does exchange rate variability depress trade flows evidence from error correction models this paper examines the impact of exchange rate volatility on the trade flows of the g 7 countries in the context of a multivariate error correction model the error correction models do not show any sign of parameter instability the results indicate that the exchange rate volatility has a significant negative impact on the volume of exports in each of the g 7 countries assuming market participants are risk averse these results imply that exchange rate uncertainty causes them to reduce their activities change prices or shift sources of demand and supply in order to minimize their exposure to the effects of exchange rate volatility this in turn can change the distribution of output across many sectors in these countries it is quite possible that the surprisingly weak relationship between trade flows and exchange rate volatility reported in several previous studies are due to insufficient attention to the stochastic properties of the relevant time series copyright 1993 by mit press

exchange rate policy for developing countries according to the imf in the mid 1970 s approximately 85 percent of developing countries had pegged exchange rate arrangements since then the situation has changed drastically today most developing countries have either managed floats or flexible exchange rates argentina hong kong and a few others may persevere with their currency boards additional nations may well imitate them and movements toward common currencies a la the european union may gain strength here and there nonetheless it seems clear that the political and financial prerequisites to adopt such hard pegs are extremely stringent new attempts are the exception not the rule the question for most emerging market economies is no longer to float or not to float but how to float in this note we review some key issues in defining the right answer to this question

volatility and irish exports we analyse the impact of volatility per se on real exports for a small open economy concentrating on irish trade with the uk and the us an important element is that we take account of the time lag between the trade decision and the actual trade or payments taking place by using a flexible lag approach rather than adopt a single measure of risk we also adopt a spectrum of risk measures and detail varied size characteristics and statistical properties we find that the ambiguous results found to date may be due to not taking account of the timing effect which varies substantially depending on which volatility measure is used

u s bilateral trade flows and exchange risk during the floating period abstract this paper tests for real exchange rate risk effects on u s bilateral trade flows during the floating period using several new as well as previously used risk measures significant negative effects occur in five of six u s import flows and in two of six u s export flows with one export flow showing a significant positive effect these results are consistent with several previous findings for aggregate u s trade two risk measures using the forward exchange rate and assuming a time varying risk premium provide marginally more significant results than the others

has the european monetary system led to more exports evidence from four european union countries abstract we attempt to investigate whether the exchange rate mechanism erm period has coincided with an increase in intra eu exports we conclude that this has not been the case but it is likely that the elimination of nominal exchange rate variability arising from a single currency will boost intra european union trade

does inflation targeting improve fiscal discipline abstract we explore the performances of inflation targeting it adoption in terms of fiscal discipline fd while most existing studies focus exclusively on the role of fd as a precondition for it adoption using a sample of developing and developed countries we show that it adoption exerts a positive and significant effect on fd a result robust to a wide variety of alternative specifications in addition this effect is statistically significant only in developing countries a result that may fuel the current debate regarding the relevance of it adoption in general and particularly for developing countries

central bank transparency and cross border banking abstract we analyze the effect of central bank transparency on cross border bank activities based on a panel gravity model for cross border bank claims for 21 home and 47 destination countries from 1998 to 2010 we find strong empirical evidence that a rise in central bank transparency in the destination country on average increases cross border claims using interaction models we find that the positive effect of central bank transparency on cross border claims is only significant if the central bank is politically independent and operates in a stable economic environment central bank transparency and credibility are thus considered complements by banks investing abroad

inflation targeting in emerging market and transition economies lessons after a decade abstract starting in the early 1990s several emerging market and transition economies adopted inflation targeting it in this paper we discuss a number of issues that arise in this context a the definition of it b the role of preconditions for it c the use of intermediate exchange rate targets and d the specification of inflation targets our overall conclusion is that suitably modified it is a useful policy strategy for emes

the impact of monetary union on macroeconomic integration evidence from west africa data from 19 african nations is used to investigate the hypothesis that monetary union represented in this case by the cfa franc zone augments the extent of macroeconomic integration the paper covers two key dimensions of integration the volume of bilateral trade and the magnitude of cross country business cycle correlation restricting our attention to a part of the world in which for historical reasons monetary union membership is exogenous to economic characteristics we can test whether the large single currency effects claimed by a rose apply within a sample of less developed countries

exchange rate variability and the flow of international trade abstract this study uses a garch generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model to test if real exchange rate volatility has an adverse effect on the value of u s imports from canada we find that exchange rate uncertainty has a negative and statistically significant affect on trade flows

discriminating monopoly forward markets and international trade recent empirical studies see e g kravis and lipsev 1977 1978 isard 1977 aspe and giavazi 1982 demonstrate that there are notable divergencies between domestic and export prices this empirical evidence suggests that the law of one price is systematically violated kravis and lipsey 1977 p 155 argue that many firms involved in international trade particularly manufacturers are in the position of a discriminating monopolist faced with separate markets each characterized by a different demand elasticity a model which explicitly allows for price discrimination has been used by several authors see for example aspe and giavazi 1982 ethier 1982 katz paroush and kahana 1982 and tarr 1979 katz paroush and kahana 1982 hereafter kpk used a model of a price discriminating firm which operates under price uncertainty to investigate its optimal level of output and sales in the two markets the main assumption made in kpk 1982 is that the firm determines its level of output and the allocation of sales between the two markets before the resolution of uncertainty furthermore no forward markets were available to this firm in this paper we analyze a price discriminating firm which sells its produce both in the domestic and on world markets under either exchange rate uncertainty or foreign price uncertainty this firm is a monopoly in the domestic market but a price taker on the world market our model differs substantially from the kpk model and in some cases conforms better with reality due to the following two assumptions first the firm determines its level of output before the resolution of uncertainty but decides about the optimal allocation of sales only after it observes the foreign price denominated in domestic currency secondly forward markets to share the exchange rate risk or the uncertain foreign commodity price are available and their impact on the firm s policy is analyzed hence this work integrates two strands of literature it combines studies on price discriminating firms some were mentioned above and studies on firm behavior when forward markets are available danthine 1978 holthausen 1979 katz and paroush 1979 feder just and schmitz 1980 in this paper we are mainly concerned with a firm which always exports this includes large

