This paper attempts to model the nominal and real exchange rate for Ireland, relative to Germany and the UK from 1975 to 2003. It offers an overview of the theory of purchasing power parity (PPP), focusing particularly on likely sources of nonlinearity. Potential difficulties in placing the...

From a conceptual point of view there is little consensus of what should be the “ideal indicator” of international cost and price competitiveness as each of the standard measures typically employed has its own merits and drawbacks. This calls for addressing the question from an empirical...

This paper reviews three different concepts of equilibrium exchange rates that are widely used in policy analysis and constitute the backbone of the IMF CGER assessment: the Macroeconomic Balance, the External Sustainability and the reduced form approaches. We raise a number of econometric...

The impact of currency collapses (i.e. large nominal depreciations or devaluations) on real output remains unsettled in the empirical macroeconomic literature. This paper provides new empirical evidence on this relationship using a dataset for 108 emerging and developing economies for the period...

This paper comments on selected aspects of identification issues of DSGE models. It suggests the singular value decomposition (SVD) as a useful tool for detecting local weak and non-identification. This decomposition is useful for checking rank conditions of identification, identification...

This study examines the marginal effects of traditional determinants of exports and imports with a focus on the role of price competitiveness in restoring external balances. It is a first attempt to compare marginal effects of various harmonised competitiveness indicators (HCIs) on both exports...

The elasticity of exports to exchange rate fluctuations has been the subject of a large literature without a clear consensus emerging. Using a novel sector level dataset based on firm level information, we show that exchange rate elasticities double in size when the country and sector specific...

This paper uses a survey of 1281 New Zealand exporters to investigate the role of firm characteristics in setting export prices. Larger, and more productive firms, are more likely to differentiate prices across markets. Primary sector firms are more likely to price to market than firms in other...

This paper examines whether the level of reserves in emerging market countries has become excessive. It presents a discussion of “adequacy” versus “excessive” levels of reserves, and presents calculations of reserve adequacy for a large number of emerging market countries. Two categories...

This study examines the European Commission’s 2011 call for advice to the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) on the improvement of the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision (IORP) Directive (the “IORP Directive”). Specifically, it uses both the...