exchange rate volatility and foreign trade evidence from thirteen ldc s this article investigates empirically the impact of real exchange rate volatility on the export flows of 13 less developed countries ldc s over the quarterly period 1973 1996 estimates of the cointegrating relations are obtained using johansen s multivariate procedure estimates of the short run dynamics are obtained for each country using the error correction technique the major results show that increases in the volatility of the real effective exchange rate approximating exchange rate uncertainty exert a significant negative effect on export demand in both the short run and the long run in each of the 13 ldc s these effects may result in significant reallocation of resources by market participants

exchange rate volatility and aggregate export growth in bangladesh the long and short run determinants of bangladeshi export growth are examined these are modelled as depending on world trade volume bangladeshi and world export prices and exchange rate volatility several techniques are used to estimate and test hypotheses about the cointegration space of these variables we find that there are two plausible restricted cointegrating vectors one appears to be an export demand while the other is suggestive of an export supply these are then imposed on an error correction model estimates suggest that in the long run bangladeshi export growth is driven by the volume of world trade and is negatively and inelastically related to the volatility of bangladeshi exchange rates once these long run effects are accounted for it is found that none of the variables significantly explains any short run changes in export growth

can the markov switching model forecast exchange rates abstract a markov swirching model is fit for 18 exchange rates at quarterly frequencies the model fits well in sample for many exchange rates by the mean squared error criterion the markov model does not generate superior forecasts to a random walk or the forward rate there appears to ne some evidence that the forecasts of the markov model are superior at predicting the direction of change of the exchange rate

regime switching approach to monetary policy effects even though monetary policy has kept interest rates at historically low levels the japanese economy has experienced long lasting recessions since the 1990s in this paper japanese data are employed to conduct an empirical analysis of changes in the effects of monetary policy on the real economy it is found that monetary policy effects vary depending on the phase of the business cycle and the lending attitudes diffusion indices more precisely policy effects are larger in recession but diminish in extreme recession and monetary policy is more effective when lenders attitudes are severe but less effective when they are excessively severe

multiple currencies and hedging this paper presents a model of a competitive exporting firm confronting multiple currency risks future markets do not exist for the firm s own currency but do exist between currencies of two countries to which the firm exports its entire output we provide analytical insight into optimal cross hedging and its implications on production and on trade flows we show that the unbiasedness of the cross currency futures market does not imply non random profits furthermore the availability of cross hedging opportunities has no effects on production but does have effects on exports

exchange rate variation commodity price variation and the implications for international trade abstract a commonly cited disadvantage of floating exchange rates is that a fluctuating exchange rate reduces international trade when firm owners are risk averse risk averse firm owners are concerned with the variation in the real domestic currency price of the good they export or import this price variation depends on exchange rate variation but also on a good s foreign currency price variation domestic price level variation and the covariation between these three variables the empirical results presented here show that for many commodities floating exchange rates did not cause a significant increase in overall real domestic currency price variation

the effect of the asian financial crisis on the relationships among open macroeconomic factors for asian countries this study investigates the effect of asian financial crisis on the relationships among exchange rate volatility export import and productivity for taiwan korea malaysia and indonesia cointegration tests show no change for the long run equilibrium relationship among these variables throughout the crisis granger causality finds that some exogeneity orderings alter from pre to post crisis periods for the countries considered impulse response functions irs for the pre crisis period demonstrate the primary importance of productivity then second importance of export for the post crisis period oscillatory paths around zero of the irs imply an ambiguous finding for the direction of effect and relative exogeneity among variables studied the variance decompositions in export for taiwan korea and malaysia and in productivity for malaysia and indonesia did not change from the pre crisis to the post crisis era however most of the rest of the forecast error variances in variables were decomposed in

regime switching analysis for the impacts of exchange rate volatility on corporate values a taiwanese case a second moment regime switching model with not only a switching intercept and a switching slope but also a switching error variance is applied to examine the impacts of exchange rate volatility erv on corporate values cv for the 10 industries investigated in taiwan two different regimes categorized as strong impact and weak impact are identified the dominant power varies from one industry to another the wald statistics for the null of equality are ambiguous which show that if the markov switching ms model is plausible then the erv might not be one major factor but another factor that could switch the cv of taiwan s industries for the model s volatility influence the data of 8 out of 10 industries are shown to fit a two state model when the volatility is stimulated a two state first order ms model is appropriate for the goodness of fit analysis at the 10 significant level

the effects of real exchange rate risk on international trade abstract by assuming real profit maximization and uncertain prices as well as exchange rates we conclude that it is uncertain percentage changes in the real exchange rate that are risky in international trade empirical estimation of fourteen bilateral trade flows among industrialized countries finds a significant negative effect on trade quantity from such risk in a number of these cases the expectation variable has a positive effect in a larger number of cases significant price effects from the expectation variable are fewer and from risk are negligible

fiscal policy debt management and exchange rate credibility lessons from the recent italian experience abstract this paper explores some potential determinants of exchange rate credibility with reference to the italian experience of the 1990s the analysis relies on a nonlinear framework emphasizing shifts between credible and non credible states and assuming a significant degree of persistence in the above regimes almost all fiscal and debt management indicators display significant effects on devaluation expectations the main policy implications of the paper are that a restrictive fiscal stance a lengthening of average debt maturity and an increase in the share of foreign denominated debt are crucial to stabilize the lira exchange rate and to qualify italy in the former group of countries which will join emu