bivariate garch estimation of the optimal commodity futures hedge six different commodities are examined using daily data over two futures contract periods cash and futures prices for all six commodities are found to be well described as martingales with near integrated garch innovations bivariate garch models of cash and futures prices are estimated for the same six commodities the optimal hedge ratio ohr is then calculated as a ratio of the conditional covariance between cash and futures to the conditional variance of futures the estimated ohrs reveal that the standard assumption of a time invariant ohr is inappropriate for each commodity the estimated ohr path appears non stationary which has important implications for hedging strategies

the impact of exchange rate volatility on international trade reduced form estimates using the garch in mean model abstract in this paper we use a multivariate garch in mean model of the reduced form of multilateral exports to examine the relationship between nominal exchange rate volatility and export flows and prices the model imposes rationality on perceived exchange rate volatility unlike conventional two step strategies tests are performed for five industrialized countries over the post bretton woods era we find that the garch conditional variance has a statistically significant impact on the reduced form equations for all countries for most of the countries the magnitude of the effect is stronger for export prices than quantities in addition the estimated magnitude of the impact of volatility on exports is not robust to using the conventional estimation strategy jel f41 f31

the effect of real exchange rate uncertainty on ldc manufactured exports abstract this paper uses pooled time series cross sectional data to conduct an empirical investigation of the relationship between real exchange rate uncertainty and the manufactured exports of developing countries export supply equations for four categories of manufactures are estimated using pooled data for ten countries over the period 1963 1985 evidence is found that some categories of ldc manufactured exports are negatively affected by real exchange rate uncertainty

drivers of electricity price dynamics comparative analysis of spot and futures markets abstract against the backdrop of numerous evidence that variable renewable generation decreases electricity prices and increases price volatility this paper assesses the drivers of electricity prices in spot and futures markets focusing on the german electricity markets we take into account nonlinearities in electricity prices by means of structural breaks and threshold regressions we find that short run and medium long run price drivers differ and more importantly that they vary over time in the case of the spot market the determinants of prices are renewable infeed and electricity demand while in the futures market the main drivers are natural gas coal and carbon prices our results give relevant insights for market participants who seek to optimize procurement selling strategies in the spot market and use the futures market to hedge against spot price volatility which has increased due to a higher renewable generation

the structuralist theory of imported inflation an application to south africa this study emphasizes the importance of identifying the origin of inflation in the present context of inflation targeting by many emerging market and transition economies the analysis shows based on south african data how structural supply and demand inflation can be distinguished the results indicate that south africa s inflation experience between 1973q1 and 1998q4 is characterized by two monetary regimes during the first regime 1973q1 1984q4 the long run cause of inflation is demand pull the second regime 1987q1 1998q4 represents major changes to structural imported and cost push inflation the two year period 1985 1986 signifies structural change from the first to the second regime moreover the results in the second regime remain robust when the inflation model is subjected to new out of sample data until 2001q2 evidence of structural imported inflation in the second regime suggests that inflation should not entirely be squeezed out of the system nor should it necessarily be k

within u s trade and the long shadow of the american secession using data from the us commodity flow surveys we show that the historical union confederacy border lowers contemporaneous trade between us states by about 16 percentrelative to trade flows within the former alliances amongst one million placebos there is no other constellation of state grouping that would yield a larger border effect the finding is robust over different econometric models treatment of the rest of the world available survey waves or levels of aggregation including contemporaneous controls such as network institutional or demographic variables and heckscher ohlin or linderterms lowers the estimate only slightly historical variables such as the incidence of slavery do not explain the effect away adding us states unaffected by the civil war we argue that the friction is not merely reflecting unmeasured north south differences finally the estimated border effect is larger for differentiated than for homogeneous goods stressing the potential role for cultural factors and trust

risky business multinationals uncertainty and asymmetric insurance a partial equilibrium model is used to examine the international production allocation of a two plant multinational firm that is confronted with uncertainty with respect to foreign sales the firm produces identical products in both plants using firm specific factors the internationally price discriminating multinational has monopoly power in both segmented markets the analysis focuses on how asymmetric insurance facilities between the firm s home and host country influence its international production allocation and level of intra firm trade

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

renewable generation and electricity prices taking stock and new evidence for germany and austria abstract economic theory predicts that the increase of renewable electricity production should reduce the price of electricity in the short run which is also known as the merit order effect although the merit order effect is only one of several consequences of renewable production on the electricity system it is crucial to determine its size for the economic evaluation of renewable energies in this paper we present a comprehensive overview of relevant past research results on the price effect of renewables additionally we conduct a new empirical analysis of the price effect of renewable production for the austrian german region a market that clearly qualifies for a merit order effect analysis given its characteristics based on the review and our own analysis we show that the merit order effect varies depending on the region and the assessment method chosen we also find that the size of this effect is less dispersed throughout different markets than previously suggested by the literature

the danish green certificate system some simple analytical results we formulate a simple static equilibrium model for the electricity market taking account of both green certificates and co2 emission permits the objective is to investigate the relationship between these markets under the existence of upper and lower price bounds on the green certificates both in the short and in the long run we perform various comparative static changes of the parameters of the model and study how these affect the endogenous variables of the model as well as producers and consumers surplus we also investigate the effects of imports and exports of electricity several comparative static results are derived and in particular it is shown that harsher co2 emission constraints and increased import wholesale price both may lead to reduced capacity of green electricity

