sticky import prices and j curves we show that devaluations lead to a j curve when imported goods are durable and import prices adjust slowly to exchange rate changes the j curve effect is caused by intertemporal speculation as import prices are low relative to future prices immediately after a devaluation

monetary shocks the exchange rate and the trade balance abstract this paper investigates the response of the exchange rate and the trade balance to monetary policy innovations for the us economy during the period 1973 01 1993 12 the empirical findings indicate that contractionary monetary policy shocks lead to transitory appreciations of the real and the nominal exchange rate exchange rate appreciations that are caused by a temporary contractionary shock to monetary policy are correlated with a short lived improvement in the trade balance which is then followed by a deterioration giving support to the j curve hypothesis

state dependent pricing invoicing currency and exchange rate pass through abstract we analyze exchange rate pass through and volatility of import prices in a dynamic framework where firms are subject to menu costs and decide on price adjustments in response to exchange rate innovations the exchange rate pass through and import price volatility then depend on the invoicing currency in combination with functional forms of cost and demand functions in particular there is lower pass through less frequent price adjustments and lower price volatility when prices are set in the importer s currency than when prices are set in the exporter s currency

exchange rate pass through in developing and emerging markets a survey of conceptual methodological and policy issues and selected empirical findings abstractglobal integration has increased the international linkages of financial markets for emerging market countries a key channel for the international transmission of inflation and economic cycles is from exchange rate movements to domestic prices known as exchange rate pass through erpt this article reviews the conceptual methodological and policy issues connected with erpt in emerging market and developing countries and critically surveys selected empirical studies a key contribution is to categorise and compare the heterogeneous methodologies used to extract erpt measures in the empirical literature single equation models and systems methods are contrasted frequent misspecifications that produce unreliable erpt estimates are highlighted the discerning policy maker needs to ascertain by which methods erpt measures were calculated the controls and restrictions applied and the time frame and stability of the estimates

risk aversion exchange rate uncertainty and the law of one price insights from the market for online air travel tickets we argue that risk aversion driven by exchange rate uncertainty causes a wedge between the domestic and foreign prices of a homogeneous good we test our hypothesis using a unique micro data set from a market with minimum imperfections the empirical findings validate our hypothesis as accounting for exchange rate uncertainty we are able to explain a significant proportion of deviations from the law of one price overall our analysis suggests the possibility of a new solution to the purchasing power parity puzzles

conditional exchange rate volatility and the volume of foreign trade evidence from seven industrialized countries there has long been a concern over the volatility of exchange rates and their impact on the volume of foreign trade however very little attention has been paid to the choice of an appropriate volatility variable as well as the proper specification of the trade equation the sample standard deviation of the exchange rate has been used as a proxy for exchangerate uncertainty in empirical studies that examine the effects of exchange rate uncertainty on the volume of foreign trade see for example akhtar and hilton 1 and gotur 27 these studies have provided conflicting evidence on this issue it has been argued that use of the sample standard deviation is inappropriate because the empirical distribution of exchange rates is not normal 22 10 in this regard subsequent empirical research 12 36 40 41 11 has employed a moving standard deviation of the rate of change of the exchange rate as a proxy for exchange rate uncertainty chowdhury 11 obtained a clear pattern of results that support the hypothesis that the higher volatility of exchange rates led to a reduction in international trade transactions after the breakdown of the bretton woods system in march 1973 other studies have reported ambiguous results 2 the moving standard deviation used in these studies has been criticized in the literature for a ignoring relevant information on the random process generating exchange rates 18 b underestimating the effect of volatility on decisions 52 c distorting the measurement of the volatility variable by smoothing the series 9 and d injecting an element of arbitrariness into the calculation through decisions about the order m of the moving average 43 3

tax policy and aggregate demand management under catching up with the joneses this paper examines the role for tax policies in productivity shock driven economies with catching up with the joneses utility functions the optimal tax policy is shown to affect the economy countercyclically via procyclical taxes i e cooling down the economy with higher taxes when it is overheating in booms and stimulating the economy with lower taxes in recessions to keep consumption up thus models with catching up with the joneses utility functions call for traditional keynesian demand management policies but for rather unorthodox reasons

exchange rate pass through in south africa panel evidence from individual goods and services abstract this study estimates pass through for south africa using samples of final goods and services and homogenous imports estimated pass through to consumer goods prices is low roughly 16 per cent in the two years following an exchange rate change surprisingly it is somewhat higher for services deviations from long run ppp appear to disappear relatively quickly with a half life of about 16 months for imports pass through estimates are much higher averaging around 60 per cent but with wide source country variation finally there is virtually no support for a simple linear trend change in either pass through or in reversion to ppp during the sample

the collapse of purchasing power parities during the 1970 s one of the striking facts concerning the relationship beiveen prices and exchange rates during the 1970 s has been the dismal performance of the predictions of the simple versions of the purchasing power parity doctrine ppp that doctrine in its absolute version states that the equilibrium exchange rate between domestic and foreign currencies equals the ratio of domestic to foreign price levels the relative version of the doctrine relates equilibrium changes in exchange rates to changes in the ratio of domestic to foreign prices during the 1970 s short run changes in exchange rates bore little relationship to short run differentials in national inflation rates and frequently divergences from purchasing power parities have been cumulative this paper reviews and analyzes the empirical record of exchange rates and prices during the 1970 s and the analysis is based on the experience of the dollar pound the dollar frecch franc and the dollar dm exchange rates section 2 presents the evidence on ppp during the 1970 s and contrasts it with the evidence from the 1920 s a period during which the doctrine held up reasonably well this analysis is relevant for assessing whether the flexible exchange rate system was successful in providing national economies with an added degree of insulation from foreign shocks and whether it provided policymakers with an added instrument for the conduct of macroeconomic policy the evidence regarding devia tions from purchasing power parities is also relevant for determining whether there is a case for managed float section 3 attempts to explain what went wrong with

