Net foreign assets and imperfect pass-through: the consumption real exchange rate anomaly

An unresolved issue in international macroeconomics is the apparent lack of risk-sharing across countries, which contradicts the prediction of models based on the assumption of complete markets. We assess the importance of financial frictions in this issue by constructing an incomplete market model with stationary net foreign assets (NFA) and imperfect pass-through (IPT). In this paper, there is a cost of bond holdings that allows us to incorporate the dynamics of NFA into the risk-sharing condition. On theoretical grounds, our results suggest that the dynamics of NFA may account for the lack of risk-sharing across countries. In addition, the IPT mechanism, by closing the current account channel, does not help to explain this feature of the data. On empirical grounds, we test the risk-sharing condition derived in the paper, and we find that growth factors of consumption and real exchange rates behave in a manner that may be consistent with a significant role for the net foreign asset position.Risk ; International finance

Can Fluctuations in the Consumption-Wealth Ratio Help to Predict Exchange Rates?

It is well documented that macroeconomic fundamentals are little help in predicting changes in the nominal exchange rates compared to the predictions made by a simple random walk. Letta and Ludvigson (2001) find that fluctuations in the common long-term trend in consumption, asset wealth, and labor income (herby, consumption-wealth ratio)is a strong predictor of the excess returns. In this paper, we study the role of the consumption-wealth ratio in predicting the change in the nominal exchange rate of a large set of countries. We find evidence that fluctuations in the consumption-wealth ratio help to predict in-sample all the currencies. in terms of out-of-sample forecasts, our results suggest that the consumption-wealth ratio may play a significant role predicting the Canadian dollar at all horizons and at short-intermediate horizons for some currencies.Exchange Rates, Consumption-Wealth Ratio, PRedictability

Net Foreign Assets And Imperfect Financial Integration: An Empirical Approach

Empirical evidence against both risk-sharing across countries and the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) condition has been extensively documented. This paper investigates the empirical implications of imperfectly integrated financial markets resulting from these two issues. Under this asset market structure both the risk-sharing condition and the UIP are affected by the Net Foreign Assets Position(NFA) of the country. First, we find strong evidence for OECD countries that the NFA contributes to explaining the lack of risk-sharing across countries. Similarly, in terms of the UIP, the NFA is able to capture a time-varying risk-premium for a small group of countries over short-term horizons.

The Consumption-Real Exchange Rate Anomaly: Non-Traded Goods, Incomplete Markets and Distribution Services

The real exchange rate is volatile and tends to move in opposite direction with respect to relative consumption across countries. Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan (CKM, 2002) refer to the inability of models to replicate the last stylized fact as the consumption-real exchange rate anomaly. In this paper we show that an international RBC model similar to the one proposed by CKM but extended by considering nontraded goods and an incomplete asset market structure can solve this anomaly. Non tradable goods amplify wealth effects that arise from the incomplete assets market structure generating a negative comovement between the real exchange rate and relative consumption. The model performs reasonable well with other business cycle moments and, by adding distribution services in terms of nontraded goods, it generates a real exchange rate as volatile as in the data. Results are robust to the addition of nominal price rigidities and -in contrast with CKM- there is no need of monetary shocks to account for the real exchange rate dynamics.

Learning about Monetary Policy Rules when the Cost Channel Matters

We study how the stability of rational expectations equilibrium may be affected by monetary policy when agents learn using adaptive learning (E-stability concept) and the cost channel of monetary policy matters. We focus on both instrumental taylor-type rules and optimal rules. We show, analytically, that standard instrument rules -contemporaneous and forecast based rules - can easily induce indeterminacy and expectational instability when the cost channel is present. Overall, a naive application of the Taylor principle in this setting could be misleading. Regarding optimal rules, we find that "expectational-based" rules, under discretion and commitment, do not always induce determinate and E-stable equilibrium. This result stands in contrast to the findings of Evans and Honkapohja (2003) for for the baseline “New Keynessian" model.Monetary Policy Rules, Cost Channel, Indeterminacy

Determinacy and Learnability of Monetary Policy Rules in Small Open Economies

This paper evaluates under which conditions different Taylor-type rules lead to determinacy and expectational stability (E-stability) of rational expectations equilibrium in a simple New Keynesian small open economy model, developed by Gali and Monacelli (2005). In particular, we extend the Bullard and Mitra (2002) results of determinacy and E-stability in a closed economy to this small open economy framework. Our results highlight an important link between the Taylor principle and both determinacy and learnability of equilibrium in small open economies. More importantly, the degree of openness coupled with the nature of the policy rule adopted by the monetary authorities might change this link in important ways. A key finding is that, contrary to Bullard and Mitra, expectations-based rules that involve the CPI and/or the nominal exchange rate limit the region of E-stability and the Taylor Principle does not guarantee E-stability. We also show that some forms of managed exchange rate rules can help to alleviate problems of both indeterminacy and expectational instability, yet these rules might not be desirable since they promote greater volatility in the economy.

