Can Sticky Price Models Generate Volatile and Persistent Real Exchange Rates?

The central puzzle in international business cycles is that real exchange rates are volatile and persistent. The most popular story for real exchange rate fluctuations is that they are generated by monetary shocks interacting with sticky goods prices. We quantify this story and find that it can account for some of the observed properties of real exchange rates. When prices are held fixed for at least one year, risk aversion is high and preferences are separable in leisure, the model generates real exchange rates that are as volatile as in the data. The model also generates real exchange rates that are persistent, but less so than in the data. If monetary shocks are correlated across countries, then the comovements in aggregates across countries are broadly consistent with those in the data. Making asset markets incomplete or introducing sticky wages does not measurably change the results.

Can sticky price models generate volatile and persistent real exchange rates?

The central puzzle in international business cycles is that fluctuations in real exchange rates are volatile and persistent. We quantity the popular story for real exchange rate fluctuations: they are generated by monetary shocks interacting with sticky goods prices. If prices are held fixed for at least one year, risk aversion is high, and preferences are separable in leisure, then real exchanage rates generated by the model are as volatile as in the data and quite persistent, but less so than in the data. The main discrepancy between the model and the data, the consumption—real exchange rate anomaly, is that the model generates a high correlation between real exchange rates and the ratio of consumption across countries, while the data show no clear pattern between these variables.Prices ; Econometric models ; Foreign exchange rates

Can sticky price models generate volatile and persistent real exchange rates?

The conventional wisdom is that monetary shocks interact with sticky goods prices to generate the observed volatility and persistence in real exchange rates. We investigate this conventional wisdom in a quantitative model with sticky prices. We find that with preferences as in the real business cycle literature, irrespective of the length of price stickiness, the model necessarily produces only a fraction of the volatility in exchange rates seen in the data. With preferences which are separable in leisure, the model can produce the observed volatility in exchange rates. We also show that long stickiness is necessary to generate the observed persistence. In addition, we show that making asset markets incomplete does not measurably increase either the volatility or persistence of real exchange rates. ; Replaced by Staff Report 277Prices ; Econometric models ; Foreign exchange rates

New Keynesian models: not yet useful for policy analysis

In the 1970s macroeconomists often disagreed bitterly. Macroeconomists have now largely converged on method, model design, and macroeconomic policy advice. The disagreements that remain all stem from the practical implementation of the methodology. Some macroeconomists think that New Keynesian models are on the verge of being useful for quarter-to-quarter quantitative policy advice. We do not. We argue that the shocks in these models are dubiously structural and show that many of the features of the model as well as the implications due to these features are inconsistent with microeconomic evidence. These arguments lead us to conclude that New Keynesian models are not yet useful for policy analysis.

Comparing alternative representations and alternative methodologies in business cycle accounting

We make two comparisons relevant for the business cycle accounting approach. We show that in theory representing the investment wedge as a tax on investment is equivalent to representing this wedge as a tax on capital income as long as the probability distributions over this wedge in the two representations are the same. In practice, convenience dictates differing probability distributions over this wedge in the two representations. Even so, the quantitative results under the two representations are essentially identical. We also compare our methodology, the CKM methodology, to an alternative one used in Christiano and Davis (2006) as well as by us in early incarnations of the business cycle accounting approach. We argue that the CKM methodology rests on more secure theoretical foundations.> > Replaced by Staff Report No. 384Business cycles - Econometric models

The Poverty of Nations: A Quantitative Exploration

We document regularities in the distribution of relative incomes and patterns of investment in countries and over time. We develop a quantitative version of the neoclassical growth model with a broad measure of capital in which investment decisions are affected by distortions. These distortions follow a stochastic process which is common to all countries. Our model generates a panel of outcomes which we compare to the data. In both the model and the data, there is greater mobility in relative incomes in the middle of the income distribution than at the extremes. The 10 fastest growing countries and the 10 slowest growing countries in the model have growth rates and investment-output ratios similar to those in the data. In both the model and the data, the `miracle' countries have nonmonotonic investment-output ratios over time. The main quantitative discrepancy between the model and the data is that there is more persistence in growth rates of relative incomes in the model than in the data.

Business cycle accounting

We propose a simple method to help researchers develop quantitative models of economic fluctuations. The method rests on the insight that many models are equivalent to a prototype growth model with time-varying wedges which resemble productivity, labor and investment taxes, and government consumption. Wedges corresponding to these variables - efficiency, labor, investment, and government consumption wedges - are measured with data and then fed back into the model in order to assess the fraction of various fluctuations accounted for by these wedges. Applying this method to U.S. data for the Great Depression and the 1982 recession reveals that models with frictions which manifest themselves primarily as investment wedges are not promising for the study of business cycles. The efficiency and labor wedges together account for essentially all of the fluctuations, the investment wedge leads to an increase in output rather than a decline, and the government consumption wedge plays an insignificant role.Business cycles - Econometric models

Sticky price models of the business cycle: can the contract multiplier solve the persistence problem?

We construct a quantitative equilibrium model with price setting and use it to ask whether with staggered price setting monetary shocks can generate business cycle fluctuations. These fluctuations include persistent output fluctuations along with the other defining features of business cycles, like volatile investment and smooth consumption. We assume that prices are exogenously sticky for a short period of time. Persistent output fluctuations require endogenous price stickiness in the sense that firms choose not to change prices very much when they can do so. We find that for a wide range of parameter values the amount of endogenous stickiness is small. As a result, we find that in a standard quantitative business cycle model staggered price setting, by itself, does not generate business cycle fluctuations.Business cycles ; Multiplier (Economics) ; Price regulation

Technology capital transfer

It is widely believed that an important factor underlying the rapid growth in China is increased foreign direct investment (FDI) and the transfer of foreign technology capital, which is accumulated know-how from investment in research and development (R&D), brands, and organizations that is not specific to a plant. In this paper, we study two channels through which FDI can contribute to upgrading of the stock of technology capital: knowledge spillovers and appropriation. Knowledge spillovers lead to new ideas that do not directly compete or devalue the foreign affiliate’s stock. Appropriation, on the other hand, implies a redistribution of property rights over patents and trademarks; the gain to domestic companies comes at a loss to the multinational company (MNC). In this paper we build these sources of technology capital transfer into the framework developed by McGrattan and Prescott (2009, 2010) and introduce an endogenously-chosen intensity margin for operating technology capital in order to capture the trade-offs MNCs face when expanding their markets internationally. We show that economic outcomes differ dramatically depending on the source of greater openness and the channel with which technology capital transfer is operative.

A critique of structural VARs using real business cycle theory

The main substantive finding of the recent structural vector autoregression literature with a differenced specification of hours (DSVAR) is that technology shocks lead to a fall in hours. Researchers have used these results to argue that business cycle models in which technology shocks lead to a rise in hours should be discarded. We evaluate the DSVAR approach by asking, is the specification derived from this approach misspecified when the data are generated by the very model the literature is trying to discard? We find that it is misspecified. Moreover, this misspecification is so great that it leads to mistaken inferences that are quantitatively large. We show that the other popular specification that uses the level of hours (LSVAR) is also misspecified. We argue that alternative state space approaches, including the business cycle accounting approach, are more fruitful techniques for guiding the development of business cycle theory.> > Replaced by Staff Report No. 364Vector autoregression ; Business cycles