Many international macroeconomic models link the real exchange rate to a ratio of marginal utilities. We examine this link empirically, allowing the marginal utility of consumption to depend on government expenditure, real money balances, or external habit. We also consider two environments with...

Euro-interest rates are well-known to be persistent, as are their differentials across countries for a given maturity. The international CCAPM implies that the rates are persistent because forecasts of national consumption growth or inflation are persistent too. We examine this prediction for a...

This paper investigates the behaviour of estimators based on the Kullback-Leibler information criterion (KLIC), as an alternative to the generalized method of moments (GMM). We first study the estimators in a Monte Carlo simulation model of consumption growth with power utility. Then we compare...

There is much research on consumption-savings problems with risky labor income and a constant interest rate and also on portfolio allocation with risky returns but nonstochastic labor income. Less is known quantitatively about the interaction between the two forms of risk. Under CRRA utility,...

Daily data on spot and forward dollar/sterling exchange rates and on Britain's foreign exchange reserves are used to reassess the financial history of the 1956 Suez crisis. We find that support of sterling at its Bretton Woods lower bound lost credibility as early as July. Reserve losses also...

Much recent business cycle research focuses on moments of macroeconomic aggregates. We construct examples of real business cycle sample paths for output, consumption, and employment for the U.S. economy. Annual sample paths are generated from an initial condition in 1925, measured technology and...

We propose a unified framework for studying the greenback-gold price during the U.S. suspension of convertibility from 1862 to 1879. The gold price is viewed as a floating exchange rate, with a fixed destination given by gold standard parity because of the prospect of resumption. We test this...

We outline in turn criticisms made by econometricians of the methods used in empirical business-cycle research and then criticisms made by business-cycle researchers of some methods used by econometricians. The aim is to clarify and in some cases correct these criticisms. Overall there is no...

Economists often describe nominal exchange rates as forward-looking, so that they reflect discounted, expected, future fundamentals. This study applies a method for identifying the discount rate involved, without knowing or measuring fundamentals. Identification arises from assumptions on the...