This paper explains in detail the construction of series for productivity in the traded and nontraded sectors for a panel of 56 countries spanning 1989–2012. The level of productivity in each sector is defined as real value added per worker in constant 2005 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) U.S....

We propose a fully flexible, complete-market model of the international business cycle that is consistent with two major empirical facts: positive cross-country co-movement of economic aggregates and a negative correlation between the real exchange rate and relative consumption (the Backus-Smith...

This technical note is developed as a mathematical companion to the paper ‘The Real Exchange Rate in Sticky Price Models: Does Investment Matter?' (GMPI working paper no.17). It contains three basic calculations. First, we derive the equilibrium conditions of the model. Second, we compute the...

We investigate the link between real exchange rates and sectoral total factor productivity measures for countries in the Eurozone. Real exchange rate patterns closely accord with an amended Balassa-Samuelson interpretation, both in cross-section and time series. We construct a sticky price...

International real business cycle (IRBC) models predict a real exchange rate volatility that is much lower than the levels observed in the data. In this paper, we build a two-country IRBC model with both a traded and a non-traded goods sector, and calibrate it to UK-euro area (EA) data. We...

Asset prices undergo long swings that revolve around benchmark levels. In currency markets, fluctuations involve real exchange rates that are highly persistent and that move in near-parallel fashion with nominal rates. The inability to explain these two regularities with one model has been...

This paper examines how much the central bank should adjust the interest rate in response to real exchange rate fluctuations. The paper first demonstrates in a two-country Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model, that the home bias in consumption is important to duplicate the...

A central puzzle in international macroeconomics is that observed real exchange rates are highly volatile. Standard International Real Business Cycle (IRBC) models cannot reproduce this fact when calibrated using conventional parameterizations, and can only generate one fourth of the real...

The paper re-investigates the effects of government spending shocks on the real exchange rate and inflation, using US data. In opposition to some previous puzzling results, we find that an increase in government spending appreciates the real exchange rate and generates inflationary pressures....