symmetric pass through of tariffs and exchange rates under imperfect competition an empirical test abstract this paper examines the effect of tariffs and exchange rates on u s prices of japanese cars trucks and motorcycles in particular we test whether the long run pass through of tariffs and exchange rates are identical the symmetry hypothesis we find that this hypothesis is easily accepted in our sample we also find that the pass through relation varies across products ranging from about 0 6 for trucks to unity for motorcycles these coefficients have very different implications for trade policy we explain the results based on demand cost and institutional conditions in each industry

pricing exports a cross country study abstract this paper applies cointegration and error correction analysis to estimate the long run steady state and short run dynamic relationships between the exchange rate and export prices in industrial and newly industrializing economies the data coherent analysis allowing the endogeneity of domestic cost and the exchange rate shows that the exchange rate has smaller effects on the export price than previous studies would indicate it contradicts some widely accepted relationships e g smaller more open countries have greater coefficients of pass through the results also exhibit important differences among the usa japan and germany in their export pricing behavior jel f30 f31

real and nominal shocks in a two country price setting world abstract this paper develops a two country model in which the law of one price does not hold in the short run and which is consistent with the stylized fact that exchange rates respond more quickly to news than prices this is done by assuming that firms face lumpy information costs in determining what price to charge both domestic and imported goods prices are therefore sticky with respect to news and deviations from the law of one price ppp are due to exchange rate surprises the model is used to analyze the domestic and international impact of real and nominal disturbances

asset bubbles and bailouts as long as bubble size is relatively small bubbles increase production level but once the size becomes too large then bubbles reduce it given this non monotonic relationship this paper investigates the relationship between bubbles and government bailouts it shows that bailouts for bursting bubbles may positively influence ex ante production efficiency and relax the existence condition of stochastic bubbles the level of bailouts has a non monotonic relationship with production efficiency and a partial bailout policy achieves production efficiency moreover it examines the welfare effects of bailout policies rigorously and shows that even non risky bubbles may be undesirable for taxpayers

market shares financial constraints and pricing behaviour in the export market a structural dynamic model of price and quantity adjustment is estimated on time series data for exports and export prices two sources of dynamics are considered customer markets and preset prices as predicted by the customer market model the market share adjusts slowly after a change in the relative price and financial conditions affect prices prices are found to be sticky in the sense that they do not reflect the most recent information about costs and exchange rates a parsimoniously parameterized structural model explains about 90 of the variation in market share and the relative price

balance of payments crises under inflation targeting abstract this paper analyzes a small open economy model under inflation targeting it shows why such a monetary regime is vulnerable to speculative attacks that take place over a short period rather than instantaneously the speed at which the regime collapses and the extent of reserve losses are increasing in the central bank s explicit or implicit commitment to intervene in the foreign exchange market attacks are therefore ranked from most to least severe as follows exchange rate targeting cpi inflation targeting domestic nontradables inflation targeting and money targeting under inflation targeting the size of the attack is increasing in the tradables consumption share

dynamic relations between international equity and currency markets the role of currency order flow previous research on the dynamic linkages between international financial markets focused on bivariate interequity or intercurrency relationships and do not allow a specific role for the currency or equity market respectively in this paper we hypothesize that there are important yet not well understood dynamic relationships between international equity and currency markets and these are driven by information spillover via the mechanism of currency order flow using a trivariate asymmetric garch framework we find that the relationships between equity and currency markets are significant bidirectional and pervasive these relationships which coexist with the relationships between u s and foreign equity markets are much stronger in the volatilities than in the means importantly we find strong support for our information spillover hypothesis where currency order flow is the economic mechanism by which information is transmitted

taxation bubbles and endogenous growth we study the interplay between taxation bubble formation and economic growth a rational bubble may be beneficial when growth is fueled by public investment or r d externalities and the government levies taxes on bubble returns to finance this investment our main result challenges the conventional view about the negative effect of bubbles in endogenous growth grossman and yanagawa 1993

customer markets credit market imperfections and real price rigidity according to standard theory an increase in demand should raise prices of goods given factor prices empirically however prices appear to be unaffected by short run variations in demand this paper suggests an explanation of this observation if customers react slowly to price changes and credit markets are imperfect prices may be unchanged or even fall when demand increases the reason is that when demand is high profits are high and firms can compete more intensely for customers without increasing their borrowing copyright 1991 by the london school of economics and political science

exchange rate hysteresis large versus small policy misalignments abstract using a monetary model in the spirit of dornbusch 1976 and a sunk cost model of trade hysteresis we show that a sufficiently large policy misalignment can induce hysteresis in the trade balance and thereby alter the steady state real exchange rate hence exchange rate dynamics are path dependent since hysteresis in our model can entail industrial dislocation and the scrapping of sunk assets we suggest that these factors constitute a welfare cost of large policy misalignments that have not been considered formally additionally since the long run exchange rate is path dependent standard empirical tests of exchange rate models may involve a misspecification