trade creation and diversion revisited accounting for model uncertainty and natural trading partner effects summary the effect of preferential trade agreements ptas on trade flows is subject to model uncertainty stemming from the diverse and even contradictory effects suggested by the theoretical pta literature the existing empirical literature has produced remarkably disparate results and the wide variety of empirical approaches reflects the uncertainty about the correct set of explanatory variables that ought to be included in the analysis to account for the model uncertainty that surrounds the validity of the competing pta theories we introduce bayesian model averaging bma to the pta literature statistical theory shows that bma successfully incorporates model uncertainty in linear regression analysis by minimizing the mean squared error and by generating predictive distributions with optimal predictive performance once model uncertainty is addressed as part of the empirical strategy we find strong evidence of trade creation trade diversion and open bloc effects our results are robust to a range of alternative empirical specifications proposed by the recent pta literature copyright 2010 john wiley sons ltd

effects of exchange rate variations on bilateral trade with a vehicle currency evidence from china and singapore abstract using a testable gravity type bilateral trade model derived from an underlying demand and supply model this paper explores the effects of exchange rate variations on bilateral trade in an exchange rate regime with a vehicle currency the introduction of the vehicle currency allows us to figure out whether variations in the trade volume due to the fluctuation of the bilateral exchange rate are primarily due to changes in demand or in supply or both more specifically in this theoretical framework the appreciation of one country s currency against the vehicle currency is expected to promote its imports but the effect of revaluation of the country s currency against the vehicle currency on its exports is ambiguous moreover high volatility of the exchange rate of one country s currency against the vehicle currency is also expected to depress its import volume from the empirical point of view the decomposition of the bilateral exchange rate of two currencies into the bilateral rates of these two currencies against the vehicle currency provides a new alternative to avoid the econometric problem of potential reverse causality in assessing the effects through compiling a novel monthly bilateral trade dataset between china and singapore over 21 years or 252 months we empirically test the predictions of our model which get robust support from the results

on the market impact of wind energy forecasts this paper presents an analysis of how day ahead electricity spot prices are affected by day ahead wind power forecasts demonstration of this relationship is given as a test case for the western danish price area of the nord pool s elspot market impact on the average price behaviour is investigated as well as that on the distributional properties of the price by using a non parametric regression model to assess the effects of wind power forecasts on the average behaviour the non linearities and time variations in the relationship are captured well and the effects are shown to be quite substantial furthermore by evaluating the distributional properties of the spot prices under different scenarios the impact of the wind power forecasts on the price distribution is proved to be considerable the conditional price distribution is moreover shown to be non gaussian this implies that forecasting models for electricity spot prices for which parameters are estimated by a least squares techniques will not have gaussian residuals hence the widespread assumption of gaussian residuals from electricity spot price models is shown to be inadequate for these model types the revealed effects are likely to be observable and qualitatively similar in other day ahead electricity markets significantly penetrated by wind power

risky sex in a risky world sexual behavior in a hiv aids environment in spite of increased awareness of hiv aids unprotected casual sex is still widespread in many hiv infected countries in this paper a two period model for sexual decisions under uncertainty is d

exchange rate effects on the volume and variability of trade flows abstract this paper investigates the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on the volume and variability of trade flows employing a signal extraction framework we show that the direction and magnitude of importers and exporters optimal trading activities depend upon the source of the uncertainty general microstructure shocks fundamental factors driving the exchange rate process or a noisy signal of policy innovations providing a rationale for the contradictory empirical evidence in the literature we also show that exchange rate uncertainty emanating from general microstructure shocks and the fundamental factors reduces the variability of trade flows while that related to a noisy signal of policy innovations increases variability

exchange rate uncertainty futures markets and the multinational firm abstract we consider a monopolistic risk averse multinational firm which sells and produces at home and abroad under exchange rate uncertainty first we show that the stochastic exchange rate implies higher production and lower sales in the foreign country then we analyze the impact of currency futures markets a separation result is obtained for a multinational firm i e production and the allocation of sales are independent of the distribution of the random exchange rate and of the firm s attitude towards risk we also examine the effect of currency futures on a multinational firm s foreign direct investments in the absence of futures markets we obtain some comparative statics results when risk aversion increases

does real exchange rate volatility affect sectoral trade flows this article investigates empirically the effect of real exchange rate volatility on sectoral bilateral trade flows between the united states and its top 13 trading partners our investigation also considers those effects on trade flows that may arise through changes in income volatility and the interaction between income and exchange rate volatilities we provide evidence that i exchange rate volatility does not systematically affect sectoral trade flows ii income volatility has little impact on trade flows and iii the effect of the interaction term on trade flows is opposite that of exchange rate volatility dampening its impact on trade flows

monetary policy in emerging markets can liability dollarization explain contractionary devaluations abstract in emerging markets external debt is denominated almost entirely in large developed country currencies such as the u s dollar this liability dollarization offers a channel through which exchange rate variation can lead to business cycle instability when firms assets are denominated in domestic currency and liabilities are denominated in foreign currency an exchange rate depreciation worsens firms balance sheets which leads to higher capital costs and contractions in capital spending to illustrate this i construct a quantitative sticky price small open economy model in which a monetary policy induced devaluation leads to a persistent contraction in output in this model fixed exchange rates offer greater stability than an interest rule that targets inflation

