The Real Exchange Rate, Exports, and Manufacturing Profits: A Theoreti- cal Framework With Some Empirical Support

This paper investigates the relationship between manufacturing profits, exports, and the real exchange rate. Using Harston's (1990) model of pricing-to-market, we derive a co-integrated log-linear profits equation that restricts the long-run relationship among real U.S. manufacturing profits, domestic sales, the real exchange rate, real unit costs, the U.S. relative price of output, and foreign sales. We show that the elasticity of real profits with respect to the real exchange rate is bounded below by the product of (i) 1 minus the long-run pass-through coefficient and (ii) the ratio of export revenues to total profits. Our empirical findings suggest that, even after taking into account output, costs, and relative prices, real exchange rate fluctuations have a sizable and statistically significant influence on real U.S. manufacturing profits. The framework developed in this paper appears to be of some value in directing attention towards a heretofore underappreciated channel through which real exchange rate changes can potentially influence national savings.

International Lending and Borrowing in a Stochastic Sequence Equilibrium

This paper is a theoretical investigation of international lending and borrowing in the context of a general equilibrium model in which national productivities are subject to random fluctuations and rates of time preference differ among countries. International capital flows arise from the efforts of risk-averse households situated in different countries to self-insure against random productivity fluctuations. We establish the existence of a rational expectations equilibrium in which the world interest rate is constant and strictly less than the rate of time preference of the least impatient countries. The rate of time preference, solvency restrictions on borrowing, and balanced-budget fiscal policies are rigorously analyzed.

International Capital Mobility, Public Investment and Economic Growth

This paper presents a neoclassical model of international capital flows, public investment, and economic growth. Because public capital is non-traded and is imperfectly substitutable for private capital, the open economy converges only gradually to the Solow steady-state notwithstanding the fact that international capital mobility is perfect. Along the convergence path, the economy initially runs a current account deficit that reflects a consumption boom and a surge in public spending. Over time, the rate of public investment declines as does the rate of growth in the standard measure of multifactor productivity in the private sector, the Solow residual.

Co-Integration, Aggregate Consumption, and the Demand For Imports: A Structural Econometric Investigation

This paper uses a two-good version of Hall's (1978) representative agent, permanent income model to derive a structural import demand equation for nondurable consumer goods. Under the identification restriction that taste shocks are stationary, the model is shown to imply that log imports, log domestic goods, and the log relative price of imports are co-integrated. The data decisively reject the null hypothesis that imports, the relative price of imports, and the consumption of home goods are not co-integrated. We employ the non-linear least squares technique recently proposed by Phillips and Loretan (1990> to estimate the parameters of the import demand equation. The long-run price elasticity of import demand is estimated to be -0.95. The elasticity of import demand with respect to a permanent increase in real spending is estimated to be 2.20. These estimates fall within the range reported in studies by Helkie and Hooper (1986), Cline (1989), and the many studies surveyed by Goldstein and Kahn (1985) The message of this paper is that, at least for non-durable consumer goods, it is possible to interpret the traditional import demand equation as a co-integrating regression, and to interpret the price and expenditure elasticities estimated from such a trade equation as a co-integrating vector. Estimates of the co-integrating vector can be used to recover estimates of the utility parameters of the representative household. The similarity between the OLS and Phillips-Loretan estimates of the parameters suggests that the simultaneous equation bias is not large.

G7 Current Account Imbalances: Sustainability and Adjustment

This volume collects the eleven original papers that were written for the NBER Project on G7 Current Account Imbalances. Four major themes emerged from the papers written for the project. First, there was broad agreement that the current account imbalances that prevailed among the G7 countries as of June 2005 would ultimately decline, although there was no consensus on when or how this would occur . Second, there was agreement that adjustments in global currency markets would likely be associated with the shifts in global saving and investment patterns that would be required to bring about the ultimate decline in G7 current account imbalances. Third, while the focus of the conference was on current account imbalances in the G7 countries, it was recognized that the aggregate excess of saving over investment that existed among the emerging market economies at the time of the conference, as well as the currency intervention policies of some of these countries, were contributing to the current imbalances in the G7 that prevailed as of June 2005. Fourth, there was a consensus that re-valuation of the evolving foreign asset and liability positions of the G7 countries would play a role during process by which current account imbalances narrowed, although there was range of opinion concerning how large a role such revaluation effects would play.

Is Bad News About Inflation Good News for the Exchange Rate?

We show in a simple -- but robust -- theoretical monetary exchange rate model that the sign of the covariance between an inflation surprise and the nominal exchange rate can tell us something about how monetary policy is conducted. Specifically, we show that 'bad news' about inflation -- that it is higher than expected -- can be 'good news' for the nominal exchange rate -- that it appreciates on this news -- if the central bank has an inflation target that it implements with a Taylor Rule. The empirical work in this paper examines point sampled data on inflation announcements and the reaction of nominal exchange rates in 10 minute windows around these announcements for 10 countries and several different inflation measures for the period July 2001 through March 2005. When we pool the data, we do in fact find that bad news about inflation is indeed good news for the nominal exchange rate, that the results are statistically significant, and that the r-square is substantial, in excess of 0.25 for core measures of inflation. We also find significant differences comparing the inflation targeting countries and the two non-inflation targeting countries.