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Working Paper
Market share and exchange rate pass-through in world automobile trade
This paper explores the relationship between exchange rate pass-through and market share for monopolistically competitive exporters. Under fairly general assumptions we show that pass-through should be high for exporters based in a country with a very large share of total destination market sales. For source countries with small and intermediate market shares, the theoretical relationship is potentially nonlinear and sensitive to assumptions about the nature of consumer demand and firm interactions. The model is estimated using a panel data set of automobile exports from France, Germany, ...
Working Paper
The effect of exchange rates on prices, wages, and profits: a case study of the United Kingdom in the 1990s
During the 1990s the United Kingdom experienced large and sudden exchange rate movements that had no apparent impact on overall consumer prices. This paper shows that the stability of U.K. consumer prices was made possible in part by offsetting movements in the price-cost margins of foreign exporters and in part by offsetting price-cost margins in the U.K. distribution sector. At the same time, U.K. manufacturers experienced margin swings in the opposite direction, largely due to their role as exporters. Thus, sterling depreciation boosted the profits of U.K. manufacturers and squeezed the ...
Working Paper
International coordination of macroeconomic policies: still alive in the new millennium?
In this paper we provide two building blocks for an analysis of international policy coordination: (1) a survey of models of policy coordination, and (2) an account of experience with policy coordination among the G-7 countries and within Europe since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System. Using these building blocks, we investigate the correspondence between the models and experience and attempt to draw lessons for both the modelers and the practitioners. We find that the correspondence is close enough that the models help in analyzing several instances of actual policy coordination, but ...
Working Paper
Exchange rate variability and the level of international trade
There have been numerous theoretical and empirical studies of the effect of exchange rate variability on the level of international trade. Most theoretical studies have concluded that under reasonable assumptions exchange rate variability ought to depress the level of trade. Empirical studies generally have not identified a significant effect of exchange rate variability on trade flows. This paper builds a theoretical model in which exchange rate variability has a negative effect on the level of trade. The model is calibrated to observed trade flows and real exchange rates. Simulation of the ...
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.
Working Paper
Productive capacity, product varieties, and the elasticities approach to the trade balance
Most macroeconomic models imply that faster output growth tends to lower a country's trade balance by raising its imports with little change to its exports. Krugman (1989) proposed a model in which countries grow by producing new varieties of goods. In his model, faster-growing countries are able to export these new goods and maintain balanced trade without suffering any deterioration in their terms of trade. This paper analyzes the growth of U.S. imports from different source countries and finds strong support for Krugman's model.
Working Paper
German unification: what have we learned from multi-country models?
This study reports on early simulations of the effects of German unification using three different rational-expectations multi-country models. Despite significant differences in their structures and in the implementations of the unification shock, the models delivered a number of common results that proved to be a reasonably accurate guide to the direction and magnitude of the effects of unification on most key macroeconomic variables. In particular, unification was expected to give rise to an increase in German aggregate demand that would put upward pressure on output, inflation, and the ...
Conference Paper
Price and output stability under alternative monetary policy rules
Working Paper
How pervasive is the product cycle? The empirical dynamics of American and Japanese trade flows
This paper looks for dynamic patterns in international trade flows using multilateral American and Japanese data disaggregated to the four-digit SITC level. Little evidence is found of product-cycle dynamics between 1962 and 1988; rather, goods that begin the sample in surplus (deficit) tend to remain in surplus (deficit) throughout the sample.
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 ...