the influence of unanticipated money growth on real output some cross country estimates two major propositions can be deduced from the theories of the business cycle developed in 4 14 15 161 1 monetary growth affects real output only if it is unanticipated 2 the impact on output of unanticipated monetary growth declines the more unpredictable monetary growth becomes proposition 1 has been tested on u k data in 2 3s on u s data in 5 6 7 and on canadian data in 19 the best known but somewhat informal test of proposition 2 is contained in 15 on data from a cross section of eighteen countries l in this paper we apply the method described in 3 to test proposition 1 using data from a range of countries furthermore we develop and discuss a formal method of testing proposition 2 and apply that method to the same data our main conclusion is that neither proposition can be decisively rejected

long run trends in internal migrations in italy a study in panel cointegration with dependent units the objective of this paper is to examine the long run determinants of internal migrations from southern italy in order to accomplish this task the paper develops a bootstrap test for panel cointegration analysis with dependent units monte carlo simulations show that the test based on the continuous path block bootstrap has good power and size properties and is robust to both short and long run dependence across units the empirical analysis points to income in the sending region as a key factor of the decline of migrations with unemployment and income differentials playing only a minor role copyright 2007 john wiley sons ltd

classifying exchange rate regimes deeds vs words abstract most of the empirical literature on exchange rate regimes uses the imf de jure classification based on the regime announced by the governments despite the recognized inconsistencies between reported and actual policies in many cases to address this problem we construct a de facto classification based on data on exchange rates and international reserves from all imf reporting countries over the period 1974 2000 which we believe provides a meaningful alternative for future empirical work on the topic the classification sheds new light on several stylized facts previously reported in the literature in particular we find that the de facto pegs have remained stable throughout the last decade although an increasing number of them shy away from an explicit commitment to a fixed regime hidden pegs we confirm the hollowing out hypothesis but show that it does not apply to countries with limited access to capital markets we also find that pure floats are associated with only relatively minor nominal exchange rate volatility and that the recent increase in the number of de jure floats goes hand in hand with an increase in the number of de facto dirty floats fear of floating

oil price shocks and the dispersion hypothesis recent research by david lilien shows that a significant fraction of aggregate unemployment can be explained by the dispersion of employment growth across industries this paper presents two new results in this area first it is shown that a significant fraction of the variation in lilien s dispersion index is due to the differential impact of oil shocks across industries second and more important it is shown that once the dispersion in employment growth due to oil shocks is accounted for the residual dispersion has no explanatory power for unemployment

financial intermediation business failures and real business cycles in this paper a general equilibrium business cycle model is construct ed that when subjected to real disturbances mimics observed qualita tive comovements among real output money business failures risk pr emia intermediary loans and prices in contrast monetary disturban ces generate cycles that have several inconsistencies with empirical evidence thus providing support for real business cycle theory at th e expense of monetary theories of the business cycle financial inter mediation arises endogenously in the model and intermediation matters for business cycle behavior a credit supply mechanism acts in tande m with an intertemporal substitution effect in propagating stochastic disturbances copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

terms of trade and exchange rate regimes in developing countries abstract since friedman essays in positive economics university of chicago press chicago 1953 157 203 an advantage often attributed to flexible exchange rate regimes over fixed regimes is their ability to insulate more effectively the economy against real shocks i use a post bretton woods sample 1973 96 of 75 developing countries to assess whether the responses of real gdp real exchange rates and prices to terms of trade shocks differ systematically across exchange rate regimes i find that responses are significantly different across regimes in a way that supports friedman s hypothesis the paper also examines the importance of terms of trade shocks in explaining the overall variance of output and prices in developing countries

a neoclassical model of unemployment and the business cycle this paper investigates a general equilibrium model of unemployment and the business cycle in which specialization of labor plays a key role a rational expectations equilibrium with fully flexible wages and prices can exhibit unemployment in which the marginal product of employed workers exceeds the reservation wage of those who are without jobs workers are unemployed either because they are in the process of relocating for a better job or because they are waiting for conditions in the depressed sector to improve moreover seemingly small disruptions in the supplies of primary commodities such as energy could be the source of fluctuations in aggregate employment and can exert surprisingly large effects on real output