mexican investment after the tequila crisis basic economics confidence effects or market imperfections abstract this study provides an empirical investigation of the determinants of the growth of investment in mexico especially after the tequila crisis the paper uses the generalized method of moments estimator to determine if investment can be explained with a standard investment function the model predicts well the recovery of investment the tradable sector has an accelerator effect that exceeds that of the non tradable sector domestic real interest rates and real exchange rate volatility are also significant results support the hypothesis of a confidence effect during the 1982 1983 crisis but not during the tequila crisis there is also evidence of credit rationing

asymmetnc taxation and the theory of the competitive firm under uncertainty this paper examines the implications of the asymmetries in the tax treatment of corporate profits and losses for the theory of the competitive firm under uncertainty it is shown that the tax asymmetry introduces a curvature into the firm s target function which affects its behaviour in the short run in long run industry equilibrium however most of the effects disappear at the firm level but still remain at the industry 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

monetary policy transmission interest rate rules and inflation targeting in three transition countries in 1991 the rate of inflation in the czech republic hungary and poland was between 35 and 70 at the end of 2001 it is below 8 we setup a small structural macro model of these economies to explain the process of disinflation contrary to a widespread skepticism which permeated a large part of previous research on these issues we show that a simple open macroeconomic model along the lines of svensson 2000 journal of international economics with forward looking inflation and exchange rate expectations can adequately characterize the relationship between the output gap inflation the real interest rate and the exchange rate during the course of transition we use the estimated models to interpret the main features of monetary policy in each country and identify the channels of policy transmission we characterize the policy rules and assess the relative importance of the interest rate channel on aggregate demand and the exchange rate channel which affects both aggregate demand and supply in determining the path of dis inflation in the same context we also tentatively analyze the consequences of attempting a faster path of disinflation finally we evaluate the appropriateness of the inflation targeting framework which has been adopted recently in all three countries and discuss to what extent it represents a discontinuity with the past

inflation targeting an indirect approach to assess the direct impact it is quite difficult to assess the benefits of inflation targeting it since its immediate effect will be on inflation expectations an unobserved variable due to lack of comprehensive data on inflation expectations most studies so far concentrated on the impact of it either on observable variables like output unemployment and inflation or compared post it surveys of itcountries with nonit countries in our study we focus on a yet unanswered question i e how the expectations change with the adoption of it we suggest that heterogeneous inflation expectations lead to long memory in actual inflation and it if successful should decrease this persistence by concentrating the public s expectations toward the announced target empirical results confirm our hypothesis with a reduction in inflation memory after the adoption of it in almost all eight developed countries in our sample

impact of exchange rate uncertainty on trade flows evidence from commodity trade between the united states and the united kingdom previous studies that investigated the impact of exchange rate volatility on the trade flows employed aggregate trade data and standard estimation techniques they provided mixed results in this paper we use disaggregated import and export data for 177 commodities traded between the united states and the united kingdom to investigate whether volatility of the real bilateral dollar pound exchange rate has any detrimental effect on trade flows at the commodity level additionally we employ the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error correction modelling that is suitable for the models used mostly because it does not require pre unit root testing and variables in the model could be stationary non stationary or a combination of the two in most trade flow models estimated we found a negative effect of exchange rate volatility on commodity trade

impact of exchange rate uncertainty on commodity trade between us and sweden previous studies that investigated the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on the trade flows of sweden employed aggregate trade data either between sweden and the rest of the world or at bilateral level between sweden and her major trading partners in this article we disaggregate the trade data and employ the import and export data from 87 industries that trade between sweden and the us we find that exchange rate volatility has significant short run effects on the trade flows between the two countries in almost two third of the industries however the short run effects are translated into the long run effects in one third of the cases furthermore the real depreciation of krona against the dollar was found to have favourable effects on the overall trade balance between the two countries

exchange rate volatility and export performance a cointegrated var approach during the last decades norwegian exporters have despite various forms of exchange rate targeting faced a rather volatile exchange rate which may have influenced their behaviour recently the shift to inflation targeting and a freely floating exchange rate has brought about an even more volatile exchange rate we examine the causal link between export performance and exchange rate volatility across different monetary policy regimes within the cointegrated vector autoregression var framework using the implied conditional variance from a generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch model as a measure of volatility although treating the volatility measure as either a stationary or a nonstationary variable in the var we are not able to find any evidence suggesting that export performance has been significantly affected by exchange rate uncertainty we find however that volatility changes proxied by blip dummies related to the monetary policy change from a fixed to a managed floatin

the effects of exchange rate volatility on agricultural trade i extend cho sheldon and mccorriston s 2002 analysis of the effect of exchange rate volatility on agricultural trade among the g 10 countries to a broad sample of developed and developing nations i replicate their original finding that exchange rate volatility has a large negative impact on agricultural trade between g 10 members after controlling for agricultural export subsidies which are correlated with exchange rate volatility i show that the original impact declines by half using the extended sample i find that the effect of exchange rate volatility is much larger for developing country exporters than for developed exporters copyright 2008 oxford university press

interactions between the power and green certificate markets abstract the current trend of liberalising the power markets is combined with ambitious deployment plans for power production based on renewable energy supplies a new policy scheme to ensure this extension has been developed in the form of a green certificate system with a politically determined target of deployment in such a system producers of renewably based electricity receive tradable certificates in proportion to the electricity they produce the producer can thereby sell these certificates and receive additional revenue apart from the power price this paper studies the price and consumption effects of such a system with a simple model we show that the effects are ambiguous this ambiguity is caused by the interaction between the two markets therefore the green certificate system is difficult to manage if the state has parallel energy targets such as a desired deployment of renewably based energy and a stabilisation or reduction of the energy consumption in addition this complicates the regulation through a deployment target of renewably based power production as the regulator has to be aware of the different effects which follow a specific target until now these effects have not been considered in the analyses of the green certificate system when introducing the system even though it might have considerable consequences for the success of the system

