We investigate the possibility that the large current account deficits of the U.S. are the outcome of optimizing behavior. We develop a simple long-run world equilibrium model in which the current account is determined by the expected discounted present value of its future share of world GDP...

Nominal exchange rate changes can lead to 'expenditure switching' when they change relative international prices. A traditional argument for flexible nominal exchange rates posits that when prices are sticky in producers' currencies, nominal exchange rate movements can change relative prices...

We examine the factors that determine the differences in ex ante returns on equities in eleven Pacific Basin countries. Our concern is whether real return differentials are primarily caused by nominal return differentials or expected changes in real exchange rates. We find that nominal return...

The value of the dollar appears to move in one direction for long periods of time. We develop a new statistical model of exchange rate dynamics as a sequence of stochastic, segmented time trends. The paper implements new techniques for parameter estimation and hypothesis testing for this...

This paper examines optimal exchange-rate policy in two-country sticky-price general equilibrium models in which households and firms optimize over an infinite horizon in an environment of uncertainty. The models are in the vein of the new open-economy macroeconomics' as exemplified by Obstfeld...

We show analytically that in a rational expectations present value model, an asset price manifests near random walk behavior if fundamentals are I(1) and the factor for discounting future fundamentals is near one. We argue that this result helps explain the well known puzzle that fundamental...

When equity prices are determined as the discounted sum of current and expected future dividends, Shiller (1981) and LeRoy and Porter (1981) derived a relationship between the variance of the price of equities, p(t), and the variance of the ex post realized discounted sum of current and future...

We use new disaggregated data on consumer prices to determine why there is variability in prices of similar goods across U.S. cities. We address questions similar to those that have arisen in the international context: is this variability purely a result of market segmentation or do sticky...

Standard models of exchange rates, based on macroeconomic variables such as prices, interest rates, output, etc., are thought by many researchers to have failed empirically. We present evidence to the contrary. First, we emphasize the point that "beating a random walk" in forecasting is too...

We explore the link between an interest rate rule for monetary policy and the behavior of the real exchange rate. The interest rate rule, in conjunction with some standard assumptions, implies that the deviation of the real exchange rate from its steady state depends on the present value of a...