price and investment dynamics theory and plant level data we construct a model of a firm competing for market share in a customer market and making investments in physical capital the firm is financially constrained and there are implementation lags in investment our model predicts that product prices should depend on costs and competitors prices but respond weakly to demand shocks also prices should be strongly related to investment we estimate price and investment equations on panel data for swedish manufacturing plants and find results that are qualitatively in line with these predictions though the relation between investment and prices is stronger than predicted by our model

price dynamics of exporting and import competing firms a model of a market for an internationally traded good is presented in this paper buyers who are customers of one firm are imperfectly informed about other firms prices and it is costly for them to change from one supplier to another this leads to dynamic market share equations which allow analysis of the interaction between price quantity decisions of exporting and import competing firms one result is that although the prices of importcompeting firms must in the long run match import prices they may in the short run be uncorrelated or even negatively correlated with import prices

the j curve a literature review due to lag structure currency devaluation is said to worsen the trade balance first and improve it later resulting in a pattern that resemble the letter j hence the j curve phenomenon since its introduction by magee in 1973 brooking papers on economic activity 1 pp 303 25 a large number of studies have attempted to test the phenomenon using different techniques and different model specifications the results are at best ambiguous and deserve to be collected together for the future generation of researchers and graduate students this paper fills such a vacuum in the literature by reviewing the j curve related empirical papers

the exchange rate and the u s wage process an intensive empirical investigation the u s wage growth slowdown since 1982 has generated a large controversy over its causes a hypothesis that has received extensive attention is based on international competitivene ss effects the evidence is mixed and several authors have proposed alternative hypotheses based on economic or noneconomic developments this paper addresses this issue and finds significant effects of international competition on wages in manufacturing services and total hourly private earnings an array of tests indicates that thes e results are robust but that the depreciation of the dollar after 198 5 has not had the large effects of the 1981 85 appreciation copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

flexible exchange rates and commodity price changes the case of japan although agricultural commodities are often assumed to have flexible prices little has been done to estimate exchange rate pass through perfect commodity arbitrage opportunities imply complete pass through imperfect opportunities could lead to incomplete pass through analysis of commodity price and exchange rate adjustments for five commodities exported to japan by the united states reveals that during the 1970s commodity prices were generally flexible during the 1980s when the dollar was rising price stickiness on the part of exporters importers contributed to inflexible prices and asymmetric exchange rate response specifically an exchange rate increase was passed through for some commodities but not a decline

intertemporal substitution in imported durables abstract this paper analyzes the hitherto unexplored relation between expected exchange rates and import prices of durable goods the distinguishing feature of durable goods is their asset like quality implying that their current and future sales are substitutable durability induces intertemporal substitution hence expected exchange rates affect the current price of imported durables although the sign of the effect cannot be determined by theory only the evidence shows that an expected appreciation raises the current import price of durables

the empirical role of the exchange rate on the crude oil price formation this paper adopts a novel empirical approach to the crude oil price formation for the purpose of understanding the price reactions of opec member countries to changes in the exchange rate of the us dollar against other major currencies and prices of other members the results are broadly consistent with the view of the absence of a unified opec determined price in the international crude market literature in addition the results also highlight a cross regional dimension of the crude oil market

exchange rate pass through at the product level we use a detailed database to investigate exchange rate pass through at the product level for a large number of countries the empirical analysis suggests that pricing behaviours are dichotomous with complete pass through in around 25 of sectors and significant pricing to market in the remaining ones average long run pass through coef ficient is close to 80 this result hides a strong heterogeneity of pass through behaviours across sectors even when composition effects are controlled for average pass through varies across importing countries the econometric analysis shows that pass through tends to be higher in volatile environments in less developed countries in weakly integrated markets jel classification f12 f31 f41

is price adjustment asymmetric evaluating the market share and marketing bottlenecks hypothesis abstract export price adjustment is asymmetric with respect to currency fluctuations in at least two circumstances if firms face capacity constraints in distribution networks or quantitative trade restrictions then pricing to market may be greater during depreciations of the exporter s currency if firms attempt to build market share subject to the threat of trade restrictions then pricing to market may be greater during appreciations of the exporter s currency this paper tests for asymmetries using panel data on german and japanese 7 digit industry exports the data seldom reject the hypothesis of a symmetric response of prices to exchange rates

exchange rate pass through evidence from aggregate japanese exports the pass through of exchange rate changes to prices has been the subject of both theoretical and empirical investigations much of the recent interest in pass through was stimulated by the unprecedented movements in the u s dollar during the 1980s and by the potential for these movements to have lasting consequences on the domestic economy still unresolved in these studies is whether pass through to the u s market has declined over the past decade and if so why possible explanations include e g a growing dependence on imports changes in the structure of competition in the u s market or even unfair practices by foreign firms this issue is crucial to evaluating the long term effects of recent movements in u s dollar exchange rates this paper seeks to shed light on these issues indirectly by focusing on the stability of pass through in aggregate japanese exports japan is an obvious case study both because of its increasing presence in world trade and because of the continuing concern expressed frequently in the popular press over the large and persistent bilateral trade imbalances between japan and her major trading partners especially the u s two general criticisms of empirical studies in this area are the poor quality of the data analyzed and the lack of formal justification for the empirical modeling strategies employed these problems are addressed in this study in two ways first the data set used represents a significant improvement over those employed in other aggregate analyses this data from the bank of japan is unique because it is available on a monthly basis and because export prices as opposed to unit values are reported in both domestic and contractual currencies thus the exchange rate measure this study uses corresponds exactly to the export bundle that is we do not use the trade weighted exchange rate index commonly employed in addition to aggregate export price data this data set also contains six sector specific price indexes which permits a comparison of aggregate results with those at the sector or industry level second the problem of dynamic specification is addressed by estimating each equation in error correction form this methodology has been advocated as a means of avoiding illusory

