Does Export Pricing Explain ‘Fear of Floating’ in Small Open Emerging Market Economies?

Trade data on East Asian EMEs shows the predominant use of Dollar Currency Pricing (DCP). Using a DSGE model with six-stage vertical production chain, staggered prices, and cross-border trade in intermediate inputs, we aim to provide an alternative explanation for ‘fear of floating’ by EMEs. We examine interactions between firms’ pricing rules and the transmission of external shocks under different exchange rate regimes. We find that weak input substitution and DCP of exports eliminate expenditure-switching and the allocative role of exchange rate adjustment, resulting in ‘exchange rate disconnect’, and hence ‘fear of floating’ by EMEs.Vertical production chain; Staggered price contracts; Input Substitution; External Currency Pricing; Monetary Policy

R&D? A Small Contribution to Productivity Growth

In this paper I calibrate the contribution of R&D investments to productivity growth. The basis for the analysis is the free entry condition. This yields a relationship between the resources devoted to R&D and the growth rate of technology. Since innovators are small, this relationship is not directly a¥ected by the size of the R&D externalities, the presence of scale effects or diminishing returns in R&D after controlling for the growth rate of output and the interest rate. The resulting contribution of R&D to productivity growth in the US is smaller than three to five tenths of one percentage point. Interestingly, this constitutes an upper bound for the case where innovators internalize the consequences of their R&D investments on the cost of conducting future innovations. From a normative perepective, this analysis implies that, if the innovation technology takes the form assumed in the literature, the actual US R&D intensity may be the socially optimal.RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT; PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH; TOTAL FACTOR PRODUCTIVITY

R&D: A Small Contribution to Productivity Growth

In this paper I evaluate the contribution of R&D investments to productivity growth. The basis for the analysis are the free entry condition and the fact that most R&D innovations are embodied. Free entry yields a relationship between the resources devoted to R&D and the growth rate of technology. Since innovators are small, this relationship is not directly affected by the size of R&D externalities, or the presence of aggregate diminishing returns in R&D after controlling for the growth rate of output and the interest rate. The embodiment of R&D-driven innovations bounds the size of the production externalities. The resulting contribution of R&D to productivity growth in the US is smaller than three to five tenths of one percentage point. This constitutes an upper bound for the case where innovators internalize the consequences of their R&D investments on the cost of conducting future innovations. From a normative perspective, this analysis implies that, if the innovation technology takes the form assumed in the literature, the actual US R&D intensity may be the socially optimal.

R&D? A Small Contribution to Productivity Growth

In this paper I evaluate the contribution of R&D investments to productivity growth. The basis for the analysis are the free entry condition and the fact that most R&D innovations are embodied. Free entry yields a relationship between the resources devoted to R&D and the growth rate of technology. Since innovators are small, this relationship is not directly affected by the size of the R&D externalities, or the presence of aggregate diminishing returns in R&D after controlling for the growth rate of output and the interest rate. The embodiment of R&D- driven innovations bounds the size of the production externalities. The resulting contribution of R&D to productivity growth in the US is smaller than three to five tenths of one percentage point. This constitutes an upper bound for the case where innovators internalize the consequences of their R&D investments on the cost of conducting future innovations. From a normative perspective, this analysis implies that, if the innovation technology takes the form assumed in the literature, the actual US R&D intensity may be the socially optimal.Research and Development, productivity growth, total factor productivity

Optimal Monetary Policy with Informational Frictions

We study optimal monetary policy in an environment in which firms’ pricing and production decisions are subject to informational frictions. Our framework accommodates multiple formalizations of these frictions, including dispersed private information, sticky information, and certain forms of inattention. An appropriate notion of constrained efficiency is analyzed alongside the Ramsey policy problem. Similarly to the New-Keynesian paradigm, efficiency obtains with a subsidy that removes the monopoly distortion and a monetary policy that replicates flexible-price allocations. Nevertheless, “divine coincidence” breaks down and full price stability is no more optimal. Rather, the optimal policy is to “lean against the wind”, that is, to target a negative correlation between the price level and real economic activity.

Nontraded Goods, Market Segmentation, and Exchange Rates

Empirical evidence suggests that movements in international relative prices are large and persistent. Nontraded goods, both in the form of final consumption goods and as an input into the production of final tradable goods, are an important aspect driving international relative price movements. In this paper we show that nontraded goods play an important role in the context of an otherwise standard open-economy macromodel. Our quantitative study with nontraded goods generates implications along several dimensions that are more closely in line with the data relative to the model that abstracts from nontraded goods. In addition, contrary to a large literature, standard alternative assumptions about the currency in which firms price their goods are virtually inconsequential for the properties of aggregate variables in our model, other than the terms of trade.exchange rates; nontraded goods; distribution services; incomplete asset markets.

