By disaggregating price indices, it becomes apparent that the real exchange rate consists of the real exchange rate for a single good and a weighted sum of relative prices between goods. When applying a battery of panel unit root tests to this sum and its components, it is found that both the...

Panel unit root tests of real exchange rates - as opposed to univariate tests - usually reject non-stationarity. These tests, however, could be biased if the real exchange rate contained MA roots. Indeed, two independent arguments claim that the real exchange rate, being a sum of a stationary...

Inflation differentials within European Monetary Union (EMU) are increasingly seen as exerting adverse effects on the price competitiveness of member countries' firms and – given the common monetary policy within EMU – as being detrimental to euro-area economies, in particular to those with...

The Balassa-Samuelson effect is usually seen as the prime explanation of the continuous real appreciation of central and east European (CEE) transition countries' currencies against their western counterparts. The response of a small country's real exchange rate to various shocks is derived in a...