markup adjustment and exchange rate fluctuations evidence from panel data on automobile exports abstract this paper uses data on bilateral automobile export prices from the usa germany and japan to gauge the importance of markup adjustment driven by exchange rate movements across several destination markets we find that japanese exports are characterized by a high degree of markup adjustment designed to stabilize the price measured in the buyer s currency there is weak evidence for such behavior on the part of german exporters and no evidence of markup adjustment by us exporters where it exists markup adjustment tends to be highly persistent the dynamic pattern of markup adjustment is consistent with invoicing in the exporter s currency except for exports to the usa and canada

measuring the intensity of competition in export markets abstract this paper develops an approach to measuring the intensity of competition in international markets using readily available data on destination specific values and quantities of exports at the seven digit industry level the intensity of competition a group of exporters faces in a particular export market is measured by the residual demand elasticity the group faces this elasticity is identified by exchange rate shocks which rotate the supply relation of the source country export group relative to competitors located in other countries we apply this method to german exports of beer and us exports of linerboard paper the resulting estimates of market power appear to be plausible and consistent with other indicators of competition e g market shares the number of competitors providing support for the applicability of our framework in measuring competition in international markets

economic growth with bubbles this paper presents a stylized model of economic growth with bubbles this model views asset price bubbles as a market generated device to moderate the effects of frictions in financial markets improving the allocation of investments and raising the capital stock and welfare the model illustrates various channels through which asset price bubbles affect the incentives for innovation and economic reforms and therefore the rate of economic growth the model also offers a new perspective on the effects of financial development on asset price bubbles and economic growth

the response of domestic prices to expected exchange rates this article examines the recent u s price experience in response to the actual and anticipated rise and fall of the dollar and tests for determinants of the observed price effects an index of real exchange rate expectations is developed and used to explore its role in determining domestic producer prices actual and expected future real exchange rates are seen to have opposite impacts on domestic price determination at the industry level further the industry specific characteristics interact asymmetrically with actual and expected real exchange rate changes copyright 1992 by university of chicago press

price indices and nonlinear mean reversion of real exchange rates author affiliation jyh lin wu institute of economics national sun yat sen university kaohsiung 804 taiwan jlwu2 mail nsysu edu tw and the department of economics national chung cheng university chia yi 106 taiwan ecdjlw ccu edu tw corresponding authorpei fen chen department of international business and trade shu te university kaohsiung taiwan cpf mail stu edu tw acknowledgment we thank two anonymous referees for interesting and constructive comments on an earlier version of the paper any remaining errors are ours 1 introduction are price indices crucial for the existence of a nonlinear mean reversion of real exchange rates do prices or exchange rate adjustments dominate when deviations from purchasing power parity ppp occur is the half life implied by a nonlinear model reasonable the purpose of this article is to address the above three questions for the uk and new zealand over the period of recent float the ppp hypothesis has been one of the most intensive research issues in empirical international finance over the past two decades the rationale behind it is a simple arbitrage hypothesis which results in a linear adjustment of deviations from ppp and the stationarity of real exchange rates empirically existing evidence based on unit root tests provide mixed results for ppp abuaf and jorion 1990 mark 1990 o connell 1998a theoretically there are several reasons for the nonlinear adjustment of deviations from ppp such as the existence of market frictions or transaction costs sercu uppal and van hulle 1995 in addition models of pricing to market and exchange rate pass through give rise to impediments to goods arbitrage krugman 1987 froot and klemperer 1989 the implication is that the speed of adjustment of deviations from ppp depends on the magnitude of the deviations on the other hand the adoption of a price index is crucial in examining ppp several authors have argued that the consumer and producer price indices cpi and ppi respectively do not correspond to their theoretical counterparts and contain measurement errors and aggregation biases cheung and lai 1993 imbs et al 2005 in addition the commodity basket for cpi and ppi includes nontradable goods which impart a nonstationary component to real cpi or ppi exchange rates engel 1999 recently xu 2003 argues that the price index of traded goods tpi is the appropriate one for ppp since it reflects the behavior of arbitrage better than the cpi or ppi the purpose of this article therefore is to examine the nonlinear dynamics of tpi based real exchange rates several authors have applied a smooth transition autoregressive star model to capture the nonlinear dynamics of real exchange rates as it allows for a smooth adjustment between regimes michael nobay and peel 1997 taylor peel and sarno 2001 there are several reasons for us to apply a band threshold autoregressive tar instead of a star type model in our empirical analysis first our empirical evidence fails to reject the unit root hypothesis against the hypothesis of a nonlinear star stationary process based on the test provided by kapetanios shin and snell 2003 1 second the plots of cpi ppi and tpi based real exchange rates in figure 1 show that the tpi based real rate has the largest variation among these three real rates third our empirical evidence rejects the null hypothesis of linearity against tar type nonlinearity and supports the hypothesis that real exchange rates are tar type stationary figure 1 plots of real exchange rates for the uk and new zealand figure omitted see article image several empirical studies have applied a threshold type process to examine the nonlinear mean reversion of real exchange rates obstfeld and taylor 1997 o connell 1998b taylor 2001 sarno taylor and chowdhury 2004

