The real exchange rate is said to be the single most important price in an economy. While we used to think that we knew what explained its movements (e.g., the Balassa-Samuelson effect), the recent much-cited result by Engel (1999) proposes a serious reinterpretation i.e., nearly 100% of the...

This study estimates pass-through for South Africa using samples of final goods and services, and homogenous imports. Estimated pass-through to consumer goods prices is low, roughly 16 percent in the two years following an exchange rate change; surprisingly, it is somewhat higher for services....

The real exchange rate (RER) has been called the single most important price, yet its behavior exhibits several puzzles. In this project, we use Big Mac prices as a unique prism to study the movement of real exchange rates. Part of our innovation is to match these prices to the prices of...

Using a panel of 12 tradable sectors in 91 OECD country pairs (14 countries), we study the deviations from the purchasing power parity during the recent floating exchange rate period. (1) We find some evidence that the deviations are positively related to exchange rate volatility as well as to...

The real exchange rate (RER) has been called the single most important price, yet its behavior exhibits several puzzles. In this project, we use Big Mac prices as a unique prism to study the movement of real exchange rates. Part of our innovation is to match these prices to the prices of...