Open Economies Review

A monetary model of the exchange rate is constructed in which “fundamentalists” and “chartists” interact. It is shown that the non-linearity of this speculative dynamics leads to chaotic motion of the exchange rate. The model is also capable of generating some of the stylized facts of exchange rate dynamics.

By taking into account factor market interactions, the theory of strategic trade policies can consistently explain the fact that less efficient countries offer greater export subsidies to the most technologically advanced industries because in these countries there may be greater differences in efficiency of production technology between industries than in more efficient countries.

This paper examines the interplay of the financing and hedging decisions of a risk-averse multinational firm having a wholly-owned foreign subsidiary. Exchange rate risk management of the multinational firm is shown to have direct impacts on its international capital structure decision and on its currency of denomination decision. If a currency forward market exists, the multinational firm will devise its international capital structure so as to minimize the global weighted average cost of capital. Or else the multinational firm has to rely on a money market hedge through issuing more foreign currency denominated debt and less domestic currency denominated debt, thereby resulting in a higher global weighted average cost of capital.

We develop a model of monetary and fiscal policies appropriate for considering U.S.-European policy interactions in an era of near-balanced budgets and European monetary union. We study the determinants of policy trade-offs and incentives for central banks and governments across the Atlantic. Smaller, more open economies face more favorable trade-offs, since openness enhances policy effectiveness via the exchange-rate channel. Changes in Europe's monetary arrangements do not affect U.S. trade-offs, although they alter the trade-offs facing European policy-makers. Fiscal trade-offs depend crucially on the extent to which fiscal policy is distortionary. Changes in taxes and spending move both employment and inflation in the desired direction following a worldwide supply shock when spending is financed with distortionary taxes.

We use the Johansen cointegration approach to assess the empirical validity of the purchasing power parity (PPP) between the UK and Germany since the introduction of the euro. We conduct the empirical analysis in the context of the global financial crisis that began in 2007 and find that it directly affects the cointegration space. We fail to validate the Johansen and Juselius (1992) original hypothesis that nonstationarity of PPP associates with the nonstationarity of interest rate differentials to produce a stationary relation. On the other hand, we do not reject PPP. We find that PPP cointegrates with inflation differentials. We also find, contrary to conventional wisdom, that (i) equilibrium adjustment occurs between the German and UK inflation rates, while weak exogeneity exists for the German and UK interest rates and the PPP condition, and (ii) three common trends associated with the German interest rate the UK interest rate, and the PPP condition “push” the system with the German interest rate and the PPP condition playing dominant roles in affecting inflation in both Germany and the UK. These results cast serious doubt on the presumed independence of the UK monetary policy.

We analyze the choice between fixed and flexible exchange rates in the context of an open economy version of a multimarkets equilibrium model. In contrast to previous analysis, we separate the information and the shock-absorbing aspects of the two regimes. Under a relative price risk criterion, flexible exchange rates are preferable for a relatively open economy, the more so the less stable are domestic output demand and supply conditions. Fixed exchange rates are preferable for a relatively closed economy, especially so if domestic output demand and supply functions are relatively stable, and if the real balance effect in domestic output demand functions is strong.

We examine the effect of cultural distance, a proxy for the lack of a minimum reservoir of trust necessary to initiate and complete trade deals, on bilateral trade flows. Employing data for 67 countries that span the years 1996–2001, we estimate a series of modified gravity specifications and find that cultural dissimilarity between nations has an economically significant and consistently negative effect on aggregate and disaggregated trade flows; however, estimated effects vary in magnitude and economic significance across measures of trade and our cohort of OECD reference countries. The consistently negative influence of cultural distance indicates that policymakers may wish to consider mechanisms that enhance the build-up of trust and commitment when seeking to facilitate the initiation and completion of international trade deals. Our findings also imply that coefficient estimates from related studies that do not account for the trade-inhibiting effect of cultural distance may be biased.

In this note we use a consistent long-run data set recently published by Maddison (1991) for 10 countries to examine the long-run relationship between saving and investment. In contrast to recent findings of Leachman (1991) we conclude that saving and investment are cointegrated in many countries. Our results suggest that aggregate demand and supply shocks explain much of the time series correlation between total saving and investment.