which should give you pause for thought about national-security-rationalized tariffs. Output stable, real prices up.
Category Archives: international
An Event Study: How Do Equity Markets View National Security-based Trade Protection?
Figure 1: Dow Jones, 15 minute increments. Source: TradingEconomics.
The World-Wide Fama Puzzle Reversal
In my previous post, I recounted “The New Fama Puzzle” as it applied to dollar exchange rates, with focus on the euro/dollar rate. A quick observation: the reversal also appears for non-US dollar based exchange rates (against euro, yen, pound).
Continue reading
Interest Differentials and Exchange Rate Changes Before and After the Global Crisis
Before 2007M08
and After 2007M09
If the joint hypothesis of uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) and rational expectations –- sometimes termed the unbiasedness hypothesis — held, then the slope of the regression lines (in red) would be indistinguishable from unity. In fact, they are significantly different from that value. This pattern of coefficient reversal holds up for other dollar-based exchange rates, as well as for other currency pairs (with a couple exceptions). The fact that the coefficient is positive in the post-global financial crisis period is what we term “the New Fama puzzle”.
World Economic Outlook Update: Upwardly Revised Growth, Rising Risks?
The IMF released an update to WEO today:
Continue reading
Guest Contribution: “Trump’s Tax Cut Will Worsen the US Current Account Deficit”
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. This is an extended version of a column that appeared at Project Syndicate on January 15th.
Making Mexico Pay for the Wall (Redux)
So we’re back to this again? From CNN:
“They can pay for it indirectly through NAFTA,” Trump said Thursday in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We make a good deal on NAFTA, and, say, ‘I’m going to take a small percentage of that money and it’s going toward the wall.’ Guess what? Mexico’s paying.”
Guest Contribution: “Trade and Inequality Within Countries”
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. This is an extended version of a column that appeared at Project Syndicate.
“Asset Prices and Macroeconomic Outcomes: A Survey”
That’s the title of an excellent review authored by two leading experts, Stijn Claessens and Ayhan Kose, that is required reading for anyone who wants to glean the implications of asset price movements for what’s going to happen in the real economy. From the conclusion:
Challenges to theoretical and empirical findings. The links between asset prices and activity differ from the predictions of standard models in a number of ways. First, asset prices are much more volatile than fundamentals would imply and can at times deviate, or at least appear to do so, from their predicted fundamental values. The term structure of interest rates is not fully consistent with the simple expectation hypothesis. Although exchange rates can be modelled as the present value of expected fundamentals, they appear to be overly volatile,
as is the case between equity prices and their underlying dividend streams (the puzzle of “excess volatility”). Moreover, macroeconomic and financial news seem to have an exaggerated effect on asset prices: equities, bonds and currencies overreact to news about cash flows and other fundamentals.
No Trigger: The Umpire Strikes Back
The Senate parliamentarian ruled the trigger to prevent a revenue shortfall as unacceptable, thereby temporarily stymieing the bill.