Fiscal Policies, External Deficits, and Budget Deficits

This paper studies the effects of fiscal policies on external and budget deficits. From a tractable small open-economy, overlapping-generation model, the effects are measured by the responses of the external deficit to an increase in the budget deficit due to a tax-cut. The responses are positively affected by the birth rate and the degree of persistence of the budget deficit. Empirical results for the G7 countries over the post-1975 period reveal that the values of birth rate are small for all, but one, countries; but the responses of external and budget deficits are substantial and persistent for most countries. In particular, the fiscal policy has the most important effects on the external deficits for Canada, Japan, and the United States; somewhat smaller impacts for France, Germany, and the United Kingdom; and negligible effects for Italy.Agents’ superior information; birth rate; impact and dynamic responses; G7 Countries; orthogonality restrictions.

The Effects of Monetary-Policy Shocks on Real Wages: A Multi-Country Investigation The Effects of Monetary-Policy Shocks on Real Wages: A Multi-Country Investigationv

This paper assesses the plausibility of popular models of the monetary transmission mechanism for the G7 countries. For this purpose, flexible structural vector autoregressions are used to relaxe the restrictions behind the traditional identifying schemes of monetary-policy shocks and their effects on macroececonomic variables, and in particular, on real wages. The estimates reveal that expansionary monetary-policy shocks produce declines of real wages for Canada, France, and the United Kingdom. This is consistent with sticky-wage models and suggests that labor-market frictions constitute prime features of these economies. In constrast, positive monetary-policy shocks yield increases of real wages for Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States. This is consistent with sticky-price models and limited-participation models, so that goods-market frictions and/or financialmarket frictions seem important characteristics of these economies. Finally, the standard identifying restrictions are often statistically rejected and produce severe distortions of real-wage responses.Conditional heteroscedasticity; monetary-policy indicators; orthogonality conditions.

Fluctuations in the Foreign Exchange Market: How Important are Monetary Policy Shocks?

We study the effects of U.S. monetary policy shocks on the bilateral exchange rate between the U.S. and each of the G7 countries. We also estimate deviations from uncovered interest rate parity and exchange rate pass-through conditional on these shocks. The analysis is based on a structural vector autoregression in which monetary policy shocks are identified through the conditional heteroscedasticity of the structural disturbances. Unlike earlier work in this area, our empirical methodology avoids making arbitrary assumptions about the relevant policy indicator or transmission mechanism in order to achieve identification. At the same time, it allows us to assess the implications of imposing invalid identifying restrictions. Our results indicate that the nominal exchange rate exhibits delayed overshooting in response to a monetary expansion, depreciating for roughly ten months before starting to appreciate. The shock also leads to large and persistent departures from uncovered interest rate parity, and to a prolonged period of incomplete pass-through. Variance-decomposition results indicate that monetary policy shocks account for a non-trivial proportion of exchange rate fluctuations.Conditions heteroscedasticity, delayed overshooting, exchange rate pass-through, identification, structural vector autoregression, uncovered interest rate parity

Closing International Real Business Cycle Models with Restricted Financial Markets

Several authors argue that international real business cycle (IRBC) models with incomplete financial markets offer a good explanation of the ranking of cross-country correlations. Unfortunately, this conclusion is suspect, because it is commonly based on an analysis of the near steady state dynamics using a linearized system of equations. The baseline IRBC model with incomplete financial markets does not possess a unique deterministic steady state and, as a result, its linear system of difference equations is not stationary. We show that the explanation of the ranking of cross-country correlations is robust to modifications that ensure a unique steady state and a stationary system of linear difference equations. We find, however, that the modifications affect the quantitative predictions regarding key macroeconomic variables.Incomplete markets, stationarity, cross-country correlations, wealth effects

The Current Account and the Interest Differential In Canada

For post-1975 Canadian data, we document the joint behavior of output, the current account, and the interest differential at the business cycle frequency. We also interpret the joint behavior using a simple small open economy model. Our simple model assumes that agents have access to world international financial markets, but face country-specific interest rate on their holdings of world assets. The interest differential depends negatively on the country’s net foreign asset position. We find that our simple model matches the Canadian data remarkably well.International Real Business Cycle, Small Open Economy, Habit Formation.

Closing International Real Business Cycle Models with Restricted Financial Markets

Several authors argue that international real business cycle (IRBC) models with incomplete financial markets offer a good explanation of the ranking of cross-country correlations. Unfortunately, this conclusion is suspect, because it is commonly based on an analysis of the near steady state dynamics using a linearized system of equations. The baseline IRBC model with incomplete financial markets does not possess a unique deterministic steady state and, as a result, its linear system of difference equations is not stationary. We show that the explanation of the ranking of cross-country correlations is robust to modifications that ensure a unique steady state and a stationary system of linear difference equations. We find, however, that the modifications affect the quantitative predictions regarding key macroeconomic variables.Incomplete markets, stationarity, cross-country correlations, wealth effects.

Dynamics of the Current Account and Interest Differentials

In contrast to earlier work, we study the relation between the current account and interest rate differentials. To do so, we document the relation for international data. We then interpret this relation from a two-country, dynamic, general equilibrium environment. We finally confront the relation predicted by the environment to the relation observed in the data. We find that the environmental correctly predicts that the current account is countercyclical; that the interest differentials is procyclical; and that the current account is negatively correlated with current and future interest differentials, but positively correlated with past interest differentials.International real business cycle

Monetary Policy Shocks: Testing Identification Conditions Under Time-Varying Conditional Volatility

We propose an empirical procedure, which exploits the conditional heteroscedasticity of fundamental disturbances, to test the targeting and orthogonality restrictions imposed in the recent VAR literature to identify monetary policy shocks. Based on U.S. monthly data for the post-1982 period, we reject the nonborrowed-reserve and interest-rate targeting procedures. In contrast, we present evidence supporting targeting procedures implying more than one policy variable. We also always reject the orthogonality conditions between policy shocks and macroeconomic variables. We show that using invalid restrictions often produces misleading policy measures and dynamic responses. These results have important implications for the measurement of policy shocks and their temporal effects as well as for the estimation of the monetary authority's reaction function.Conditional heteroscedasticity, monetary policy indicators, orthogonality conditions

Econometric Inference, Cyclical Fluctuations, and Superior Information

This paper presents and assesses a procedure to estimate conventional parameters characterizing fluctuations at the business cycle frequency, when the economic agents' information set is superior to the econometrician's one. Specifically, we first generalize the conditions under which the econometrician can estimate these "cyclical fluctuation" parameters from augmented laws of motion for forcing variables that fully recover the agents' superior information. Second, we document the econometric properties of the estimates when the augmented laws of motion are possibly misspecified. Third, we assess the ability of certain information criteria to detect the presence of superior information.Block bootstrap, Hidden variables, laws of motion for forcing variables, Monte Carlo simulations

Recursive Measures of Total Wealth and Portfolio Return

This letter presents and assesses a procedure to generate recursive measures of aggregate total wealth and portfolio return. Conceptually, the procedure is more flexible than the classical replacement cost and present value methods. Empirically, the procedure yields recursive measures that appear more realistic than those obtained from the classical methods.Financial, human, and tangible assets; present value and replacement cost methods