Category Archives: exchange rates

“Renminbi Going Global”

That’s the title of a new working paper by Xiaoli Chen (Shandong University) and Yin-Wong Cheung (UCSC). Readers might recognize Cheung as a co-author with G. Ma and R. McCauley on a 2010 BIS paper, discussed in this May 2010 Econbrowser post, and just published in Pacific Economic Review. For anybody who is interested in the latest developments in the Chinese government’s attempts to internationalize the Renminbi, this is essential reading. From the summary of the paper.

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The Macroeconomic Effects of Large Exchange Rate Appreciations

From the abstract to a new OECD Development Center working paper, by Marcus Kappler, Helmut Reisen, Moritz Schularick and Edouard Turkisch, the results of a large, cross-country study based upon a narrative approach to identifying appreciation episodes:

The study shows that currency appreciations can help to a certain extent in reducing global imbalances, and that it can go along with a shift from a mainly export-based model of growth towards a model with internal sources of growth. The cost in terms of growth would be very limited in the case of developed countries, but somewhat larger for developing countries.

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Exchange Rates: Two Stylized Facts and Yet Another (Consequent) Puzzle

My colleague, Charles Engel, has a new paper entitled The Real Exchange Rate, Real Interest Rates, and the Risk Premium, in which he tries to identify what characteristics an exchange rate model must possess in order to explain two stylized facts.

…The well-known interest parity puzzle in foreign exchange markets finds … the high interest rate country tends to have the higher expected return in the short run. The second stylized fact concerns evidence that when a country’s relative real interest rate rises above its average, its currency tends to be stronger than average in real terms.

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The Real Value of the Yuan and Inflation

A recent NYT article highlighted the fact that international competitiveness (as defined by macroeconomists) depends on not just the nominal exchange rate, but also relative price levels. From Inflation in China May Limit U.S. Trade Deficit by Keith Bradsher:

Inflation is starting to slow China’s mighty export machine, as buyers from Western multinational companies balk at higher prices and have cut back their planned spring shipments across the Pacific.

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Exchange Rate Modelling at AEA

Or, at least one session’s worth of recent thinking on the topic.

Presiding: Philippe Bacchetta (University of Lausanne)

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