External Imbalances (external + imbalance)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Twin deficits: squaring theory, evidence and common sense

ECONOMIC POLICY, Issue 48 2006
Giancarlo Corsetti
SUMMARY Budget deficits and current accounts OPENNESS AND FISCAL PERSISTENCE Simple accounting suggests that shocks to the government budget move the current account in the same direction, and this ,twin deficits' intuition leads many observers to call for fiscal consolidation in the US as a necessary measure to reduce the large external imbalance of this country. The response of other macroeconomic variables to budget developments, however, has important implications for ,twin deficits' and for this policy prescription. Focusing on the international transmission of fiscal policy shocks via terms of trade changes, we show that the likelihood and magnitude of twin deficits increases with the degree of openness of an economy, and decreases with the persistence of fiscal shocks. We take this insight to the data and investigate the transmission of fiscal shocks in a vector autoregression (VAR) model estimated for Australia, Canada, the UK and the US. We find that in less open countries the external impact of shocks to either government spending or budget deficits is limited, while private investment responds in line with our theoretical prediction. These results suggest that a fiscal retrenchment in the US may have a limited impact on its current external deficit. , Giancarlo Corsetti and Gernot J. Müller [source]


Effectiveness of China's Monetary Policy and Reform of Its Foreign Exchange System

CHINA AND WORLD ECONOMY, Issue 5 2006
Xinhua Gu
E58; F31; F41 Abstract This paper examines the effectiveness of China's monetary policy in curbing the overheating and speculation problems under the current foreign exchange system. The paper stresses the necessity of capital controls in China's gradual foreign exchange reform and the importance of credible government policy in guiding market expectations. Also, the paper discusses the persistence of China's external imbalance, and provides policy recommendations for its reduction. (Edited by Zhinan Zhang) [source]


Conventional and unconventional approaches to exchange rate modelling and assessment

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FINANCE & ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2008
Ron Alquist
Abstract We examine the relative predictive power of the sticky price monetary model, uncovered interest parity, and a transformation of net exports and net foreign assets. In addition to bringing Gourinchas and Rey's new approach and more recent data to bear, we implement the Clark,West procedure for testing the significance of out-of-sample forecasts. The interest rate parity relation holds better at long horizons and the net exports variable does well in predicting exchange rates at short horizons in sample. In out-of-sample forecasts, we find evidence that our proxy for Gourinchas and Rey's measure of external imbalances outperforms a random walk at short horizons as do some of the other models, although no single model uniformly beats the random walk forecast. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


The contribution of domestic and external factors to emerging market currency crises: an early warning systems approach,

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FINANCE & ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2007
Steven B. Kamin
Abstract In this paper, a modified ,early warning system' (EWS) approach is developed to identify the roles of domestic and external factors in emerging market crises. Several probit models of currency crises were estimated for 26 emerging market countries. These models were used to identify the separate contributions to the probabilities of crisis of domestic and external variables. We found that, relative to domestic factors, adverse external shocks and large external imbalances contributed little to the average estimated probability of crisis in emerging market countries, but accounted for much more of the spikes in the probability of crisis estimated to occur during actual crisis years. We interpret these results to suggest that while, on average over time, domestic factors have tended to contribute to much of the underlying vulnerability of emerging market countries, adverse swings in external factors may have been important in pushing economies ,over the edge' and into currency crisis. In consequence, the costs of giving up exchange rate flexibility through adoption of strongly fixed exchange rate regimes,e.g. currency boards or dollarization,may be quite high for some countries. Published in 2007 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Pricing-to-Market and Market Structure,

OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 2 2008
Matteo Bugamelli
Abstract Stimulated by imperfect competition/sticky prices framework of the new open economy macroeconomics, empirical research has reconsidered the role of exchange rates in international adjustment. This paper reassesses the link between exchange rates and traded good prices by estimating pricing-to-market equations for the five main euro area countries over the period 1990,99. We minimize selection biases by keeping all manufacturing products and all destination markets and show that exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) is much larger, almost complete, than previously estimated. Thanks to a huge variability in terms of exchange rate variations, products and destination markets, we can map differences in ERPT into market structures and, at the same time, reconcile our results with the empirical literature. We find that ERPT is highly incomplete for sales by oligopolistic industries into advanced economies, indeed in the order of 50,60% as previously estimated. ERPT is instead almost complete in emerging and developing economies where therefore exchange rate movements can help adjust external imbalances. We also find that ERPT is largely asymmetric: it is almost complete after an appreciation of the exporter's currency, rather incomplete after a depreciation. This result is very robust across specifications. [source]