Flexible Exchange Rate and Excess Capital Mobility

macroeconomics, exchange rates, excess capital

Two Notes on Exchange Rate Rules and on the Real Value of External Debt

This report presents two unrelated, short papers on exchange rate rules and on the real value of the external debt. The paper on exchange rate policy uses the Taylor model of overlapping, long term wage contracts to ask whether accommodating or PPP oriented exchange rate policies tend to stabilize output. In earlier work I had shown that exchange rate indexing, while destabilizing prices enhances the stability of output. The result is qualified hereby showing that the exchange rate not only affects aggregate demand directly but operates also, through the cost of imported intermediates, on the price level. It is shown that unless monetary policy is sufficiently accommodating this latter effect may dominate with the consequence that increased exchange rate indexation reduces output stability .The paper on the real value of external debt poses the question how to integrate external debt holdings in the traditional framework used to evaluate the effects on real income of changes in world prices. It is shown that integrating debt service liabilities in a comprehensive income measure makes real disposable income equal to the value of output less the real value of real interest payments on the external debt. Furthermore, with the CPI being the appropriate deflator for foreign debt, a rise in export prices raises income in proportion to exports while a rise in import prices lowers real income in proportion to Imports. The proper accounting of debt in a comprehensive income framework, noting the intertemporal budget constraints, thus restores the conventional treatment of the income effects of price changes.

External Balance Correction: Depreciation or Protection

macroeconomics, external balance, depreciation

Monetary Stabilization, Intervention and Real Appreciation

This paper investigates the adjustment process to a reduction in the rate of credit creation in an open, flexible exchange rate economy. The framework of analysis is one of rational expectations with respect to interest rates, inflation and depreciation. The special feature of the model is the role of exchange market intervention and the resulting endogeneity of the money stock. The model is of empirical interest because of the growing experience in countries such as Israel, Spain or Argentina with th fact that monetary disinflation rapidly leads to real appreciation, unemployment and money creation induced by exchange market intervention. With capital flows and induced money creation threatening attempts at stabilization, there is a need to understand the relationship between intervention and inflation.

Argentina Since Martinez De Hoz

The paper reviews macroeconomic events and policies in Argentina in the period 1981-1984. In that period inflation,that had decelerated to less than 100 percent, resumed and reached irore than 600 percent in mid-1984. The real exchange rate that had appreciated in the policy of disinflation depreciated sharply and, in the end-phase, real wages grew more than forty percent. These events, by Northern-Atlantic standards, are dramatic and the paper attempts to sort out the main issues and connections. Special attention is paid to the role of the real exchange rate and its relation to real wages, the determinants of the black market premium for foreign exchange, and to the budget.

Equilibrium and Disequilibrium Exchange Rates

The paper reviews theoretical developments in the field of exchange rate theory and assesses the empirical evidence. Since the empirical evidence does not lend support to the models that have been formulated, a number of reasons for that failure are suggested. These include the argument that the current account has been overrated as an exchange rate determinant and that the role of "news" as yet remains to be tested in an extensive way. Four exchange rate problems are identified as possibly giving justification to exchange market intervention or other policies. They are the possibility of speculative bubbles, the peso problem, the use of irrelevant information and the problem of real appreciation in the case of monetarist stabilization. In each case the exchange rate can deviate from fundamentals, following the asset market rather than the goods market and thus disturbing macroeconomic equilibrium.