Search Results
Showing results 1 to 10 of approximately 12.
(refine search)
Working Paper
The real exchange rate and fiscal policy during the gold standard period: evidence from the United States and Great Britain
We study the determinants of the dollar/pound real exchange rate from 1879 to 1914 focusing on the role of fiscal policy. We present a simple dynamic model of the real exchange rate to frame our analysis. The econometric results are based upon the decomposition of the sources of the innovation of the real exchange rate drawn from a structural vector autoregression model. We find little evidence that changes in tariffs and government spending affected the real exchange rate. There is some stronger empirical evidence that shocks to deficits were associated with the fluctuations in the real ...
Working Paper
Troubled banks, impaired foreign direct investment: the role of relative access to credit
The relative wealth hypothesis of Froot and Stein (1991), motivated by the aggregate correlation between real exchange rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) observed in the 1980s, cannot explain one of the major shifts in FDI in the 1990s: the continued decline in Japanese FDI during a period of stable stock prices and a rapidly appreciating yen. However, when the relative wealth hypothesis is supplemented with the relative access to credit hypothesis proposed in this study, we are able to show that unequal access to credit by Japanese firms can explain the FDI puzzle in the 1990s. We ...
Report
Establishing credibility: evolving perceptions of the European Central Bank
The perceptions of a central bank's inflation aversion may reflect institutional structure or, more dynamically, the history of its policy decisions. In this paper, we present a novel empirical framework that uses high-frequency data to test for persistent variation in market perceptions of central bank inflation aversion. The first years of the European Central Bank (ECB) provide a natural experiment for this model. Tests of the effect of news announcements on the slope of yield curves in the euro area and on the euro-dollar exchange rate suggest that the market's perception of the policy ...
Journal Article
European Monetary Union
The discussion briefly reviews the events leading up to the adoption of the European Monetary System in March 1979 and the associated Exchange Rate Mechanism. It goes on to describe the Maastricht Treaty and to review the costs and benefits of a common currency. The author also considers the importance of European Monetary Union (EMU) from a U.S. perspective.
Working Paper
Job creation, job destruction, and international competition: a literature review
This paper is a chapter in our forthcoming monograph, Job Creation, Job Destruction, and International Competition (W.E. Upjohn Institute, 2003), and expands on the ideas advanced in Klein, Schuh, and Triest (2003). The chapter provides an extensive review of the literature that studies the connection between international factors, such as real exchange rates and trade agreements, and the domestic labor market. Until recently, the literature has focused on the effects of international factors on net employment at aggregate levels or in selected import-competing industries. In the long run, ...
Working Paper
Capital account liberalization, financial depth, and economic growth
We show a statistically significant and economically relevant effect of open capital accounts on financial deepness and economic growth in a cross-section of countries over the period 1986 to 1995. Countries with open capital accounts over some or all of this period had a significantly greater increase in financial depth than countries with continuing capital account restrictions, and they also enjoyed greater economic growth. These results, however, are largely driven by the developed countries included in the sample. The observed failure of capital account liberalization to promote ...
Report
International trade and factor mobility: an empirical investigation
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has been growing rapidly, at a pace far exceeding the growth in international trade. Thus, a full understanding of the relationship between trade in goods and FDI is important for obtaining a complete picture of the extent and sources of international linkages. We investigate whether FDI serves as a complement to trade or a substitute for trade based on the effects identified by the Rybczynski theorem whereby an increase in a factor of production used intensively in one sector affects production both in that sector and in other sectors. Using detailed data on ...
Working Paper
Job creation, job destruction, and international competition: job flows and trade: the case of NAFTA
This paper is a chapter in our forthcoming monograph, Job Creation, Job Destruction, and International Competition (W.E. Upjohn Institute 2003), and expands on the ideas advanced in Klein, Schuh, and Triest (2003). The chapter is a case study of the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the U.S. labor market in three industries: textiles and apparel, chemicals, and automobiles. NAFTA significantly altered the trade environment for these industries and contributed to changes in the bilateral export-import structure among the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Our ...
Journal Article
Foreign exchange intervention as a signal of monetary policy
Recent experience with exchange rate management has rekindled interest in the efficacy of foreign exchange intervention. While there is broad evidence that sterilized intervention has no effect on the exchange rate through a portfolio balance channel, less evidence exists on the signalling role of intervention. This article considers the signalling role of intervention for the United States and West Germany between the 1985 Plaza Accord and the October 1987 stock market crash. ; An examination of the data shows that intervention observed by the foreign exchange market did not precede changes ...