The bilateral real exchange rate between Chinese renminbi (RMB) and the US dollar is studied. The panel data Penn effect model shows that the RMB was overvalued in 1980-1991 but later undervalued in 1992-2010. In 2010, it was undervalued by 36.7%. Econometric analysis and an examination of the...

The Chinese economy has been in a state of external and internal imbalances for some years, which has something to do with the undervaluation of renminbi (RMB). But the Chinese Government hesitates to allow RMB to appreciate because of the worry that RMB appreciations are contractionary thus...

China's trade surplus is often heavily criticized in political and economic debates, accompanied by claims for a revaluation of the Chinese currency, the Renminbi (RMB). While the main arguments exchanged in the current discourse appear to become more and more emotionally loaded rather than...

With non-homothetic preferences, a monopolistic competition equilibrium is inefficient. In a setting with heterogeneous firms that charge variable markups, this paper finds a sufficient statistic for changes in allocative efficiency that can be directly measured with data. The model also...

What is the relationship between interest rates and the exchange rate? The empirical literature in this area has been inconclusive. We use an optimizing model of a small open economy to rationalize the mixed empirical findings. The model has three key margins. First, higher domestic interest...

The yen is an important barometer for the Japanese economy. Depreciations are typically associated with favorable economic developments such as increased corporate profits, rising equity prices, and upward pressure on domestic consumer prices. On the other hand, large and sharp appreciations run...

This study investigates the impacts of rising wages and the appreciation of the yuan on the structure of China's exports. China's exports are classified here as ordinary exports (OE) and two distinctive groups of processing exports, pure assembly exports (PAE) and mixed assembly exports (MAE)....

Currency appreciation against the US dollar is associated with the compression of emerging market economy (EME) sovereign yields. We find that this yield compression is due to reduced risk premiums rather than expectations of interest rates already priced into forward rates. We explore a model...