stock market dispersion and unemployment abstract the sectoral shifts hypothesis advanced by lilien 1982 and davis 1987 suggests that unemployment is in part the result of resources being reallocated from declining to expanding sectors of the economy using u s data from 1931 to 1987 we test this hypothesis by constructing an index measuring the dispersion among stock prices from different industries we find that lagged values of this index significantly affect unemployment we show that the stock market dispersion index is less contaminated by aggregate demand influences than lilien s employment dispersion index which makes our test less vulnerable to the abraham and katz 1986 critique

commodity currencies and the real exchange rate abstract this paper examines whether the real exchange rates of commodity exporting countries and the real prices of their commodity exports move together over time using international monetary fund imf data on the world prices of 44 commodities and national commodity export shares we construct new monthly indices of national commodity export prices for 58 commodity exporting countries over 1980 2002 evidence of a long run relationship between national real exchange rate and real commodity prices is found for about one third of the commodity exporting countries the long run real exchange rate of these commodity currencies is not constant as would be implied by purchasing power parity based models but is time varying being dependent on movements in the real price of commodity exports

booming sector and de industrialisation in a small open economy this paper presents a theoretical analysis of the dutch disease the phenomenon whereby a boom in one traded goods sector squeezes porfitability in other traded goods sectors both by directly bi

unanticipated monetary policy and real economic activity some cross regime evidence abstract classical equilibrium models of business cycles predict several consequences of policy regime shift this paper examines these predictions using evidence from the post 1979 period and by comparing several pre war monetary regimes the policy invariance proposition and the lucas hypothesis receive some support from the evidence although some discrepancies remain

analyzing the impacts of foreign exchange and oil price on biofuel commodity futures abstract this paper employs an arji trend model that combines the autoregressive jump intensity arji and component models to analyze the effects of the u s dollar index and oil prices on the dynamic properties of biofuel related commodity futures the results show that the arji trend model not only provides a better fit for the data on the volatility dynamics of corn soybean and wheat futures but also performs better in terms of out of sample forecasting the u s dollar index and oil prices both generate significant impacts on the returns of the futures since the coexistence of permanent component transitory component and time varying jumps are observed in those futures the arji trend model is beneficial for acquiring a better understanding of the differential attributes among corn soybean and wheat futures

a unified theory and test of extended immediate deterrence we present a unified theory and test of extended immediate deterrence unified in the sense that we employ our theoretical deterrence model as our statistical model in the empirical analysis the theoretical model is a straightforward formalization of the deterrence logic in huth 1988 and huth and russett 1984 coupled with private information concerning utilities our statistical analysis suggests that the attacker and defender s decisions are influenced by the balance of forces nuclear weapons defender protege military alliances arms transfers and trade as well as the regime types of those involved many of these findings contradict previous research by huth 1988 and huth and russett 1988 we find that many of the variables involved in the deterrence calculus are nonmonotonically linked to the probability of deterrence success or war we illustrate the results with case studies of the soviet japanese dispute over manchukuo 1937 1938 and the berlin blockade 1948

market power inflation targeting and commodity currencies abstract the commodity currency literature highlights the robust exchange rate response to fluctuations in global commodity prices that occurs for major commodity exporters the magnitude of the response however varies widely across countries and over time horizons this paper examines the real exchange rates of 51 commodity exporters over the period from 1980 to 2010 and finds that in the long run a higher degree of market power in the world commodity trade can reduce the exchange rate response while in the short run an inflation targeting regime can amplify it these differential impacts across countries and horizons are of particular relevance for monetary policy making and for trade strategy in commodity abundant economies

unexpected monetary disturbances during the gold standard era abstract this empirical paper uses the barro methodology of estimating unexpected monetary shocks to determine the effect these shocks had on real output in the u s during the gold standard era between 1880 and 1913 it also investigates whether changes in a measure of financial intermediation had real effects the results indicate that neither expected nor unexpected money shocks affected output changes in financial intermediation however were significantly correlated with output this result lends support to theories which stress the endogeneity of broad measures of the money supply

cyclical fluctuations and sectoral reallocation evidence from the psid abstract this paper documents the correlation between permanent sectoral reallocation and the business cycle using data from the michigan panel study of income dynamics we find that the outflow of workers from goods to services accelerates during recessions the flow from services to stable employment in surables accelerates during booms we also document the contribution of sectoral reallocation to total unemployment permanent switchers account for about a quarter of the total weeks of unemployment during booms this proportion rises to nearly 40 duing recessions

