Anticipated and Unanticipated Oil Price Increases and the Current Account

This paper examines the current-account response to anticipated future increases in real oil prices as well as to unexpected increases which may be temporary or permanent in nature. The analysis is conducted using an intertemporal two-period model of a small open economy which produces both traded and nontraded goods and imports its oil. The paper identifies the channels through which various types of oil price increases affect the current account. The inclusion of nontraded investment and consumer goods permits oil price increases to generate intertemporal and static substitution effects in production and consumption which alter net international saving. Moreover, the relative oil-value-added ratio in the traded and nontraded sectors plays a crucial role in shaping these substitution effects and hence the current-account response.

Adjustment to Variations in Imported Input Prices: The Role of Economic Structure

This paper introduces an imported input into a model of art open economy with developed financial markets, a flexible exchange rate, and some degree of market power on the export side. The model is designed to investigate the impact of an increase in imported input prices on the exchange rate, domestic interest rate, income and nontraded-goods prices. The analysis reveals that changes in various structural parameters, such as the degree of market power or the extent of demand-side openness" or "financial openness," alter the transmission of foreign price disturbances to the domestic economy.

The Transmission of Disturbances under Alternative Exchange-Rate Regimeswith Optimal Indexing

The paper develops a general stochastic macroeconomic model which can be used to study the international transmission of disturbances under alternative exchange-rate systems. Four types of exchange-rate systems are considered: uniform flexible exchange rates, uniform fixed exchange rates, two-tier exchange rates in which the current-account exchange rate is fixed and the capital-account exchange rate is flexible, and two-tier exchange rates with separate, floating rates for current and capital-account transactions. It is assumed that expectations are rational, so only the unexpected portion of macro policy alters the level of output. In addition, private contracts form the underpinning of the aggregate supply function, and they can be adjusted optimally in response to the country's choice of exchange-rate regime. It is shown that when the home country takes all prices as exogenous and wages are optimally indexed, the country is fully insulated from foreign disturbances under the two fixed-rate regimes but not under the two flexible-rate regimes. Even so, the fixed-rate regimes are inferior to the flexible-rate regimes in terms of their ability to minimize output variance. When the home country is large in the market for its own produced good, these results must be modified. The analysis makes two general points. First, one cannot assume stability of structure when assessing the consequences of alternative exchange-rate regimes. For example, the slope of the aggregate supply curve and the rationally-formed expectations in the asset markets can respond dramatically to the government's choice of exchange-rate regime. Second, exchange-rate regimes that provide full insulation from foreign disturbances may nevertheless be inferior to other regimes in terms of their ability to maximize social welfare.

Structural Differences and Macroeconomic Adjustment to Oil Price Increases in a Three-Country Model

In this paper a three-country model based on intertemporal maximizing behavior is constructed in order to analyze the effects of oil price increases on welfare levels and trade balance positions. The model can also be used to assess the effects of oil price increases on the world interest rate, on the final goods terms of trade between oil importers (what is sometimes called the real exchange rate), and on output, investment and savings levels, oil imports, wages, and consumption at each date. The analysis highlights the role of structural asymmetries between oil importers in accounting for differences in trade balance responses. A number of structural differences are isolated in turn in order to determine their influence on the final goods terms of trade, which is the key factor in affecting relative trade balance positions.

World Equilibrium with Oil Price Increases: An Intertemporal Analysis

This paper examines the effect of OPEC price increases on the welfare of a group of oil-importing industrial countries. It also studies how taxes or subsidies on oil imports or capital flows could alter the group's welfare. The analysis is conducted using a general-equilibrium model that describes the behavior of two actors, OPEC and the oil-importing bloc called Industria. The analysis is explicitly intertemporal and takes into account endogenous changes in saving, investment and employment.We show that Industria's welfare is affected not only by direct oil terms of trade effect, but also by changes in the world rate of interest(intertemporal terms of trade effects) and, for rigid wages, changes in employment. Thus Industria gains from the intertemporal terms of trade effect if it is a net borrower and the world rate of interest falls. Precise conditions for whether the world rate of interest falls or rises are given.We also show that Industria may gain from subsidizing oil imports rather than taxing them, in particular if wages are rigid, and that it may gain from restricting international capital mobility.

Adjustment to Expected and Unexpected Oil Price Changes

For oil importers, differences in economic performance after the 1973-74 oil price increase and after the 1979-80 increase can be attributed to a number of factors, including the fact that the 1973-74 oil price increase was unexpected whereas the 1979-80 increase was largely expected. In this paper, we analyze how an economy's adjustment to expected oil price increases might differ from its adjustment to unexpected increases. By expected oil price increases, we shall mean ones that were anticipated in the past, and by unexpected oil price increases, we shall mean those that were not anticipated in the past but occur unexpectedly in the present. We model this distinction using a three- period model, where the periods are called the past, present and future.

Holding International Reserves in an Era of High Capital Mobility

Last September, as calls grew louder for European Central Bank (ECB)intervention to reverse the euro’s fall, the lead of an Economist article asked, “If central banks are so reluctant to intervene in foreign-exchange mar-kets, why do they still hold so many reserves? ” The article went on to say that at the time, the ECB and the euro area’s national central banks together held about $226 billion of foreign-exchange reserves, not counting their sizable gold holdings.1 The question is being asked more often these days. The Economist sug-gested that the idea of having an abundance of reserves is partly a carryover from the Bretton Woods system, when central banks were obligated to defend their parities against the dollar through intervention and so needed a lot of reserves. Yet, as the Economist noted, Bretton Woods broke down thirty years ago, and today many fewer countries peg their exchange rates. Indeed the cur-rency and financial crises of the 1990s have led some observers to conclude that in a world of high capital mobility, fixed exchange rates such as the Euro-pean exchange-rate mechanism or the East Asian pegs before 1997–98 cannot work for long.2 As a result, more countries have shifted to floating exchange rates. With less need to hold reserves to defend currency values, one would expect global reserve holdings to decline. But just the opposite has occurred— world reserve holdings are at record levels. Figure 1 shows that global reserve holdings (excluding gold) were equiv-alent to seventeen weeks of imports at the end of 1999, almost double what