increasing wage dispersion and the changes in relative employment and wages in mexico s urban informal sector 1987 1993 this study analyses the role of changes in informal formal relative employment wage levels and wage inequality in explaining increasing wage dispersion in mexico during the 1987 1993 period from 1987 to 1993 the variance of the log of hourly wages for mexican workers increased by more than 50 per cent using data from the encuesta nacional de empleo urbano we find that this increase in the overall wage dispersion was mainly driven by increasing wage dispersion in the formal sector coupled with a faster growth in formal sector employment as a percentage of total employment however compression in the distribution of wages within the informal sector contributed to substantially slowdown the increasing overall wage inequality about 60 per cent of the 1987 1993 4 65 percentage point reduction in the informal sector share of total employment is explained by changes in the structure that determines sectoral employment the rest is explained by changes in the composition of the labour force particularly in

the relationship between waste paper and other inputs in the swedish paper industry a number of life cycle assessment studies havecompared the environmental impacts of materialrecycling and incineration of waste paper theyhave shown that in most cases a recyclingscenario results in lower total energy use butgreater use of fossil fuels if waste paper andfossil fuels are complements parts of theenvironmental argument for recycling isabolished this paper estimates a cost functionfor the swedish paper industry if the costshares are co integrated an error correctionmodel will be used to model the dynamics short and long run elasticities are thencalculated to address the relationship betweenwaste paper and the other inputs capital labor purchased pulp fiber fossil fuels andelectricity contrary to the life cycleassessment studies the results show that wastepaper and fossil fuels are substitutes andthat waste paper and electricity arecomplements

structural determinants of real exchange rates and national price levels some empirical evidence contrary to the long held notion of purchasing power parity ppp economists have found systematic evidence that the general level of prices across countries at a point in time varies dramatically irving b kravis alan w heston and robert summers 1982 for example report that some countries national price levels are no more than one third the u s price level extensions of this work show that such departures from ppp have persisted for decades recently efforts have been made to explain systematically these persistent or structural departures from ppp pioneering work by kravis and robert e lipsey 1983 1987 1988 has demonstrated that a positive correlation between the price level and real per capita gross domestic product is robust across numerous cross sectional specifications for instance using data from kravis et al 1982 table 6 12 87 percent of the variation in national price levels pl of 21 countries in 1975 is explained by per capita gdp y and a constant

input choices and uncertain demand the theory of the firm under demand uncertainty has to date assumed that the firm s input decisions are unaffected by the stochastic nature of demand this assumption is not usually made explicitly but it is implied by the assumption that the firm s cost function presumably derived by finding the minimum cost combination of inputs for any given level of output is unaffected by the uncertainty however if firms must choose some of their inputs before the uncertainty regarding demand is resolved then different input decisions may involve different levels of risk since firms decisions regarding price and output are affected by demand uncertainty and non linear risk preferences as previous authors have shown it seems reasonable to suspect that their input decisions will also be affected but if input decisions are affected then firms cost functions are not invariant to uncertainty and the results of previous studies must be reexamined three different types of firms are considered in this paper the competitive firm the quantity setting imperfect competitor and the price setting imperfect competitor input decisions of the competitive firm and the quantity setting imperfect competitor are shown to be unaffected by demand uncertainty and hence the assumption of an unchanging cost function is appropriate in these cases for the price setting imperfect competitor however input decisions are influenced by demand uncertainty and an unchanging cost function is therefore not appropriate this case is considered in some detail and conditions under which results can differ from those previously reported in the literature are examined

measuring and analysing the effects of short term volatility in real exchange rates this paper examines short term volatility in the real effective exchange rates of industrial countries and its impact on their imports it yields three conclusions first volatility has not diminished as markets have gained experience with floating exchange rates the trend appears to be in the opposite direction for some countries second exposure to short term volatility has differed among countries japan and sweden have experienced much more than most other industrial countries third volatility appears to depress the volume of international trade this third finding is consistent with results reported by cushman and by akhtar and hilton and challenges earlier findings by hooper and kohlhagen

real exchange rate volatility and the us bilateral trade a var approach this paper uses var models to investigate the impact of real exchange rate volatility on u s bilateral imports from the united kingdom france germany japan and canada the var systems include u s and foreign macro variables and are estimated separately for each country the major results suggest that the effect of volatility on imports is weak although permanent shocks to volatility do have a negative impact on this measure of trade and those effects are relatively more important over the flexible rate period copyright 1989 by mit press

the merit order effect a detailed analysis of the price effect of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices in germany the german feed in support of electricity generation from renewable energy sources has led to high growth rates of the supported technologies critics state that the costs for consumers are too high an important aspect to be considered in the discussion is the price effect created by renewable electricity generation this paper seeks to analyse the impact of privileged renewable electricity generation on the electricity market in germany the central aspect to be analysed is the impact of renewable electricity generation on spot market prices the results generated by an agent based simulation platform indicate that the financial volume of the price reduction is considerable in the short run this gives rise to a distributional effect which creates savings for the demand side by reducing generator profits in the case of the year 2006 the volume of the merit order effect exceeds the volume of the net support payments for renewable electricity generation which have to be paid by consumers

trade reform uncertainty and export promotion mexico 1982 88 abstract this paper uses a simple portfolio optimization framework to analyze both the direct impact of liberalization measures and the impact of reduced relative riskiness of exporting vs producing for the domestic market arising from a commitment to an outward orientation we allow for uncertainty in both the domestic and foreign markets and examine the very counterintuitive implications of the covariance for export behavior we use firm level export data in a dynamic panel context bi variate garch techniques and the levin and lin tests for unit root stationarity in panel data to examine the mexican liberalization from 1983 88

inflation targeting genuine effects or publication selection bias abstract this paper uses a meta regression analysis mra to evaluate the impact of publication selection bias as for the macroeconomic effects of inflation targeting it a popular approach to implementing monetary policy documented in the existing literature using 8 059 point estimates from 113 studies we show that a significant part of the documented positive effects of it on inflation and to some extent output growth volatility is in fact due to publication selection bias in particular results pointing to lower inflation volatility and higher real gdp growth tend to be favored by researchers as well as those pointing to statistically significant macroeconomic effects however even after controlling for these two types of biases we find it to be correlated with lower inflation and higher real gdp growth differently the evidence on the it inflation volatility relationship is found to be less clear

the impact of renewables on electricity prices in germany an update for the years 2014 2018 abstract increasing electricity prices for private consumers manifested the idea of price boosting renewable energy sources in germany s public opinion literature however widely concurs that wind and photovoltaics have a reducing effect on spot market electricity prices the underlying merit order effect led to historically low exchange prices in the past years to quantify this effect this study analyses historic demand and supply curves from the german day ahead market to reconstruct electricity prices without the feed in of wind and photovoltaics from 2014 to 2018 results show that renewable energy sources considerably reduced electricity prices by between 2 89 ct kwh in 2014 to 8 89 ct kwh in 2017 this allowed german end consumers to save a total of 40 billion from 2014 to 2018 additionally wind and pv contributed significantly to security of supply demand could not have been met by domestic conventional and nuclear generation capacities in up to 424 hours in 2018 the study highlights the necessity to further speed up the expansion of wind and photovoltaics

inflation targeting should it be modeled as an instrument rule or a targeting rule abstract the paper discusses how current inflation targeting should be modeled and argues that it is better represented as a commitment to a targeting rule a rule specifying operational objectives for monetary policy or a condition for the target variables than as a commitment to a simple instrument rule like a taylor rule

optimal bank behavior under uncertain inflation in this paper we derive a model of the individual banking firm facing stochastic inflation the bank is considered as a depository financial intermediary operating in the primary market as a multiproduct price discriminating firm a secondary market is also considered where liquidity surpluses and deficits are traded two types of assets and liabilities are assumed deposits and loans linked to a general price level and nonlinked instruments effects of changes in the parameters such as inflation rate and

an ex post analysis of the effect of renewables and cogeneration on spanish electricity prices abstract growing concerns about climate change and energy dependence are driving specific policies to support renewable or more efficient energy sources such as cogeneration in many regions particularly in the production of electricity these policies have a non negligible cost and therefore a careful assessment of their impacts seems necessary in particular one of the most debated impacts is their effect on electricity prices for which there have been some ex ante studies but few ex post studies this article presents a full ex post empirical analysis by looking at use of technologies and hourly electricity prices for 2005 2009 in spain to study the effects that the introduction of renewable electricity and cogeneration has had on wholesale electricity prices it is particularly interesting to perform this study in spain where an active system of public support to renewables and cogeneration has led to a considerable expansion of these energy sources and electricity pricing is at the center of intense debate the paper reports that a marginal increase of 1 gwh of electricity production using renewables and cogeneration is associated with a reduction of almost 2 per mwh in electricity prices around 4 of the average price for the analyzed period

bilateral trade flows the linder hypothesis and exchange risk bilateral trade flows are used to examine the linder hypothesis and the effect of exchange rate variability in a gra vity type trade model derived from an underlying demand and supply mo del a behavioral model is used to justify examining these issues joi ntly the model performs well empirically using a sample of seventeen countries for the period 1974 82 the authors find overwhelming supp ort for the linder hypothesis and this version of the gravity model moreover they find strong support for the hypothesis that increased exchange rate variability affects bilateral trade flows copyright 1987 by mit press

the effect of wind and solar power forecasts on day ahead and intraday electricity prices in germany abstract this study analyzes the effects of wind and solar power generation forecasts on electricity prices converse to the existing empirical literature in this area we apply a panel data analysis to control for endogeneity due to unobserved heterogeneity we use a dataset with 24 daily observations of day ahead and intraday prices from 2010 to 2016 and we apply a fixed effects regression under consideration of robust driscoll kraay standard errors a noteworthy element of the regression model is the simulation based design of a variable indicating the power generation technology that is price determining at a certain point in time in this context we differentiate between the fuel types coal gas and others to model the nonlinear price behavior for a varying demand for 2016 we find price dampening effects of both wind and solar power of approximately 0 6 mwh per additional gwh of feed in along with the rapidly increasing shares of wind and solar power of the total power generation during the last years their price dampening effect has declined since 2013 due to a drop in fuel prices another finding is that a reduction in forecasting errors on the power generation from wind and solar and smoothing of the cyclical demand would lead to a decreased price volatility

re evaluating the effectiveness of inflation targeting abstract this paper estimates the treatment effect of inflation targeting on macroeconomic variables using a semiparametric single index method by taking into account the model misspecification of parametric propensity scores our study uses a broader set of preconditions for inflation targeting and macroeconomic outcome variables than the existing literature the results suggest no significant difference in the inflation level and inflation volatility between targeters and non targeters after the adoption of inflation targeting we find that inflation targeting reduces sacrifice ratio and interest rate volatility in the developed economies and that it enhances fiscal discipline in both the industrial and developing countries

price uncertainty and the price discriminating firm in international trade the firm operating in an uncertain environment was initially analyzed in detail by sandmo 1971 and by leland 1972 since these early papers many extensions to the analysis have been explored by such writers as batra and ullah 1974 mayer 1975 hartman 1976 holthausen 1976 stewart 1978 paroush and kahana 1979 anid katz and paroush 1979 this paper investigates the optimal policy of a pr ice discriminating firm which operates under pr ice uncertainty in one of two markets the main motivation for the analysis comes from the problems of a firm which sells its output both domestically and abroad such a firm often has nearly full information about the domestic market b ut faces uncertainty in foreign markets in particular the firm which has its utility defined over profits denominated in terms of domestic currency will regard the profits on its foreign sales as uncertain given excha nge rate variability even if it has full information about all other conditions in the foreign market hence the paper may be regarded both as an extension to the above mentioned analyses of the firm under uncertainty and as an attempt to throw light on the activities of firms involved in international trade the treatment being essentially of a mricroeconomic nature is clearly different from that of such writers as batra 1 975 and helpman and razin 1979 which are essentially macroeconomic treatments

inequality nonhomothetic preferences and trade a gravity approach we construct the first direct classification of goods as luxuries or necessities that is compatible with international trade data we then use it to test an idea that has not been tested directly in the literature countries income distributions are important determinants of their import demand and in particular of the difference in their import demands of luxuries versus necessities we interpret this result with the aid of a model in which preferences are nonhomothetic thus relaxing a long held and standard but empirically dubious assumption in the theory of international trade our model is strongly borne out by the results imports of luxuries increase with the importing country s inequality and imports of necessities decrease with it our calculations imply that if income distribution in the united states became as equal as in canada the united states would import about 9 13 fewer luxury goods and 13 19 more necessities

exchange rate volatility and exports a firm level analysis the relationship between real exports and exchange rate volatility is investigated using panel data analysis at the firm level results indicate that there is no negative or positive relationship between volatility and real exports in addition firm size and level of international activity do not influence the size and significance of the volatility effect on exports however there is some evidence that firms use import revenue to lower their exchange rate exposure

international financial volatility and commodity exports evidence from the thai agricultural sector using 1981 2006 data from the bank of thailand i estimate the effect of four measures of real exchange rate volatility on thai exports of five key agricultural commodities controlling for both the level of the real exchange rate and foreign incomes estimates of the effect of volatility on export volume are generally negative and often significant lending support to a range of theoretical models that predict such an effect no such relationship exists between lagged values of exchange rate volatility and agricultural production the range of results obtained using various measures of volatility suggests caution in comparing studies using different measures copyright 2010 oxford university press

country bashing tariffs do bilateral trade deficits matter abstract this paper investigates the impact of restricting bilateral trade imbalances in a three country three good model bilateral trade balances matter because in the nash equilibrium each country will impose tariffs on countries with whom they have bilateral deficits or promote trade with countries with whom they have bilateral surpluses all countries lose from a nash country bashing war each country loses from the unilateral elimination of its bilateral imbalances but a country can gain from a bilateral agreement with its deficit partner provided that country has a surplus with a country devoted to free trade

production effects of price and cost based anti dumping laws under flexible exchange rates this paper investigates the production response of an exporting firm when faced with the threat of an anti dumping ad action the firm s production decision is sensitive to market conditions at home and abroad as well as to the definition of dumping we examine the incentives facing the exporting firm under price based marginal cost based and average total cost based anti dumping laws depending on the nature of the anti dumping rules and market conditions a firm s production may rise fall or remain unchanged in response to ad legislation les effets de production des lois anti dumping fondees sur les prix et sur les couts dans un

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

does the linder effect hold for differentiated agri food and beverage product trade using a generalized gravity equation this study tests for the linder effect in differentiated agri food product trade i e as the demand structures of two countries become more similar their trade intensity increases two proxies of demand structure the balassa index and the absolute value of the difference in per capita gross domestic products gdps of trading partners are used to capture the linder effect in addition two measures of bilateral trade the grubel and lloyd gl index and the value of bilateral trade are used as the dependent variable this study investigates the role of the linder effect in explaining the trade of 37 differentiated agri food and beverage products categorized into eight product groups cereals fresh fish frozen fish vegetables fresh fruit processed fruit tea and coffee and alcoholic beverages the data covers trade across 52 developed and developing countries from 1990 to 2000 the type of proxy used for the linder effect and the way in which bilateral trade

exchange rate variability and the export demand for malaysia s semiconductors an empirical study this article examines the effects of exchange rate variability on export demand for semiconductors which is the largest sub sector of electronics industry in malaysia as reported by malaysian industrial development authority mida 2004 the empirical results which are estimated based on the johansen s multivariate cointegration tests and error correction model suggest that there is a unique long run relationship among quantities of export relative price real foreign income and real exchange rate variability the major finding of this article is that the variability of real exchange rate has some effect on semiconductor exports in both the long run and the short run in the light of rapid advances in technology in the global markets for electronics products the findings are useful to policy makers for the design and target of appropriate exchange rate and industrial policies to enhance the export competitiveness of semiconductor industry

estimating temperature effects on the italian electricity market abstract this paper provides empirical evidence of the effects that weather conditions exert on the electricity market offering a new contribution to the understanding of hourly regional price formation in the day ahead market in italy the empirical estimation uses a new data set of hourly data on both market variables and temperature variables there is a vast body of literature on the effect of temperature on final consumers and on wholesale electricity market equilibrium however the influence of temperature on the behavior of the wholesale electricity market has not been studied at the hourly level a new econometric estimation shows some evidence of different effects of temperature and provides a more accurate estimation of the hourly prices forecasting out of sample performance of the model is satisfactory the present results have welfare improving policy implications because appropriate policy strategies can help public decision makers promote regulation such as issuing public weather alert and designing contingent plans to face extreme weather conditions which improves production efficiency network management and consumer saving behavior taking specific weather conditions into account