real exchanges rates commodity prices and structural factors in developing countries this paper provides new empirical evidence about the relationship that may exist between real exchange rates and commodity prices in developing countries that are specialized in the export of a main primary commodity it investigates how structural factors like the exchange rate regime the degree of financial and trade openness the degree of export concentration and the type of the commodity exports affect the strength of the commodity price real exchange rate dependence

modelling systemic risk and dependence structure between the prices of crude oil and exchange rates in brics economies evidence using quantile coherency and ngcovar approaches abstract in this study we examine the dependence structure and systemic risk between return series of the prices of crude oil and the brics exchange rates to us using the quantile coherency methods of barunik and kley 2015 and the nonparametric conditional value at risk granger causality test hereafter ngcovar of diks and wolski 2018 over the period 2005 2017 further we use the hiemstra and jones 1994 hereafter hj and diks and panchenko 2005 hereafter dp tests for comparison purposes our findings indicate that all countries reveal significant negative dependence in the long run dynamics between oil prices and brazilian indian and south african currencies hj and dp tests suggest that lagged crude oil prices have predictive power for the brazilian and russian exchange rates furthermore a robust unidirectional lagged dependence exists from the brazilian exchange rate to crude oil prices concerning the chinese indian and south african currencies we find no contagion effects from to those countries to the oil market for russia there is limited evidence of contagion effects these findings provide insights for regulators and international investors

external wealth the trade balance and the real exchange rate abstract we examine the link between the net foreign asset position the trade balance and the real exchange rate in particular we decompose the impact of a country s net foreign asset position external wealth on its long run real exchange rate into two mechanisms the relation between external wealth and the trade balance and holding fixed other determinants a negative relation between the trade balance and the real exchange rate we also provide additional evidence that the relative price of nontradables is an important channel linking the trade balance and the real exchange rate

real exchanges rates in commodity producing countries a reappraisal commodity price booms as those recorded in the last decade may have a significant economic impact in small commodity exporting developing countries whether the impact on output is positive or negative is still unclear it depends on various factors notably on the impact that commodity prices can have on the real exchange rate of the commodity exporting countries two recent papers show that the real exchange rate appreciates when commodity prices increase our analysis produces new estimates of this relationship by focusing on a large sample of developing countries which are specialized in the export of one leading commodity by using non stationary panel techniques robust to cross sectional dependence we find that the price of the dominant commodity has a significant long run impact on the real exchange rate when the exports of the leading commodity have a share of at least 20 percent in the country s total exports of merchandises our results also show that the larger this share the larger the size of the impact

commodity prices and growth in africa a frican economies export primary commodities and most export little else policymakers as well as economists and historians of african economic development have seen these exports as both a hope and a curse the following parable tells the story once upon a time a servant of the ruler discovered a miraculous plant which grew readily in that country and whose seeds could be woven into fine cloth so desirable was this fabric that it became prized all over the world and fetched a high price after two score years the plant accounted for most of the country s trade with the world the ruler ordered the peasants to grow the plant paid them only a fraction of its price and he and his nobles became fabulously wealthy because the ruler wished to be remembered as a great ruler and as the father of his country he used his wealth to build a great army and brought machines from foreign countries to make the fine goods that previously could only be obtained from foreign merchants but the machines often broke down and the goods that they made were of poor quality and after the ruler died they were left to rust under the ruler s successor there was a war in a foreign land where the plant also grew so that there was a great shortage and its price increased threefold in only three seasons the new ruler spent his newfound riches on fantastic extravagance while immense sums were expended on public works after the manner of the east and on productive works carried out in the wrong way or too soon not even the threefold increase in prices could support these expenditures and the country soon found itself deeply in debt when the war ended and the price fell the country could no longer pay the interest on its debt or borrow more money even after it had sold its only useful public work to a foreign power so that power sent a mission to the country the publication of whose report from which the above

the modern history of exchange rate arrangements a reinterpretation we develop a novel system of reclassifying historical exchange rate regimes one key difference between our study and previous classifications is that we employ monthly data on market determined parallel exchange rates going back to 1946 for 153 countries our approach differs from the imf official classification which we show to be only a little better than random it also differs radically from all previous attempts at historical reclassification our classification points to a rethinking of economic performance under alternative exchange rate regimes indeed the breakup of bretton woods had less impact on exchange rate regimes than is popularly believed