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on Open Economy Macroeconomics |
| By: | Okano, Mitsuhiro |
| Abstract: | This study develops a two-country new Keynesian (NK) model that incorporates deep habits in consumption and investigates the macroeconomic dynamics under the optimal coordinated monetary policy. We show that in response to the structural shocks, the central bank changes the interest rate significantly in the two-country open economy model compared with the closed economy where the central bank is reluctant to move interest rates. When a deep consumption habit exists, the international central bank can exploit the terms of trade externalities. Habit formation might boost the expenditure switching effect, which differentiates the aggressiveness of the central bank between closed and open economies with deep habit. Moreover, we showed that the deviations from the law of one price, or the goods-specific real exchange rate, generated endogenously by the deep habit are significantly related to the degree of home bias. In particular, the deviations fully disappeared when there is no home bias. |
| Keywords: | Optimal monetary policy; Deep habit; Policy coordination; Commitment; |
| JEL: | E52 E58 F41 |
| Date: | 2021–10–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110259&r= |
| By: | Richard T. Froyen; Alfred V. Guender (University of Canterbury) |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes that the Mundellian Trilemma remains valid despite the emergence of a world financial cycle. A clear distinction must be made between monetary policy independence and insulation of an open economy’s financial system. A flexible exchange rate allows an optimizing central bank to chart an independent course but does not insulate the domestic economy from foreign monetary or financial shocks. The gains from a flexible exchange rate may be considerable and vary in accordance with the mandate of the central bank. The Mundellian Trilemma highlights the acute shortage of policy instruments and resulting tradeoffs among policy goals. We show that macroprudential policy in the form of an interest equalization tax, enhances the ability of an optimizing central bank to effectively stabilize domestic output and inflation in the presence of policy changes abroad and potentially destabilizing capital flows. |
| Keywords: | Mundellian Trilemma, policy independence, capital mobility, instrument shortage, capital controls |
| JEL: | E3 E5 F3 |
| Date: | 2021–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbt:econwp:21/08&r= |
| By: | Samuel Kortum (Cowles Foundation, Yale University); David A. Weisbach (The University of Chicago Law School) |
| Abstract: | We derive the optimal unilateral policy in a general equilibrium model of trade and climate change where one region of the world imposes a climate policy and the rest of the world does not. A climate policy in one region shifts activities—extraction, production, and consumption—in the other region. The optimal policy trades off the costs of these distortions. The optimal policy can be implemented through: (i) a nominal tax on extraction at a rate equal to the global marginal harm from emissions, (ii) a tax on imports of energy and goods, and a rebate of taxes on exports of energy but not goods, both at a lower rate than the extraction tax rate, and (iii) a goods-speciï¬ c export subsidy. The policy controls leakage by combining supply-side and demand-side taxes to control the price of energy in the non-taxing region. It exploits international trade to expand the reach of the climate policy. We calibrate and simulate the model to illustrate how the optimal policy compares to more traditional policies such as extraction, production, and consumption taxes and combinations of those taxes. The simulations show that combinations of supply-side and demand-side taxes are much better than simpler policies and can perform nearly as well as the optimal policy. |
| Keywords: | Carbon taxes, Border adjustments, Leakage, Climate change |
| JEL: | F18 H23 Q54 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2311&r= |
| By: | Jacek Rothert (United States Naval Academy; Group for Research in Applied Economics (GRAPE)); Jacob M. Short (Bank of Canada) |
| Abstract: | The canonical one-sector model over predicts international capital flows by a factor of ten. We show that introducing a non-traded goods sector can reconcile the differences between the theoretical predictions and the observed flows. We analyze the quantitative impact of the nontraded sector using a calibrated model of a small open economy, in which non-traded goods are used in consumption and investment, and need capital and labor to be produced. The model features international frictions directly affecting international borrowing and lending, as well as domestic frictions that limit the scope of inter-sectoral reallocation of capital and labor. We find that: (1) the impact of domestic frictions on the size of international capital flows is similar to the impact of international frictions, and (2) the median elasticity of capital flows with respect to international frictions in the two-sector model with costly inter-sectoral reallocation is about 50-60% lower than that same elasticity in the one-sector model. |
