Search Results
Report
The hitchhiker’s guide to missing import price changes and pass-through
A large body of empirical work has found that exchange rate movements have only modest effects on inflation. However, the response of an import price index to exchange rate movements may be underestimated because some import price changes are missed when constructing the index. We investigate downward biases that arise when items experiencing a price change are especially likely to exit or to enter the index. We show that, in theoretical pricing models, entry and exit have different implications for the timing and size of these biases. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics microdata, we derive ...
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 ...
Working Paper
Heterogeneous firms and import quality: evidence from transaction-level prices
A key emerging insight in international economics is that the scope for quality differentiation can help to explain patterns in export prices at the level of products or firms. In this paper, a unified theoretical framework of firm heterogeneity in cost and quality is brought to bear on an expansive data set of U.S. import transaction prices collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The higher moments of the price distribution are used to identify the scope for quality differentiation at the detailed product level; highly differentiated products account for about half of U.S. import ...
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 ...
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.
Journal Article
With reforms in China, time may correct U.S. current account imbalance
The U.S. current account deficit has deepened significantly since the late 1990s. This shortfall?the value of net exports of goods and services, international financial investment net income and transfer payments?was $803 billion at its peak in 2006, or 6 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Conversely, China, Germany, Japan and the oil-exporting countries have been running current account surpluses that have risen substantially (Chart 1). This divergence has raised concerns among policymakers, economic researchers and private investors about whether these imbalances are sustainable ...
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
Is the United States losing its productivity advantage?
Strikingly high rates of labor productivity growth in China, India, and other emerging economies have prompted concerns that U.S. workers and firms are losing ground to their competitors in world markets. A closer look at the evidence, however, suggests that rapid foreign productivity growth will bring gains as well as losses to the U.S. economy. Some import-competing firms may be compelled to restructure or leave the market, but consumers will benefit from lower import prices and more import varieties, and U.S. exporters may gain access to cheaper intermediate products from abroad.
Speech
U.S.economic policy in a global context
Remarks by President Dudley at the Foreign Policy Association Corporate Dinner, New York City.