the effects of exchange rate variability on international trade a meta regression analysis the trade effects of exchange rate variability have been an issue in international economics for the past 30 years the contribution of this article is to apply meta regression analysis mra to the empirical literature on average exchange rate variability exerts a negative effect on international trade yet mra confirms the view that this result is highly conditional by identifying factors that help to explain why estimated trade effects vary from significantly negative to significantly positive mra evidence on the pronounced heterogeneity of the empirical findings may be instructive for policy first by establishing that average trade effects are not sufficiently robust to generalize across countries and second by suggesting the importance of hedging opportunities hence of financial development for trade promotion for the practice of mra we make a case for checking the robustness of results with respect to estimation technique model specification and sample

has exchange risk depressed international trade the impact of third country exchange risk abstract this paper argues that the effect of exchange risk on bilateral and aggregate trade flows should be analyzed by including the impact of third country exchange risk factors in addition to direct bilateral or multilateral risk after a theoretical examination of these effects us bilateral export flow to its six largest trading partners are analyzed empirically i find individuality and jointly significant third country risk effects in most cases in contrast to some recent bilateral efforts i find a steadily growing negative impact on trade flows from exchange risk during floating and in contrast to recent aggregate trade flow studies i conclude that there was no temporary decline in exchange risk during the late 1970s

a political economic model of u s bilateral trade a bstract interrelationships between economics and politics have long been recognized by scholars in the field of international relations this paper attempts to identify and quantify the factors aflecting bilateral trade flows between the united states and other countries by developing a gravity type model the model includes economic and political variables and is tested using data for sixty six u s trading partners results indicate that pure economic variables which reflect market forces are not the only factors affecting u s bilateral trade semi cconomic and international political factors are also important

fixed exchange rates and trade abstract a classic argument for a fixed exchange rate is its promotion of trade empirical support for this however is mixed while one branch of research consistently shows a small negative effect of exchange rate volatility on trade another more recent branch presents evidence of a large positive impact of currency unions on trade this paper helps resolve this disconnect our results which use a new data based classification of fixed exchange rate regimes show a large significant effect of a fixed exchange rate on bilateral trade between a base country and a country that pegs to it these results suggest an economically relevant role for exchange rate regimes in trade determination since a significant amount of world trade is conducted between countries with fixed exchange rates

dynamic analysis of the german day ahead electricity spot market abstract this paper analyzes the dynamic behavior of day ahead spot prices in the german electricity spot market due to positive structural shocks in wind and solar power it uses a dynamic structural vector autoregressive model to estimate the related structural impulse response functions the estimates suggest that wind power shocks have a more prolonged negative effect on spot prices than solar power shocks significant autocorrelations of wind power for larger lags indicate these results the total negative merit order effect of a solar power shock is larger when using a reasonable model specification one reason might be that solar power shocks coincide with demand peaks however results regarding the relation of the effects of wind and solar should be dealt with carefully because these results do not hold for all specifications past static estimates show differences in the total average negative merit order effects these estimates might be overstated if wind and solar power dynamics are transferred to the merit order effects

robust non parametric measures of exchange rate variability changes in exchange rates are well known to possess non gaussian distributions yet in testing for differences in exchange rate volatility few researches have examined measures that do not assume gaussian data this paper develops a robust non parametric measure for comparing exchange rate variability across time the measures are applied to monthly exchange rate data to test for differences in exchange rate variability across different monetary policy regimes the comparison show inconsistencies between conclusions based on the classical f test and the robust non parametric equivalent using the robust test for changes in exchange rate variability we do not conclude that variability has increased over time increases in variability do occur but usually only in specific percentiles of the data

gravity models a reformulation and an application to discriminatory trade arrangements gravity models are used to estimate trade flows from 162 countries into 11 major importing countries for 1976 counting the ec as one the main theories underlying gravity models are reviewed and a new gravity model is derived from a linear expenditure system a major innovation of this model is that both tariffs and dummy variables for discriminatory arrangements are incorporated price variables are also explicitly included in the model the tariff and the dummy variables are found to be statistically significant and this indicates that previous gravity model studies which used dummies to estimate the trade benefits of preferential tariffs may not have accurately estimated the effects of the preferences the price variables generally are also found to be statistically significant which casts doubt on the homogeneous goods assumption underlying the purchasing power parity hypothesis some significant differences in the estimates were found when separate equations were regressed for the eec and the us

the merit order effect of wind and photovoltaic electricity generation in germany 2008 2016 estimation and distributional implications abstract generation from renewable energy sources in germany has experienced a considerable uptake in recent years mainly responsible for this development is the german renewable energy sources act erneuerbare energien gesetz eeg this paper considers redistributive implications of the eeg for different electricity consumers using time series regression analysis we show that electricity generation by wind and pv has reduced spot market prices considerably by 6 mwh in 2010 rising to 10 mwh in 2012 we use these results to build a near term forecasting tool for merit order effects projected to reach 14 16 mwh in 2016 on the other hand the costs of the eeg are passed forward to consumers in the form of a surcharge our findings highlight significant redistributive transfers under the current design of the eeg in particular some energy intensive industries are benefiting from lower wholesale electricity prices whilst being largely exempted from contributing to the costs of the scheme we also highlight implications of our results for other areas for reform of the eeg such as adequate remuneration mechanisms that ensure efficient operation and investment decisions are made under the scheme more generally these findings suggest that policy makers need to integrate distributional assessments into policy design and implementation