The central puzzle in international business cycles is that real exchange rates are volatile and persistent. The most popular story for real exchange rate fluctuations is that they are generated by monetary shocks interacting with sticky goods prices. We quantify this story and find that it can...

Since Meese and Rogoff (1983) results showed that no model could outperform a random walk in predicting exchange rates. Many papers have tried to find a forecasting methodology that could beat the random walk, at least for certain forecasting periods. This Element compares the Purchasing Power...

When comparing the price of an individual good or service across different countries, it is necessary to use to a common metric. In reporting the prices of telecommunications services, the OECD converts prices into U.S. dollars using the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) exchange rate, which takes...

This paper estimates the arbitrage costs from international relative prices, and studies the economic determinants of implied arbitrage costs. We find that the magnitude of arbitrage costs depends on the characteristics of both the type of good and set of locations under examination. More...

We study the purchasing power parity (PPP) puzzle in a multi-sector, two-country, sticky-price model. Across sectors, firms differ in the extent of price stickiness, in accordance with recent microeconomic evidence on price setting in various countries. Combined with local currency pricing, this...

When prices are sticky, movements in the nominal exchange rate have a direct impact on international relative prices. A relative price misalignment would trigger an adjustment in consumption and employment, and may help to predict future movements in the exchange rate. Although...

Volatile and persistent real exchange rates are observed not only in aggregate series but also in the individual good level data. Kehoe and Midrigan (2007) recently showed that, under a standard assumption on nominal price stickiness, empirical frequencies of micro price adjustment cannot...

We introduce the real exchange rate volatility curve as a useful device to understand the role of price stickiness in accounting for deviations from the Law of One Price at the sector level. In the presence of both nominal and real shocks, the theory predicts that the real exchange rate...

This paper reconciles the persistence of aggregate real exchange rates with the faster adjustment of international relative prices in microeconomic data. Panel estimation of an error correction model using a micro data set uncovers new stylized facts regarding this puzzle. First, adjustment to...