Noisy Business Cycles

This paper investigates a real-business-cycle economy that features dispersed information about the underlying aggregate productivity shocks, taste shocks, and—potentially—shocks to monopoly power. We show how the dispersion of information can (i) contribute to significant inertia in the response of macroeconomic outcomes to such shocks; (ii) induce a negative shortrun response of employment to productivity shocks; (iii) imply that productivity shocks explain only a small fraction of high-frequency fluctuations; (iv) contribute to significant noise in the business cycle; (v) formalize a certain type of demand shocks within an RBC economy; and (vi) generate cyclical variation in observed Solow residuals and labor wedges. Importantly, none of these properties requires significant uncertainty about the underlying fundamentals: they rest on the heterogeneity of information and the strength of trade linkages in the economy, not the level of uncertainty. Finally, none of these properties are symptoms of inefficiency: apart from undoing monopoly distortions or providing the agents with more information, no policy intervention can improve upon the equilibrium allocations

Do nominal rigidities matter for the transmission of technology shocks?

A commonly held view is that nominal rigidities are important for the transmission of monetary policy shocks. We argue that they are also important for understanding the dynamic effects of technology shocks, especially on labor hours, wages, and prices. Based on a dynamic general equilibrium framework, our closed-form solutions reveal that a pure sticky-price model predicts correctly that hours decline following a positive technology shock, but fails to generate the observed gradual rise in the real wage and the near-constance of the nominal wage; a pure sticky-wage model does well in generating slow adjustments in the nominal wage, but it does not generate plausible dynamics of hours and the real wage. A model with both types of nominal rigidities is more successful in replicating the empirical evidence about hours, wages and prices. This finding is robust for a wide range of parameter values, including a relatively small Frisch elasticity of hours and a relatively high frequency of price reoptimization that are consistent with microeconomic evidence.

State-dependent pricing, local-currency pricing, and exchange rate pass-through

This paper presents a two-country DSGE model with state-dependent pricing as in Dotsey, King, and Wolman (1999) in which firms price-discriminate across countries by setting prices in local currency. In this model, a domestic monetary expansion has greater spillover effects to foreign prices and foreign economic activity than an otherwise identical model with time-dependent pricing. In addition, the predictions of the state-dependent pricing model match the business-cycle moments better than the predictions of the time-dependent pricing model when driven by monetary policy shocks.Pricing ; Foreign exchange rates ; Equilibrium (Economics) - Mathematical models ; Monetary policy ; Price discrimination

Fricciones crediticias y 'paradas repentinas' en pequeñas economías abiertas: un marco de equilibrio del ciclo económico para crisis en mercados emergentes

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) Las fricciones financieras son un elemento central de la mayoría de los modelos que ha propuesto la obra publicada sobre los mercados emergentes para explicar el fenómeno de las paradas repentinas. A la fecha, son pocos los estudios que han procurado analizar las implicaciones cuantitativas de esos modelos e integrarlos a un marco de equilibrio del ciclo económico de las economías emergentes. En este trabajo se analizan esos estudios, considerándoselos variaciones de la capacidad de pago y de la disposición a pagar en un marco que ocasionalmente incorpora limitantes del endeudamiento al modelo del ciclo económico real de economías pequeñas que a veces resultan de obligatorio acatamiento. Una característica que tienen en común los diversos modelos es que los agentes toman en cuenta el riesgo de paradas repentinas futuras en sus planes óptimos, de modo que las asignaciones de equilibrio y los precios se distorsionan incluso cuando las limitantes crediticias no son obligatorias. Las paradas repentinas pertenecen al equilibrio competitivo de precios flexibles y únicos de esos modelos, que ocurren en una región determinada del espacio del Estado en el que sacudidas negativas hacen obligatorias las limitantes al endeudamiento. Los efectos resultantes no lineales implican que resolver los modelos requiere métodos numéricos no lineales, los cuales se describen en el sondeo. Los resultados demuestran que los modelos pueden arrojar paradas repentinas poco frecuentes con efectos negativos de la cuenta corriente y recesiones profundas enmarcadas en ciclos económicos más suaves. Aún así, las investigaciones en este campo se hallan en una etapa incipiente y este estudio procura estimular nuevos trabajos en esta área.