unfair trade the increasing gap between world and domestic prices in commodity markets during the past 25 years the early literature on international trade has debated extensively the constraints facing exporting countries in the major commodity markets this article goes one step further by suggesting that the final demand for these products can not have increased because the declines in world commodity prices were not transmitted or were transmitted imperfectly to domestic consumer prices in contrast upward movements in world prices were clearly passed on to domestic prices as a result the spread between world and domestic prices almost doubled in all major commodity markets during 1975 94 this asymmetry seldom discussed in the literature does not seem to be caused at least systematically by changes in trade and tax policies or factors such as transport processing and marketing costs this article argues therefore that a special effort should be made to better understand the transmission from world to domestic prices especially the role of large international trading companies that may have the capability to influence such spreads through one or several stages of processing in most major commodity markets

price discrimination in the context of vertical differentiation an application to canadian wheat exports this study examines the ability of the canadian wheat board cwb to price discriminate in bread wheat exports this study models wheat as a vertically differentiated intermediate good and modifies the model of vertical differentiation by mussa and rosen to the realities of wheat import demand the conceptual model isolates the bases of price discrimination and demonstrates that the cwb s ability to exploit cost differences in pricing depends on the extent of the differentiation between canadian and u s wheat this model is implemented using monthly confidential price data provided by the cwb for exports to japan the united kingdom and two markets aggregating remaining exports through canada s west and east coasts for 1982 1994 the data indicate that the cwb charges different prices to different countries for wheat of the same grade and protein content results from the model indicate that the price difference between any two markets is not completely explained by elements of perfect competition however the evidence is mixed regarding the ability of the cwb to utilize all the instruments available to price discriminate thus the cwb s pricing strategy may be more complex and dynamic than the prescription for static producer surplus maximization derived in this study

exchange rates and import prices in the united states a varying parameter estimation of exchange rate pass through this article estimates the import price function in the united states using a varying parameter model the results show that the short run nonoil import price changes have become relatively less responsive to exchange rate changes than to foreign cost changes since the generalized floating began in the early 1970s concomitantly the markup has varied significantly falling when the dollar fell and rising when it rose thus pricing to market is confirmed even for overall u s imports

exchange rate expectations and market shares abstract we consider an asymmetric duopoly comprised of a domestic and a foreign firm we derive optimal collusion equilibria and examine how market shares vary in response to changes in the exchange rate our analysis implies some surprising results first a temporary depreciation has a greater impact on market shares than a permanent depreciation second if the change in the expected future rates is of sufficient magnitude then the domestic firm s market share may decrease following a depreciation of the home currency a seemingly perverse effect 1997 elsevier science s a

international deviations from the law of one price the role of search frictions and market share this article examines the size and persistence of international deviations from the law of one price in an industry with search frictions cost differences lead foreign and domestic firms to price differently within countries when local firms are more common in each country there are large and persistent price differences across countries large and persistent changes in international relative costs lead to large and persistent changes in international relative prices dynamic considerations imply that the amount of a cost shock firms pass through to prices is u shaped in the market share of firms receiving the shock

imperfect competition and exchange rate pass through in the food processing sector imperfect competition has become an important dimension of international trade theory helpman and krugman product differentiation and economies of scale are explicitly incorporated in the new trade theory policy prescriptions following from these models hinge critically on underlying assumptions particularly the form of strategic firm behavior competitive cournot or bertrand unfortunately these models do not lend themselves easily to empirical testing also little empirical information exists on the strategic behavior of firms in international markets thus various models and tests on different aspects of imperfect competition in trade have been proposed and implemented one form of imperfect competition in international trade that has received attention re

cost pass through in the u s automobile market we study cost pass through in the u s automobile market using a framework that incorporates the effects of cost changes on input decisions we find that accounting for firms factor market decisions significantly increases measured cost pass through although we reject the hypothesis of full cost pass through and constant markups in addition our evidence suggests that cost shocks common to all manufacturers have a greater effect on prices than do model specific cost shocks finally we examine how pass through varies with manufacturer nationality finding that u s firm cost pass through exceeds that of european and asian firms

export subsidies and oligopoly with switching costs abstract i examine export policy using a two period model of oligopolistic competition with switching costs a switching costs model captures the idea that market share in one period affects profits and welfare in future periods if consumers are impatient firms and governments are patient and switching costs are significant then governments subsidize first period exports and tax second period exports otherwise governments tax exports in both periods although governments may subsidize first period exports each country is made worse off when both countries subsidize in addition firms dump p mc under conditions similar to those required for export subsidies

the evolution of price dispersion in the european car market car prices in europe are characterized by large and persistent differences across countries the purpose of this paper is to document and explain this price dispersion using a panel data set extending from 1980 to 1993 we first demonstrate two main facts concerning car prices in europe i the existence of significant differences in quality adjusted prices across countries with italy and the u k systematically representing the most expensive markets 2 substantial year to year volatility that is to a large extent accounted for by exchange rate fluctuations and the incomplete response of local currency prices to these fluctuations these facts are analysed within the framework of a multiproduct oligopoly model with product differentiation the model identifies three potential sources for the international price differences price elasticities generating differences in markups costs and import quota constraints local currency price stability can be attributed either to the presence of a local component in marginal costs or to markup adjustment that is correlated with exchange rate volatility the latter requires that the perceived elasticity of demand is increasing in price we find that the primary reason for the higher prices in italy is the existence of a strong bias for domestic brancs that generates high markups for the domestic firm fiat in the u k higher prices are mainly attributed to better equipped cars and or differences in the dealer discount practices the import quota constraints are found to have a significant impact on japanese car prices in italy france and the u k with respect to local currency price stability a large percentage of the documented price inertia can be attributed to local costs and a smaller fraction to markup adjustment that is indicative of price discrimination based on these results we conjecture that the emu will substantially reduce the year to year volatility observed in the car price data but without further measures to increase european integration it will not completely eliminate existing cross country price differences

