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on International Finance |
| By: | Mary Amiti; Oleg Itskhoki; Jozef Konings |
| Abstract: | Using new data on currency invoicing for Belgian firms, we analyze how firms make their currency choice, for both exports and imports, and the implications of this choice for exchange rate pass-through into prices and quantities. We derive our estimating equations from a theoretical framework featuring variable markups, international input sourcing, and staggered price setting with endogenous currency choice. Our structural specification provides a new test of the allocative consequences of nominal rigidities, by estimating the treatment effect of foreign-currency price stickiness on the dynamic response of prices and quantities, controlling for the endogeneity of the firm's currency choice. We show that flexible-price determinants of exchange rate pass-through are also the key firm characteristics that determine currency choice. In particular, small non-importing firms tend to price their exports in euros (producer currency) and exhibit complete exchange-rate pass-through into destination prices at all horizons. In contrast, large import-intensive firms tend to denominate their exports in foreign currencies, especially in the US dollar, exhibiting a lower pass-through of the euro-destination exchange rate and a pronounced sensitivity to the dollar-destination exchange rate. The effects of foreign-currency price stickiness are still significant beyond the one-year horizon, but gradually dissipate in the long run. |
| JEL: | E31 F31 F41 |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27926&r=all |
| By: | Pierre-Richard Agénor; Timothy P. Jackson; Luiz Pereira da Silva |
| Abstract: | A two-region, core-periphery model with financial frictions, imperfect financial integration, and cross-border banking is used to assess the gains from international macroprudential policy coordination. A core global bank lends to its affiliates in the periphery and banks are subject to a risk-sensitive capital regulatory regime. An expansionary monetary policy in the core is used to illustrate how lending costs, countercyclical capital buffers (which respond to real credit growth), and regulatory arbitrage affect cross-border bank capital flows, under both economies and diseconomies of scope in domestic and foreign lending by the global bank. Welfare gains are calculated for three policy regimes: independent policies (Nash), coordination, and reciprocity–where capital ratios set in the core region are also imposed in the periphery. Coordination generates significant gains at the level of the world economy, and these gains increase with the degree of international financial integration. However, their distribution tends to be highly asymmetric. Under certain circumstances, reciprocity may generate higher gains than independent policies for the world economy, despite the reciprocating jurisdiction (the periphery) being invariably worse off. |
| JEL: | E58 F42 F62 |
| Date: | 2020–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:liv:livedp:202028&r=all |
| By: | Luis Felipe Céspedes; Roberto Chang |
| Abstract: | We study the interaction between optimal foreign reserves accumulation and central bank international liquidity provision in a small open economy under financial stress. Firms and households finance investment and consumption by borrowing from domestic financial intermediaries (banks), which in turn borrow from abroad. Binding financial constraints can cause the domestic rate of interest to rise above the world rate and the real exchange rate to depreciate, leading to inefficiently low investment and consumption. A role then emerges for a central bank that accumulates reserves in order to provide liquidity if financial frictions bind. The optimal level of international reserves in this context depends, among other variables, on the term premium, the depth of financial markets, ex ante financial uncertainty and the precise way the central bank intervenes. The model is consistent with both the increase in international reserves observed during the period 2004-2008 and with policy intervention after the Lehman bankruptcy. |
| JEL: | E5 F3 F4 |
| Date: | 2020–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27923&r=all |