| Keywords: | non-traded sector, capital flows, savings wedge, allocation puzzle |
| JEL: | F21 F43 O41 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fme:wpaper:59&r= |
| By: | Ryan Chahrour (Boston College); Vito Cormun (Santa Clara University); Pierre De Leo (University of Maryland); Pablo Guerron-Quintana (Boston College); Rosen Valchev (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | We find that variation in expected US productivity explains more than half of G6 exchange rate fluctuations vis-a-vis the USD. Both correctly-anticipated changes in productivity and expectational “noise”, which influences expected productivity but never its realization, play an important role in driving exchange rates. Together, these disturbances account for many unconditional exchange rate patterns, including predictable excess returns, low Backus-Smith correlations, and excess volatility. Our findings suggest these famous puzzles share a common empirical origin, one that is very much connected to (expected) fundamentals. All of these findings can be rationalized by a model in which excess currency returns are driven by endogenously-fluctuating bond convenience yields. This mechanism makes additional predictions about government debt dynamics that prove true in the data. |
| Keywords: | Exchange Rate Disconnect, TFP News, Excess Returns, Excess Volatility |
| JEL: | D8 F3 G1 |
| Date: | 2021–11–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:1041&r= |
| By: | Lampe, Florian; Löscher, Anne |
| Abstract: | The paper treats the eco currency union project in West Africa and its implications for monetary policies against the backdrop of the international monetary order from a post-Keynesian perspective. The eco zone project envisions a common monetary union of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), i.e. the independent Western subzone of the CFA franc union, and the remaining non-CFA countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with Nigeria and Ghana as the economically most important member states. The literature on the international currency hierarchy developed by Latin-American structuralists and the post-Keynesian Berlin School of thought focuses on the notion of a currency-specific liquidity premium that structurally determines the interest rate level in the corresponding currency areas. Based on this set of literature, we conduct a comparison between the liquidity premia of the Western CFA-franc, the Nigerian naira and the Ghanaian cedi to make conjectures about what implications a common ECOWAS currency union would have regarding monetary policy space. Being a non-pecuniary variable, the liquidity premium cannot be observed directly. We therefore approximate the liquidity premium by calculating differences in interest rates such as the central bank's base rate, the coupon rate on T-bills and bonds and the interest rate spread between Eurobonds and bonds denominated in local currency. Besides, we use balance of payment data to identify external financial fragilities that might become a crucial factor for monetary policy due to an increasing financialisation in West African economies. We find that investors demand structurally higher yields on bonds originating in Ghana and Nigeria than in the CFA-franc zone. One could interpret this as the CFA-franc conveying over a higher liquidity premium because it has to have lower yields rates to compensate for liquidity-differences to financial assets denominated in the US dollar or euro. However, another explanation is that expectations about the future developments of the cedi's and naira's exchange value by investors are more pessimistic in comparison to that of the CFA-franc. This is rooted in two major factors: Firstly, under the current arrangement, France still has leeway in monetary policy making and acts as exchange rate stabiliser by pushing for restrictive monetary policies and guaranteeing foreign exchange reserve provision. Secondly, the estimation of external financial fragility in the CFA-franc zone and Nigeria shows that the naira implies a greater risk of sudden devaluation due to a higher exposure to mobile liabilities vis-à-vis its asset endowments. |
| Keywords: | West African Economic and Monetary Union,CFA franc,eco zone,international currency hierarchy,external financial fragility |
| JEL: | E12 F33 F41 G11 O57 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:cessdp:89&r= |
| By: | Pompeo Della Posta; Roberto Tamborini |
| Abstract: | The lesson of the sovereign debt crises of the 2010s, and of the outbreak of the COVID- 19 pandemic is that EMU irreversibility, if not to remain a wishful statement in the founding treaties, necessitates to be completed by carefully designed ramparts for extraordinary times beside regulations for ordinary times. In this paper we wish to contribute to this line of thought in two points. First, we highlight that when exposed to large, systemic shocks the EMU faces a trilemma: its integrity can only be saved by relaxing either monetary orthodoxy, or fiscal orthodoxy, or both. We elaborate this concept by means of a fiscal target-zone model, where EMU member governments are willing to abide with the commitment to debt stability under the no-bailout clause only up to an upper bound of their feasible fiscal effort. Second, we show that EMU completion means providing a monetary and/or fiscal emergency backstop to the irreversibility principle. Drawing on the target-zone literature, we show how these devices can be designed in a consistent manner that minimises their extension and mitigates the moral hazard concerns. The alternative to these devices is not retaining both the EMU irreversibility and the twin orthodoxies, but reformulating the treaties with explicit and regulated exit procedures |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:econwp:_66&r= |
