Open macroeconomics in an open economy

There are three pillars of the new Labour Government''s approach to economic policy: delivering macroeconomic stability, tackling the supply-side barriers to growth and delivering employment and economic opportunities to all. This lecture focuses on the reforms the new government has introduced in order to deliver macroeconomic stability and why open and transparent institutions and procedures are central to those reforms. The lecture sets out four principles for macroeconomic policymaking which flow from changes in the world economy and the world of economic ideas over the past twenty or thirty years. These are:-- the principle of stability through constrained discretion -- the principle of credibility through sound, long-term policies -- the principle of credibility through maximum transparency -- the principle of credibility through pre-commitment. The lecture explains each principle in turn and shows how they are being translated into practice in the macroeconomic policy reforms that the new government is introducing at the Treasury and the Bank of reforms which add up to what is now probably one of the most open and accountable system of economic policymaking in the world

Open Economy Schumpeterian Growth

This paper examines the Aghion and Howitt [1992] “creative destruction” endogenous growth model in an open economy setting. We consider four alternative trade regimes. The first two regimes allow the monopoly producer of the intermediate good to attain worldwide monopoly rents. In the first of the two, the countries engage in trade of only the imperfectly produced intermediate good. In the second, the two countries trade in both the intermediate good as well as in ideas. The last two regimes consider two countries which are identical before and after trade opens such that pro-competitive gains from trade are achieved. We again consider when only intermediaries may be traded and thereafter when both intermediaries and ideas may be traded. We find that the effects of trade on growth and welfare depend critically on the assumptions one imposes.Creative Destruction, Obsolescence, Endogenous Growth, International Trade, Imperfect Competition, Schumpeterian Growth

New Open Economy Macroeconomics

The New Open Economy Macroeconomics refers to a vast body of literature embracing a new theoretical framework for policy analysis in open economy, with the goal of overcoming the limitations of the Mundell-Fleming model, while preserving the empirical wisdom and policy friendliness of traditional analysis. Starting in the early 1990s, NOEM contributions have developed general equilibrium models with imperfect competition and nominal rigidities, to reconsider conventional views on the transmission of monetary and exchange rate shocks; they have contributed to the design of optimal stabilization policies, identifying international dimensions of optimal monetary policy; they have raised issues in the desirability of international policy coordination.Open economy models; exchange rates; stabilization policy; Mundell-Fleming

Fostering an open economy in Africa

The future of Africa's development lies in the hands of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their ability to expand across the continent. These are the enterprises that will create most of the private sector jobs for a rapidly-growing labour force. In an open economy, these SMEs can internationalize and meet surging demand for products and services in Africa and beyond.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328938908_Fostering_an_Open_Economy_in_AfricaPublished versionPublished versio

Redistribution in the Open Economy: A Political Economy Approach

This paper develops a two-country model of international trade in which citizens who are heterogeneous with respect to their factor endowments vote over tariffs and income tax rates. In the politico-economic equilibrium, each country chooses its national policies by majority voting, taking the policy choice of the other country as given. By incorporating both income and trade taxes in a unified international-trade framework, we uncover the interplay between majority voting over these two instruments at the domestic level and strategic interdependencies between countries’ trade policies. Our main result is that greater inequality can be conducive to more redistribution via income taxation, more protectionist policies in capital-abundant countries, and less protectionist policies in labour-abundant countries. The model can accommodate the predictions of recent empirical studies on the relationship between inequality, protectionism, and redistribution.International trade, majority voting, inequality, income taxation, tariffs.

The Butterfly Effect of Small Open Economies

The rational expectations equilibrium of a small open economy can be subject to indeterminacy if foreign monetary policy does not satisfy the Taylor principle. We study the implications of foreign-induced indeterminacy for the conduct of monetary policy in a small open economy. In the canonical sticky-price small open economy model, we find that indeterminacy arising in the large economy can increase the volatility of the small economy. Our main finding, however, is that ‘smallness’ is a property of the unique rational expectations equilibrium of the large economy, and not a general property of the small open economy model. If the large economy fails to anchor expectations, shocks to the small economy can affect the large one. This form of indeterminacy gives rise to a ‘butterfly effect’. Additional assumptions are required to preserve the ‘smallness’ of the small economy.indeterminacy; small open economy; rational expectations

Teaching New Keynesian Open Economy Macroeconomics at the Intermediate Level

For the open economy the workhorse model in intermediate textbooks still is the Mundell-Fleming model, which basically extends the IS-LM model to open economy problems. The purpose of this paper is to present a simple New Keynesian model of the open economy, that introduces open economy considerations into the closed economy consensus version and that still allows for a simple and comprehensible analytical and graphical treatment. Above all, our model provides an efficient tool kit for the discussion of the costs and benefits of fixed and flexible exchange rates, which also was at the core of the Mundell-Fleming model. --open economy,inflation targeting,monetary policy rules,New Keynesian macroeconomics

Estimates of the open economy New Keynesian Phillips curve for euro area countries

This paper extends the existing literature on the open economy New Keynesian Phillips Curve by incorporating three different factors of production, domestic labor and imported as well as domestically produced intermediate goods, into a general model which nests existing closed economy and open economy models as special cases. The model is then estimated for 9 euro area countries and the euro area aggregate. We find that structural price rigidity is systematically lower in the open economy specification of the model than in the closed economy specification indicating that when firms face more variable input costs they tend to adjust their prices more frequently. However, when the model is estimated in its general specification including also domestic intermediate inputs, price rigidity increases again compared to the open economy specification without domestic intermediate inputs. JEL Classification: E31, C22, E12GMM, New Keynesian Phillips curve, open economy

An Estimated, New Keynesian Policy Model for Australia

A two-block open economy model is estimated in this paper using Australian and U.S. data. Evaluation of the estimated model is carried out in relation to a simple closed economy alternative. Namely, we inspect the implied transmission mechanisms, and examine the relative out-of-sample forecasting performance of the closed and open economy models.DSGE Model, Open Economy, Australia, U.S., Bayesian Estimation.

The "New Keynesian" Phillips Curve: Closed Economy vs. Open Economy

The paper extends Woodford's (2000) analysis of the closed economy Phillips curve to an open economy with both commodity trade and capital mobility. We show that consumption smoothing, which comes with the opening of the capital market, raises the degree of strategic complementarity among monopolistically competitive suppliers, thus rendering prices more sticky and magnifying output responses to nominal GDP shocks.