The dollar declines in response to the drop in the target Fed Funds rate. What next?
Category Archives: international
Four Observations on Import and Export Prices and the Dollar
Some delayed reflections on exchange rates, trade prices, and the messages from the August data.
The Decoupling Scenario: Pre-Assessment
The U.S. economy appears to be slowing. Predictions of continued growth probably rely on assumptions the rest of the world continues to grow. How reasonable is this view?
How does China retain monetary autonomy?
As I discussed in earlier posts, China retains some policy autonomy by virtue of the presence of capital controls. A recent working paper by Ma and McCauley attempts to quantify how binding the controls are.
Europe Slows
Part of the optimism regarding the economic outlook is based upon the robust growth — to date — in the rest of the world (see this post on the subject). The Euro zone looks like it’s in for some slower growth, though.
Variation in Global Economic Growth
In discussing the U.S. economy, I keep on seeing this refrain from Treasury Secretary Paulson (this one happens to be from the NYT)
Almost Everything You Wanted to Know about G-7 Current Account Imbalances
A new book is out examining whether — and if so how — ongoing current account imbalances will be unwound.
Revaluation and China’s Multilateral Trade Balance: First Estimates
Yin-Wong Cheung, Eiji Fujii and I have just completed a paper entitled China’s Current Account and Exchange Rate” for a conference on China’s Growing Role in World Trade. This paper follows up on some of the issues I laid out in these posts: [1], [2], [3], and [4].
US Economic Growth: Retrospect and Prospect
Some interesting tidbits can be gleaned from the BEA’s recent release. First, despite the acceleration in growth in 2007Q2, the level of output in 2007Q2 is less than what we thought — as of 28 June — it was in 2007Q1. Second, q/q consumption growth now looks weaker than it did before. Third, while net exports provided a big boost to GDP growth, a large chunk of that effect is attributable to import compression, rather than export acceleration. How one views the durability of the net export effect depends in large part upon how one views the sources of import and export trends.
Will Dollar Depreciation Prevent A Recession?
As worries from ever expanding — but always containable — housing and mortgage market collapse mount (see this Reuters article), some analysts believe that the external accounts will save the day. From Bloomberg (July 23):