confidence and the real value of money in an overlapping generations economy we demonstrate that stochastic bubbles which have a constant exogenous probability of collapsing may exist in general equilibrium on an intrinsically useless and unbacked asset money this may happen provided that the probability q that the bubble will persist next period is large enough and exceeds a threshold level q which we call the minimum rate of confidence this condition is always violated when the economy without bubble is dynamically efficient it is more likely to be satisfied in dynamically inefficient economies the larger the size of the inefficiency as measured by the excess of the growth rate over the no bubble interest rate we study both exchange and production economies

flexible exchange rates prices and the role of news lessons from the 1970s recent experience with flexible exchange rate systems has led to renewed interest in the operation of foreign exchange markets as reflected in many recent studies of the principal determinants of exchange rates the 1970s witnessed the dramatic alteration of the international monetary system from a regime of pegged exchange rates which prevailed for about a quarter of a century since the bretton woods conference into a regime of flexible though managed rates as a consequence of the emergence of the new legal and economic system traders national governments and international organisations were confronted with new economic problems choices and instruments during the 1970s ex change rates fluctuated widely and inflation rates accelerated the international monetary system had to accommodate extraordinarily large oil related shocks which affected trade flows in goods and assets huge oil payments had to be recycled uncertainties concerning future developments in international politics reached new heights and the prospects for the world economy got gloomier these developments placed unprecedented pressures on the markets for foreign exchange as well as on other asset markets they were associated with a large slide in the value of the us dollar and resulted in speeding up the creation of new institutions like the european monetary system which provided the formal framework for the management of exchange rates among members

price formation in an open economy theory and evidence for the united kingdom 1951 1991 price formation is an increasingly important part of modern macroeconomics however the empirical literature on price setting is diverse and confused this paper uses cointegration techniques to test theories of price setting on uk aggregate data for 1951 91 we find i domestic prices are determined by both domestic costs and world prices and ii at the macroeconomic level prices are related to marginal cost rather than average or normal cost

a proposition on short run departures from the law of one price unanticipated inflation relative price dispersion and commodity arbitrage abstract this paper proposes an explanation of short run departures from the law of one price based on the characteristics of the inflationary process and changes in the distribution of relative prices unexpected inflation gives rise to volatility of relative prices the more unexpected and hence uneven the rate of inflation the greater the difficulty in discerning from a given structure of relative prices commodity arbitrage opportunities which may be expected to persist and those transient opportunities which do not warrant a firm s incurring fixed costs of arbitrage an illustration portrays a risk averse firm confronting an international arbitrage opportunity

brics how important is the exchange rate pass through this paper analyses the exchange rate pass through erpt into domestic consumer prices in brics brazil russia india china and south africa countries from mid 1990s onwards by using three different econometric approaches i e the single equation approach the var approach and the time varying parameter approach it is also studied the role of macroeconomic determinants in erpt our results suggest that a erpt is higher for the emerging markets with mostly floating exchange rates brazil russia and south africa than for the other brics countries b exchange rate explains on average around the 40 of the price variance for brazil russia and south africa and c inflation volatility exchange rate volatility and openness seem to be the key macroeconomic determinants in brics countries

exchange rates and traded goods prices abstract this paper presents a partial equilibrium model of the determination of domestic and export prices by a monopolistic competitive firm the model stresses the role of exchange rate uncertainty and expectations the most important result of the analysis is that the stochastic properties of deviations from the law of one price are crucially affected by the currency of denomination of export prices using data on domestic and dollar export prices of japanese goods i find that deviations from the law of one price are due to exchange rate surprises but also to price staggering and ex ante price discrimination

exchange rate pass through when market share matters the authors investigate the pass through from exchange rates to import prices when firms future demands depend on their current market shares they show that profit maximizing foreign firms may either raise or lower their dollar export prices when the dollar appreciates temporarily i e the pass through may be perverse and that current import prices may be more sensitive to expected future exchange rates than to current exchange rates they present evidence that suggests the behavior of expected future exchange rates may provide a clue to the puzzling recent behavior of u s import prices copyright 1989 by american economic association

how does a devaluation affect the current account abstract this paper explores how an exchange rate devaluation affects the current account in a sticky price inter temporal optimizing model the main issue addressed is how the features of international pricing affect the response of the current account when prices are all set in the producer s currencies the effect of a devaluation on the current account depends on the conventional marshall lerner conditions this is fundamentally an a temporal condition depending on the elasticity of substitution between home and foreign goods however when prices are all set in consumer s currencies the response of the current account depends upon the size of the inter temporal elasticity of substitution of consumption across time periods this represents an inter temporal condition when pricing to market is partial the effect of devaluation on the current account depends on the strength of the a temporal elasticity relative to the inter temporal elasticity

intertemporal speculation devaluation and the j curve abstract this paper presents a new explanation of why j curves i e the tendency of the trade balance to deteriorate immediately after a devaluation and to improve only as time passes may arise the paper focuses on the consequences of price stickiness if prices are sticky the devaluation leads first to asn increse in the relative price of tradables which tends to improve the trade balance and second to rising prices of tradables following the devaluation which tends to temporarily worsen the trade balance as a result of intertemporal speculation if the latter effect dominates a j curves results