the selection hypothesis and the relationship between trial and plaintiff victory this paper develops implications of the selection hypothesis of priest and klein for the relationship between trial rates and plaintiff win rates i find strong evidence for the selection hypothesis in estimated relationships between trial rates and plaintiff win rates at trial across case types and judges i then structurally estimate the model on judge data yielding estimates of the model s major parameters the decision standard the degree of stake asymmetry and the uncertainty parameter for each of three major case types contracts property rights and torts

exchange rate volatility and international trade the purpose of this note is to show that a positive effect of exchange rate volatility on export production has a theoretical basis the key to this claim is that as the exchange rate volatility increases so does the value of the real option to export to the world market higher volatility increases the potential gains from trade this may explain part of the mixed empirical findings regarding the effects of exchange rate risk on international trade

exchange rate volatility and international trading strategy abstract it is usually argued that an increase in exchange rate volatility reduces the volume of international trade as trading firms are risk averse this paper shows that exporting firms benefit under fairly general conditions from an increase in exchange rate volatility firms optimally adjust their export volumes to the level of the exchange rate exporting is an option which is exercised if profitable in addition the paper presents conditions under which the volume of international trade grows with exchange rate volatility

rational expectations econometric analysis of changes in regime an investigation of the term structure of interest rates abstract this paper is of interest both for its methodological contribution of new tools for analyzing rational expectations models and for its substantive conclusions concerning the term structure of interest rates during the monetary experiment of october 1979 the paper studies systems subject to changes in regime interpreted here as occasional discrete shifts in the parameters governing the time series behavior of exogenous economic variables the specification is shown to be quite tractable both theoretically and empirically the technique is used to analyze yields on three month treasury bills and ten year treasury bonds during 1962 to 1987 a constant parameter linear model for short term rates is shown to be inconsistent both with the univariate time series properties of short rates and with the observed bivariate relation between long and short rates under the expectations hypothesis of the term structure an alternative nonlinear model that admits the possibility of changes in regime affords a much better description of the univariate process for short rates moreover the cross equation restrictions implied by the expectations hypothesis of the term structure are consistent with the nonlinear specification indeed the residuals of the restricted relation have a standard error of only 0 8 basis points this is a third less than that of a completely unrestricted linear regression of long rates on short rates and compares with an unconditional standard deviation of long rates of 142 basis points i conclude that once the recognition by bond traders of changes in regime is taken into account the expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates holds up fairly well for these data

inflation real short term interest rates and the term structure of interest rates a regime switching approach this study explores the implications of the expectations hypothesis by examining the implied term premium in conjunction with an explicit description of processes generating both inflation and short term real interest rates it models inflation and short term real interest rates using a technique that allows for changes in regimes and generates future forecasts of inflation and real interest rates the hypothesis is that persistent shifts in the term premium under the expectations hypothesis might come from forecast errors by econometricians if regime shifts are omitted shifts which are however observed by the agents this study examines whether persistent shifts in the term premium can be eliminated after taking into account the regime shifts in the processes for inflation and real interest rates the results indicate that there still exists persistence in the term premium however the implied term premium generated from regime switching models shows less persistence than those from arima models

conditional exchange rate volatility and the volume of international trade evidence from the early 1900s exports from britain to the united states from 1900 to 1940 are examined to ascertain the effect of exchange rate volatility on the volume of trade in addition to using a rolling standard deviation measure of exchange rate uncertainty the conditional variance of the exchange rate series modeled as a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic process is used to generate an alternative measure of exchange rate uncertainty the results of estimation using the two measures of exchange rate volatility suggest that increases in the volatility of the real exchange rate reduce the volume of trade copyright 1992 by mit press

taiwan s financial holding companies an empirical investigation based on markov regime switching model though the financial holding company act in taiwan permits banks securities firms and insurance companies to affiliate identifying the influence on taiwan s financial holding companies hasn t been discussed rigorously yet this paper presents a formal methodology using two state markov regime switching approach to allow for the uncertainty event date of financial holding companies stock return and risk this study serves as one of the first studies that adopt a markov regime switching model to estimate financial holding companies stock behaviour the evidence shows that 12 of 13 financial holding companies have regime switching and one has no regime switching in taiwan therefore the stock behaviours of taiwan s financial holding companies follow two regimes and the traditional linear model cannot be descriptive however the levels of 12 financial holding companies risk are significantly low of state 1 and stock returns are indifferent between two states hence there are diversification benefits

export expansion and economic growth testing for cointegration and causality this paper develops a multivariate error correction model to test the causality between exports and growth in 15 asian countries 1967 91 the underlying series are tested as non stationary in levels but stationary in first differences the causal factors are cointegrated in five of these countries only causality test results indicate that export expansion causes growth in two third of these countries corrected for simultaneity between the causal factors a country with a large public sector higher level of economic development and which is less vulnerable to external economic shocks is more likely to reap the benefits of export promotion strategies the causal inferences are fairly stable over the sample period

a new turning point signalling system using the markov switching model with application to japan the usa and australia a new business cycle turning point signalling system is proposed and examined by using japanese us and australian composite indexes of economic activity time varying transition probabilities in a markov regime switching model are used as the basis of the signalling system the performance of the system is satisfactory though its reliability varies between peaks and troughs and across countries based on data up until may 1998 the system suggests the absence of turning points in any of the three countries in 1998

regime switching properties of the optimal seigniorage hypothesis the case of taiwan the optimal seigniorage hypothesis argues that the government will attempt to minimize the sum of social costs arising from the rate of inflation and taxation which results in the testable prediction that inflation and rate of tax revenue will be positively correlated this article empirically examines the regime switching properties of this theory using quarterly data from taiwan over 1961 2000 sampling periods it finds that the optimal seigniorage hypothesis is weakly supported and its explanatory power for the long run inflation behaviour is weak