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Working Paper
A forward-looking multicountry model: MX3
This is paper discusses the theoretical structure and empirical properties of MX3, a multicountry macroeconometric model with rational expectations. MX3 is a medium-sized quarterly model of the United States, Japan, and West Germany. The primary objective of the model is to analyze the effect of fiscal and monetary rules on national economies in an international context. By incorporating rational expectations into almost all of the model's behavioral equations, MX3 takes a large step toward addressing the "Lucas critique" of model-based policy analysis.
Journal Article
U.S. international transactions in 2000
The U.S. current account deficit widened to $435 billion in 2000, a record 4.4 percent of gross domestic product, as the lagged effect of strong growth in the U.S. economy in late 1999 and early 2000 continued to drive up imports of goods and services faster than exports increased. To a lesser extent, a decline in U.S. price competitiveness also contributed to the expansion in the deficit. The $104 billion increase in the current account deficit was entirely accounted for by an equal-sized increase in the goods and services deficit. Other components of the current account moved in small and ...
Working Paper
German unification and the European monetary system: a quantitative analysis
This paper uses a macroeconomic model with rational expectations to analyze issues related to German unification. A principal focus of the paper is the effect of unification on member countries of the European Monetary System. Under certain conditions, German unification has a contractionary effect on other EMS countries. We explore the implications for EMS and other countries of alternative German fiscal and monetary policies.
Journal Article
Inflation regimes and inflation expectations
This paper examines the formation of expectations about future inflation over long horizons. A key issue that agents must confront is the possibility that the economic policy framework? especially the monetary policy regime?could change at some future date. Agents are likely to base inferences about possible future regimes on experience over many years and decades past. This aspect of expectations formation may explain why inflation premiums in long-term bond yields are higher in countries with a long history of high inflation.
Working Paper
Taxation and inflation: a new explanation for current account imbalances
In a world of mobile capital, the current system of nominal interest taxation implies that the cost of capital and the return to saving in each country are strongly and negatively correlated with the rate of inflation. It follows that a country's net foreign asset position (and its current account balance) ought to be negatively correlated with its inflation rate. The magnitude of these effects is shown to be large, both theoretically and empirically. For OECD countries, cross-sectional regressions confirm that inflation rates are good predictors of current accounts, even after controlling ...
Working Paper
Preventing deflation: lessons from Japan's experience in the 1990s
This paper examines Japan's experience in the first half of the 1990s to shed some light on several issues that arise as inflation declines toward zero. Is it possible to recognize when an economy is moving into a phase of sustained deflation? How quickly should monetary policy respond to sharp declines in inflation? Are there factors that inhibit the monetary transmission mechanism as interest rates approach zero? What is the role for fiscal policy in warding off a deflationary episode? We conclude that Japan's sustained deflationary slump was very much unanticipated by Japanese policymakers ...
Working Paper
Long memory in inflation expectations: evidence from international expectations
This study provides evidence that 10-year-ahead inflation expectations adapt very slowly to changes in realized inflation. This evidence derives primarily from yields on 10-year government bonds in a sample of OECD countries, including inflation-indexed bonds where they are available. The study examines both the cross-country and time-series behavior of interest rates and inflation rates. For the United States, additional evidence is provided from a survey of 10-year inflation expectations held by market participants. This study does not present a theoretical model of expectations formation. ...
Working Paper
Inflation regimes and inflation expectations
There has been much talk in the popular press about the difficulty of attaining credibility in the bond markets for the low-inflation policies that have been adopted by a number of central banks in recent years. This credibility problem is particularly severe for those countries that have a history of high inflation. Gaining credibilty is often viewed in the context of learning by the public about the central bank's true intentions. However, this paper argues that a more important aspect of credibility--at lease for long-term inflation expectations--may be public views about how future ...
Working Paper
What can the data tell us about carry trades in Japanese yen?
This paper examines the available data that may shed light on the carry trade in Japanese yen. We define an individual or a sector to be engaged in the carry trade if it has a short position in yen and a long position in other currencies. The tendency of large yen movements to be skewed toward appreciations is consistent with the existence of substantial carry positions, and other evidence from market prices provides some modest support for an effect from the carry trade. Data on bank loans and bond holdings by currency reveal a large apparent yen carry position of the Japanese official ...
Working Paper
Exchange rate pass-through to U.S. import prices: some new evidence
This paper documents a sustained decline in exchange rate pass-through to U.S. import prices, from above 0.5 during the 1980s to somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.2 during the last decade. This decline in the pass-through coefficient is robust to the measure of foreign prices that is included in the regression (i.e., CPI versus PPI), whether the estimation is done in levels or differences, and whether U.S. prices are included as an explanatory variable. Notably, the largest estimates of pass-through are obtained when commodity prices are excluded from the regression. In this case, the ...