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...

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...

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 establishment of European monetary union (EMU) was widely expected to cause price convergence among member states. In an investigation of this claim, the present study avoids problems of comparability and representativeness by using an extremely detailed and comprehensive scanner database on...

Based on a classification of countries and territories according to their regime and anchor currency choice, the study considers the two major currency blocs of the present world. A nested logit regression suggests that long-term structural economic variables determine a given country's currency...

Die relative Kaufkraftparitätentheorie (KKPT) wird am Beispiel des DM-Peseten-Kurses auf ihre Stichhaltigkeit in der langen Frist überprüft. Methodisch wird dabei auf zwei Verfahren der Kointegrationsanalyse zurückgegriffen. Trotz einer Vielzahl von Ansätzen kann nur in zwei Fällen...

The study presents an empirical strategy for determining global currency bloc equilibria. The procedure includes, first, a nested logit estimation of the combined determinants of currency regime and anchor currency choice; second, a test for a welfare-maximising regime decision, in which estimates...

Real exports are commonly specified as depending on an indicator of price competitiveness and on a measure of foreign activity. This study empirically investigates the suitability of alternative competitiveness indicators in explaining real exports for a broad group of advanced economies. To...