, have become more frequent and severe since 2007. During these episodes, currency markets exhibit recurrent patterns, as the Japanese yen, Swiss franc, and U.S. dollar appreciate against other G-10 and emerging market...

A key issue in creating a new currency union is setting the rates to convert national currencies into the new union currency. Planned unions in the Gulf region and Africa are seeking methods to set the conversion rates when their new currencies are created. We propose a forward-looking...

Botswana's successive currency devaluations and recent move from a fixed to a crawling peg exchange rate regime raise the question of whether the exchange rate might be misaligned with economic fundamentals. This paper, applying the behavioral equilibrium exchange rate (BEER) approach, analyzes...

This paper shows that the response of inflation to external shocks is very different when the authorities target the real exchange rate than when they follow a fixed exchange rate or a preannounced crawling peg. Specifically, shocks that would have no effect on the steady-state inflation rate...

The paper describes three empirical models commonly used to conduct exchange rate assessments and applies them to data for Australia and New Zealand. The baseline results using data and mediumterm projections available as of October 2008, suggest that the Australian and New Zealand dollars were...

The paper finds that exchange rate flexibility in emerging market countries has increased over the past decade. This "learning to float" appears to have involved a strengthening of monetary and financial policy frameworks aimed at directly addressing the key vulnerabilities that give rise to the...