| By: | Rabah Arezki (African Development Bank); Markus Brueckner (Australian National University) |
| Abstract: | Military expenditure shares significantly affect the relationship between the risk of civil conflict outbreak and natural resources. We show that a significant positive correlation between the risk of civil conflict outbreak and resource rents is limited to countries with low military expenditure shares. In countries with high military expenditure shares there is no significant relationship between the risk of civil conflict outbreak and rents from natural resources. An important message is thus that a conflict resource curse is absent in countries with sufficiently large military expenditure shares. However, there is a trade-off: the larger military expenditure shares, the smaller is the effect that resource rents have on economic growth and democracy. |
| Keywords: | Military expenditure, Resource rents, Civil conflict, Democracy JEL classification: D74, Q02, Q34 |
| Date: | 2021–08–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:adb:adbwps:2477&r= |
| By: | Khalil, Makram; Weber, Marc-Daniel |
| Abstract: | In structural vector autoregressive models of US and euro area manufacturing, we use sign restrictions to identify shocks that alter the frictions to Chinese supply chain trade. We find a quantitatively significant role of such shocks for the decline of US manufacturing output at the height of the Sino-American trade tensions in 2019. At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, the results point towards large spillovers from the shutdown in China to manufacturing in the US and the euro area. Moreover, during the recovery in 2020 and 2021, positive Chinese supply chain shocks related to the shift of preferences towards goods with a large China valued-added content played a role. Interestingly, the impact of China-specific trade shocks is not limited to manufacturing sectors that are highly exposed to China. Furthermore, negative Chinese supply chain shocks cause upward price pressure across the whole manufacturing industry. |
| Keywords: | Cross-border supply-chain disruptions, China, trade tensions, Covid-19 recession, US and euro area manufacturing. |
| JEL: | E32 F41 F62 |
| Date: | 2021–10–25 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110356&r= |
| By: | Uluc Aysun (University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL); Michael Tseng (University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL) |
| Abstract: | This paper identifies two theoretical mechanisms that relate the regulatory arbitrage behavior of internationally active banks (IABs) to global financial conditions. According to the first mechanism, regulation becomes more binding during adverse financial conditions. Under these conditions, IABs face higher compliance costs in more regulated markets. According to the second mechanism, higher regulation suppresses the degree of risk-taking and asset returns so that highly-regulated nations are more insulated from global financial risk. These results are reversed in less-regulated nations. We use a panel of bilateral BIS banking statistics and a unique empirical strategy to find that the first of the two theoretical mechanisms above is more prevalent. Specifically, IABs expand their claims more rapidly in less-regulated nations when global perception of financial risk is higher. The direction of arbitrage is reversed under loose conditions. This evidence is corroborated by the inferences from a structural vector autoregressive model fitted to data from individual countries. |
| Keywords: | push factors, global banks, BIS statistics, regulation, arbitrage. |
| JEL: | F44 G11 G15 G21 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cfl:wpaper:2021-01ua&r= |
| By: | António Afonso; Francisco Tiago Carvalho |
| Abstract: | We assess the cyclicality of fiscal policy in the 19 Euro area countries, notably during recessions, for the period 1995-2020. We use a time-varying measure of fiscal cyclicality to describe fiscal policy developments. The results suggest that during recessions discretionary fiscal policy becomes more pro-cyclical, but the overall budget balance becomes more counter-cyclical. Hence, pursuing a Ricardian fiscal regime by more indebted countries leads to higher counter-cyclicality of fiscal policy. Government size reduces counter-cyclicality, as well as trade openness, and financial development has a positive impact on counter-cyclicality. |
| Keywords: | Fiscal Policy; Cyclicality; Time-varying coefficient; Euro area. |
| JEL: | C23 E62 H30 H62 |
| Date: | 2021–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ise:remwps:wp02022021&r= |