adjustment costs and pricing to market theory and evidence abstract this paper develops an adjustment cost model of pricing to market the model consists of a monopolist who supplies an identical nondurable good to two foreign markets it is shown that the degree of pricing to market increases with the relative importance of the transitory component in exchange rates customs data from 1978 through 1987 on u s and canadian imports of seven german commodities are used to estimate the model s parameters and test its over identifying restrictions

asset bubbles endogenous growth and financial frictions this paper analyzes the effects of bubbles in an infinitely lived agent model of endogenous growth with financial frictions and heterogeneous agents we provide a complete characterization on the relationship between financial frictions and the existence of bubbles our model predicts that if the degree of pledgeability is sufficiently high or sufficiently low bubbles can not exist they can only arise at an intermediate degree this suggests that improving the financial market condition might enhance the possibility of bubbles we also examine whether bubbles are growth enhancing or growth impairing in the long run we show that when the degree of pledgeability is relatively low bubbles boost long run growth on the other hand when it is relatively high bubbles lower long run growth moreover we examine the effects of the burst of bubbles and show that the effects much depend on the degree of the pldgeability i e the quality of financial system

exchange rate pass through for strategic pricing and advertising abstract this paper builds a model in the new empirical industrial organization framework bresnahan t 1989 industries and market power in schmalensee r willig r eds handbook of industrial organization north holland amsterdam to estimate exchange rate pass through in price and advertising price cost margins market structure and firm conduct are estimated endogenously allowing for precise estimation of the degree of and reasons for incomplete pass through i demonstrate that price and advertising pass through are functions of demand cost and market conduct in the short run in the long run the market conduct and cost technologies are in turn determined by the exchange rate movements 1997 elsevier science b v

external habit in a production economy a model of asset prices and consumption volatility risk a standard real business cycle model with external habit and capital adjustment costs matches a long list of asset price and business cycle moments equity firm value and risk free rate volatility the equity premium excess return predictability consumption growth predictability basic moments of consumption output and investment among others the model also generates endogenous consumption volatility risk precautionary savings motives make consumption sensitive to shocks in bad times leading to countercyclical volatility even with homoscedastic technology shocks habit acts as countercyclical leverage which amplifies this channel habit also implies high risk aversion which amplifies the stock price response received april 21 2016 editorial decision february 3 2017 by editor stijn van nieuwerburgh

asset bubbles and endogenous growth abstract we study the interaction between productive and nonproductive savings in economies with endogenous long run growth as in the neoclassical growth setting with overlapping generations asset bubbles can exist in an economy with endogenous growth provided that they are not too large and that the growth rate in the equilibrium without bubbles exceeds the interest rate here the existence conditions for bubbles reflect parameters of tastes and technology we find that bubbles when they exist retard the growth of the economy perhaps even in the long run and reduce the welfare of all generations born after the bubble appears

export pricing flexible exchange rates and divergence in the prices of traded goods abstract a model of firm pricing where customers adjust slowly to price differences is extended to an exporting firm under flexible exchange rates the foreign currency price the firm sets determines both current net revenue and the rate of investment in market share real exchange rate changes lead to price revisions but the protracted adjustment of customers prompts a smaller price response to transitory changes in the real exchange rate the model accounts for observed variations in traded goods prices across countries and the failure of exporting firms to pass through exchange rate changes but in contrast to static models does not predict frequent reallocation of traded goods production

linear and nonlinear exchange rate exposure abstract this paper presents a new methodological approach to examine exchange rate exposure which takes account of the role of the market portfolio and macroeconomic variables in exposure regressions exchange rate regimes based on periods of depreciation and appreciation and nonlinear exposure within each regime we show that the stock market s own exposure to exchange rates should be taken into account before considering industry exposure in addition we adjust the exchange rate and the stock market for common economy wide factors that are unrelated to exchange rates within this framework we show that exposure to bilateral exchange rates is statistically and economically important and that industries with extensive international trade are more often exposed than industries with low levels of international trade the signs of exposure coefficients in each regime are consistent with the extent to which an industry exports we also show that nonlinear exposure is often statistically and economically significant interestingly there is little evidence that industries are exposed to a currency basket

the effect of exchange rate distortions on grain export markets the case of argentina the growth of agricultural trade in the 1970s and the strong dollar and depressed commodity prices in the 1980s have increased awareness of the vulnerability of agricultural markets to economic forces outside the agricultural sector some of the recent agricultural developments are attributable to changes in exchange rate movements that transmit macroeconomic forces to a trade dependent agricultural sector under the flexible exchange rate system exchange rate volatility has increased artus and young because exchange rates adjust to balance external accounts for an independent level of money supply across countries volatility has also increased because asset markets and adjustments on the capital side of the balance of payments determine the exchange rate in the short run dornbush regardless of the sources of exchange rate movements exchange rate changes can affect terms of trade and international competitiveness as long as they affect relative prices between traded and nontraded goods krueger even if exchange rate changes primarily adjust price levels between countries for a given level of the money supply there are terms of trade changes in the short run however recent evidence indicates that exchange rate changes are greater than can be attributed to changes in domestic price levels across countries frenkel stockman