Monetary Policy, Regime Shifts, and Inflation Uncertainty in Peru (1949-2006)

This paper evaluates the link between inflation and inflation uncertainty in a context of monetary policy regime shifts for the Peruvian economy. We use a model of unobserved components subject to regime shifts to evaluate this link. We verify that periods of high(low) inflation me an were accompanied by periods of high(low) both short -and long- run uncertainty in inflation. Interestingly, unlike developed countries, short run uncertainty is important. These relationaships are consistent with the presence of three clearly differentiated regimes. First, a period of price stability, then a high -inflation high-volatility regime, and finally a hyperinflation period. We also verify that during a recent period of price stability, both permanent and transitory shocks to inflation have decreased in volatility. Finally, we find evidence that inflation and money growth rates share similar regime shifts.inflation dynamics, monetary policy, Markov-switching models, unobserved component models, sthocastic trends

Independencia Legal y Efectiva del Banco Central de Reserva del Perú

Este documento resume los conceptos que sustentan la independencia del banco central (IBC) así como la evidencia empírica reciente respecto a los índices de IBC para el Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (BCRP). En particular, se describe cómo han evolucionado tanto la independencia legal (de jure) del BCRP así como sus componentes (independencia económica e independencia política) en comparación con los índices de otros países de la región y de la OECD. Adicionalmente, en línea con Cukierman (2007), se construye un índice de independencia efectiva (IIE) del BCRP (1994- 2007) el cual diverge del índice de independencia legal. Los resultados son los siguientes: En general, los índices de independencia legal reportan una mejora importante a partir de los 90´s en el Perú y las economías de la región. En el caso peruano, la mejora en el índice ha sido liderada principalmente por la mayor independencia económica. A pesar de que la independencia legal no ha cambiado desde el año 1993, la adopción del régimen de metas explícitas de inflación desde el año 2002, el uso de la tasa de interés de referencia como instrumento de política y una política fiscal menos pro-cíclica, han contribuido a alcanzar un mayor índice de independencia efectiva entre los años 1998 y 2007. La mayor independencia efectiva del BCRP es un elemento adicional que sustenta el éxito del BCRP en mantener inflaciones bajas, consistente con su objetivo de preservar la estabilidad de precios.Independencia del Banco Central, Inflación

Inflation Premium and Oil Price Volatility

This paper provides a fully micro-founded New Keynesian framework to study the interaction between oil price volatility, pricing behavior of firms and monetary policy. We show that when oil has low substitutability, firms find it optimal to charge higher relative prices as a premium in compensation for the risk that oil price volatility generates on their marginal costs. Overall, in general equilibrium, the interaction of the aforementioned mechanisms produces a positive relationship between oil price volatility and average inflation, which we denominate inflation premium. We characterize analytically this relationship by using the perturbation method to solve the rational expectations equilibrium of the model up to second order of accuracy. The solution implies that the inflation premium is higher when: a) oil has low substitutability, b) the Phillips Curve is convex, and c) the central bank puts higher weight on output fluctuations. We also provide some quantitative evidence showing that a calibrated model for the US with an estimated active Taylor rule produces a sizable inflation premium, similar to the levels observed in the US during the 70s.Second Order Solution, Oil Price Shocks, Endogenous Trade-off

An Estimated Stochastic General Equilibrium Model with Partial Dollarization: A Bayesian Approach

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium New Keynesian model of a small open economy with partial dollarization. We use Bayesian techniques and Peruvian data to evaluate two forms of dollarization: currency substitution (CS) and price dollarization (PD). Our empirical results are as follows. First, we find that the two forms of partial dollarization are important to explain the Peruvian data. Second, models with both forms of dollarization dominate models without dollarization. Third, a counter-factual exercise shows that by eliminating both forms of partial dollarization the response of both output and consumption to a monetary policy shock doubles, making the interest rate channel of monetary policy more effective. Forth, based on the variance decomposition of the preferred model (with CS and PD), we find that demand type shocks explain almost all the fluctuation in CPI inflation, being the monetary shock the most important (39 percent). Remarkably, foreign disturbances account for 34 percent of output fluctuations.