Search Results
Journal Article
Import prices and the exchange rate
Working Paper
The adjustment of global external balances: does partial exchange rate pass-through to trade prices matter?
This paper assesses whether partial exchange rate pass-through to trade prices has important implications for the prospective adjustment of global external imbalances. To address this question, we develop and estimate an open-economy DGE model in which pass-through is incomplete due to the presence of local currency pricing, distribution services, and a variable demand elasticity that leads to fluctuations in optimal markups. We find that the overall magnitude of trade adjustment is similar in a low and high pass-through world with more adjustment in a low pass-world occurring through a ...
Discussion Paper
Exchange rate pass-through into U.K. import prices: evidence from disaggregated data
In this paper we estimate the rate of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) into U.K. import prices using disaggregated data at the SITC-2 and SITC-3 digit levels. We show that the ERPT varies at the disaggregate level. Because of this heterogeneity at the disaggregate level, the estimate of the ERPT using aggregate data is found substantially upward-biased in our U.K. data. The upward bias exaggerates the impact of exchange rate movements on the competitiveness of imported goods relative to domestically produced goods. Further, we investigate the source of the heterogeneity of the ERPT at the ...
Working Paper
Measurement matters for modeling U.S. import prices
We focus on capturing the increasingly important role that emerging economies play in determining U.S. import prices. Emerging market producers differ from others in two respects: (1) their cost structure is well below that of developed-market producers, and (2) their wide profit margins induce pricing policies that seek to exhaust production capacity. We argue that these features have dampened the short-run responses of import prices to changes in the value of the dollar but that they have not altered the associated long-run response. To capture these considerations, we develop a new method ...
Working Paper
Trade integration, competition, and the decline in exchange-rate pass-through
Over the past twenty years, U.S. import prices have become less responsive to the exchange rate. We propose that a significant portion of this decline is a result of increased trade integration. To illustrate this effect, we develop an open economy DGE model in which trade occurs along both the intensive and extensive margins. The key element we introduce into this environment is strategic complementarity in price setting. As a result, a firm's pricing decision depends on the prices set by its competitors. This feature implies that a foreign exporter finds it optimal to vary its markup in ...
Journal Article
Buy foreign while you can: the cheap dollar and exchange rate pass-through
Despite the dollar?s real depreciation in the past few years, the U.S. trade deficit has continued to increase, with the level of imports reaching record highs. Why has the cheaper dollar not made imports more expensive and exports more attractive and, in turn, reduced the trade deficit? ; This article presents evidence on the degree of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT)?the extent to which U.S. domestic import prices have moved in response to changes in the exchange rate?from December 1993 through December 2004. Using monthly data, the authors first decompose domestic import prices to their ...
Report
Exchange rate pass-through to import prices in the Euro area
This paper presents an empirical analysis of transmission rates from exchange rate movements to import prices, across countries and product categories, in the euro area over the last fifteen years. Our results show that the transmission of exchange rate changes to import prices in the short run is high, although incomplete, and that it differs across industries and countries; in the long run, exchange rate pass-through is higher and close to 1. We do not find compelling evidence that the introduction of the euro caused a structural change in exchange rate pass-through. Although some estimated ...
Report
Chinese exports and U.S. import prices
This paper develops a technique to decompose price distributions into contributions from markups and marginal cost. The estimators are then used as a laboratory to measure the relationship between increasing Chinese competition and the components of U.S. import prices. The estimates suggest that the intensification of Chinese exports in the 2000s corresponded to substantial changes in the distributions of both the markups and marginal cost of U.S. imports. The entry of a Chinese exporter in an industry corresponded to rest-of-world exporters shrinking their markup (lowering prices by up to 30 ...
Working Paper
In search of real rigidities
The closed and open economy literatures both work on evaluating the role of real rigidities, but in parallel. This paper brings the two literatures together. We use international price data and exchange rate shocks to evaluate the importance of real rigidities in price setting. We show that, consistent with the presence of real rigidities, the response of reset-price inflation to exchange rate shocks exhibits significant persistence. Individual import prices, conditional on changing, respond to exchange rate shocks prior to the last price change. At the same time, aggregate reset-price ...
Journal Article
Have U.S. import prices become less responsive to changes in the dollar?
The failure of the dollar's depreciation to narrow the U.S. trade deficit has driven recent research showing that the transmission of exchange rate changes to import prices has declined sharply in industrial countries. Estimates presented in this study, however, suggest that "pass-through" to U.S. import prices has fallen only modestly, if at all, in the last decade. The authors argue that methodological changes in the collection of import data and the inclusion of commodity prices in pass-through models may have contributed to earlier findings of low pass-through rates.