a structural approach to identifying the sources of local currency price stability the inertia of the local currency prices of traded goods in the face of exchange rate changes is a well documented phenomenon in international economics this paper develops a structural model to identify the sources of this local currency price stability and applies it to micro data from the beer market the empirical procedure exploits manufacturers and retailers first order conditions in conjunction with detailed information on the frequency of price adjustments following exchange rate changes to quantify the relative importance of local non traded cost components markup adjustment by manufacturers and retailers and nominal price rigidities in the incomplete transmission of such changes to prices we find that on average approximately 60 of the incomplete exchange rate pass through is due to local non traded costs 8 to markup adjustment 30 to the existence of own brand price adjustment costs and 1 to the indirect strategic effect of such costs though these results vary considerably across individual brands according to their market shares

comment on the campbell cochrane habit model campbell and cochrane 1999 formulate a model that successfully explains a wide variety of asset pricing puzzles by augmenting the standard power utility function with a time varying external habit that adapts nonlinearly to current and past average consumption in the economy we demonstrate that their preference specification has the unusual implications that habit can move negatively with consumption and that the social marginal utility can be negative as a result government interventions that occasionally destroy part of the endowment can lead to substantial welfare improvements jel code e21 e44 g12 ljungqvist stockholm school of economics and new york university email lars ljungqvist hhs se uhlig university of chicago email huhlig uchicago edu we thank fernando alvarez and john cochrane for criticisms and suggestions on our earlier exploration of the properties of the campbell cochrane preference specification the present exposition has benefitted much from the comments of the editor and three anonymous referees ljungqvist s research was supported by a grant from the jan wallander and tom hedelius foundation uhlig s research has been supported by the nsf grant ses 0922550

emerging floaters pass throughs and some new commodity currencies in spite of early skepticism on the merits of floating exchange rate regimes in emerging markets 8 of the 25 largest countries in this group have now had a floating exchange rate regime for more than a decade using parsimonious var specifications covering the period of floating exchange rates this study computes the dynamics of exchange rate pass throughs to consumer price indices we find that pass throughs have typically been moderate even though emerging floaters have seen considerable nominal and real exchange rate volatilities previous studies that set out to estimate exchange rate pass throughs ignored changes in policy regimes making them vulnerable to the lucas critique we find that within the group of emerging floaters estimated pass throughs are higher for countries with greater nominal exchange rate volatilities and that trade more homogeneous goods these findings are consistent with the pass through model of floden and wilander 2006 and earlier findings by campa and goldberg 2005 respectively furthermore we find that the indonesian rupiah the thai baht and possibly the mexican peso are commodity currencies in the sense that their real exchange rates are cointegrated with international commodity prices

why do the free trade gain numbers differ so much the role of industrial organization in general equilibrium a small general equilibrium model calibrated approximately to match the canadian tradeable goods sector is used to examine the implications of a range of assumptions about pricing behaviour and entry barriers for the impact of free trade with the united states it turns out that only a model with an extreme combination of non competitive product market and free entry as well as unexploited scale economies can generate substantial gains from free trade other assumptions modelled include monopolistic competition market share pricing an economist s model and a mainstream industrial organization approach the predicted welfare gains range from zero to more than 7 per cent of gnp pourquoi est ce que les evaluations numeriques des gains derives de l accord de libre echange different tellement le role de l organisation industrielle dans l analyse d equilibre g6neral l auteur utilise un petit modele d equilibre general calibre pour approximer le secteur canadien des biens echangeables avec l exterieur dans son analyse des implications d un ensemble de postulats quant a la tarification et aux barrieres a l entree sur l impact du libre echange avec les etats unis il appert que seul un modele impliquant une combinaison extreme de marches de produit non concurrentiels et d entree libre ainsi que d economies d echelle non exploitees peut engendrer des gains substantiels comme resultat du libre echange on examine aussi d autres postulats concurrence monopolistique tarification pour maintenir une part du marche un modele a saveur economiste et 1 approche standard d organisation industrielle les gains de bien etre qu on predit selon les postulats de base couvrent un eventail de zero a 7 pour cent du pnb

exchange rate misalignments in duopoly the case of airbus and boeing we examine the effect of exchange rate misalignments on competition in the market for large commercial aircraft this market is a duopoly where players compete in dollar denominated prices while one of them airbus incurs costs mostly in euros we construct and calibrate a simulation model to investigate how companies adjust their prices to deal with the effects of a temporary misalignment and how this affects profit margins and volumes we also explore the effects on the long run dynamics of competition we conclude that due to the duopolistic nature of the aircraft market airbus will pass only a small part of the exchange rate fluctuations on to customers through higher prices moreover due to features specific to the aircraft industry such as customer switching costs and learning by doing even a temporary departure of the exchange rate from its long run equilibrium level may have permanent effects on the industry

exchange rates and oligopoly abstract the purpose of this paper is to explain empirical observations concerning the impact of exchange rate changes on industrial prices as exchange rates change the pass through into industrial prices is often incomplete and sometimes it goes into the wrong direction i e the prices in the depreciating country decrease while those in the appreciating country increase the latter is called perverse pass through the usual context for such observations is one of segmented markets and imperfect competition we consider the simplest model with these characteristics two duopolistic firms which both operate in two countries the markets of the two countries are separate and each of the firms produces its good in one of these countries we study the effect of an exchange rate change on the prices in each country and on the level of sales and of profits of each of the firms when strong restrictions such as constant marginal costs are imposed prices move in the right direction in response to an exchange rate change however with general cost and demand structures even in this simple model it is possible for prices in both countries to move in perverse directions