Macroeconomic Performance Under Alternative Exchange Rate Regimes


Book Description

This paper reexamines the macroeconomic effects of wage indexation in an open economy under alternative exchange rate regimes. The main finding is that, once the lags in actual indexation rules are considered, wage indexation affects output behavior substantially less than posited in the previous academic literature. This result implies that the academic view that wage indexation makes a flexible exchange rate generally preferable is unwarranted and suggests that the choice of exchange rate regime with and without wage indexation depends on similar factors. The analysis also reveals that the net effects of wage indexation on macroeconomic stability are ambiguous.




Exchange Rate Reform and Structural Disturbances in a Dual Exchange Rate Economy


Book Description

This paper analyzes the implications of devaluation and a variety of structural disturbances in a dual exchange rate economy. A key feature of the model developed is its explicit recognition of both private (fraudulent) and officially-sanctioned cross transactions between the two exchange markets. The principal lesson to be learned from the analysis is that popular notions as to the effects of devaluation or of other disturbances are to be viewed with considerable caution when the dual rate regime involves inter-market transactions.




Terms of Trade Disturbances, Real Exchange Rates, and Welfare


Book Description

Many arguments that have been advanced in favor of maintaining capital controls within the EC have not paid sufficient attention to the welfare consequences of this type of market intervention. Our paper provides a simple, optimizing framework in which the welfare consequences of capital controls can be assessed. Two main issues are considered. First, how do capital controls affect the adjustment of macroeconomic variables to real disturbances? Second, what is the nature of second best arguments for maintaining capital controls given that certain distortions will remain after the European single market is in place in 1992?




Exchange Rate Regime Choice


Book Description

Traditionally the choice of exchange rate regime has been seen as a second-best policy choice, which can be directed toward mitigating the distortionary effects of price or information rigidities. In this paradigm the optimal degree of exchange rate flexibility is found to depend of the source and nature of shocks hitting an economy. More recent literature views the exchange rate as a widely and frequently seen manifestation of government policy with careful exchange-rate management emerging as a tool that can enhance shaky policy credibility.




Exchange Rate Management Under Uncertainty


Book Description

These twelve essays take up economic management under flexible exchange rates in the presence of uncertainty. Nearly all of the contributions adopt a rational expectations framework, focusing on the stochastic aspects of the assumption and exploring the variability of, for example, output and prices in relation to the variability of various external disturbances.Jagdeep Bhandari is Associate Professor of International Economics at West Virginia University.




Exchange Rate Regimes


Book Description

This book explores the exchange rate regime choice and the role played by the exchange rate in the economy. Approaching the classification of exchange rate regimes from theoretical, practical and historical perspectives, the book discusses pertinent case studies, including the choice of exchange rate regime in the post-conflict case of Iraq.




Current Issues in Monetary Economics


Book Description

This book brings together leading academics and researchers to make a timely contribution to our understanding of the key issues in the fast-developing field of monetary economics. It offers a thoroughly comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of major areas such as money supply and demand, interest rate determination, international transmission of inflation, public debt, stabilization of the economy, the rational expectations hypothesis and the relationship between money and economic development. The book will be essential reading for all undergraduate and graduate students of monetary economics and macroeconomic theory. Contents: Preface; Contributors; Introduction: Taradas Bandyopadhyay and Subrata Ghatak; Money demand and supply, M.J. Artis and M.K. Lewis; Money market operations of the Bank of England and the determination of interest rates, David T. Llewellyn; Real interest rates and the role of expectations, Kajal Lahiri and Mark Zaporowski; Public sector deficits and the money supply, P.M. Jackson; The international transmission of inflation, George Zis; A critique of monetary theories of the balance of payments; nihil ex nihilo, M.H.L. Burstein; A framework for the analysis of two-tier exchange markets with incomplete segmentation, Jagdeep S. Bhandari and Bernard Decaluwe; Rational expectations and monetary policy, Patrick Minford; Monetary policy and credibility, Paul Levine; Disinflation and wage-price controls, David A. Wilton; Monetary growth models: The role of money demand functions, Taradas Bandyopadhyay and Subrata Ghatak; Index.




Topics in Empirical International Economics


Book Description

In this timely volume emanating from the National Bureau of Economic Research's program in international economics, leading economists address recent developments in three important areas. The first section of the book focuses on international comparisons of output and prices, and includes papers that present new measures of product market integration, new methodology to infer relative factor price changes from quantitative data, and an ongoing capital stock measurement project. The next section features articles on international trade, including such significant issues as deterring child labor exploitation in developing countries, exchange rate regimes, and mapping U. S. comparative advantage across various factors. The book concludes with research on multinational corporations and includes a discussion of the long-debated issue of whether growth of production abroad substitutes for or is complementary to production growth at home. The papers in the volume are dedicated to Robert E. Lipsey, who for more than a half century at the NBER, contributed significantly to the broad field of empirical international economics.




The Macroeconomic Consequences of Wage Indexation Revisited


Book Description

Since the mid-1970s, there has been considerable research on the macroeconomic consequences of wage indexation. Nonetheless, until recently, this research had not explicitly explored the implications of contracts that index wages to lagged inflation, the usual type of wage indexation observed in practice. Drawing mainly on recent research by the author, this paper examines the consequences of wage indexation to lagged inflation on aggregate wage formation, the cost of disinflation under money- and exchange-rate-based stabilization, the variability of output under alternative shocks and policy regimes, the choice of exchange rate regime, and the level and variability of inflation.




Handbook of International Economics


Book Description

This Handbook adopts a traditional definition of the subject, and focuses primarily on the explanation of international transactions in goods, services, and assets, and on the main domestic effects of those transactions. The first volume deals with the "real side" of international economics. It is concerned with the explanation of trade and factor flows, with their main effects on goods and factor prices, on the allocation of resources and income distribution and on economic welfare, and also with the effects on national policies designed explicitly to influence trade and factor flows. In other words, it deals chiefly with microeconomic issues and methods. The second volume deals with the "monetary side" of the subject. It is concerned with the balance of payments adjustment process under fixed exchange rates, with exchange rate determination under flexible exchange rates, and with the domestic ramifications of these phenomena. Accordingly, it deals mainly with economic issues, although microeconomic methods are frequently utilized, especially in work on expectations, asset markets, and exchange rate behavior. For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes