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Begin New Search Topic International Trade and Finance Political Geography United States Content Type Working Paper

201. Foreign Investment in the US (II): BEING TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS?

Author:
Daniel Gros
Publication Date:
04-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
The income account of the US balance of payments has so far remained in surplus because of a very large differential in reported earnings on direct investment – US firms seem to enjoy a much higher rate of return than foreign firms in the US. There is little difference in terms of the rate of dividend payments; the difference is due to what is called 'reinvested earnings' (earnings minus dividends). Foreign firms report almost no reinvested earnings on their direct investment in the US whereas US firms report substantial reinvested earnings from their direct investment abroad, on average over $100 billion more p.a. than foreign firms report on their US investment. This anomaly is probably due to the desire of foreign firms to minimise their US taxes, whereas US firms do not face tax liabilities if they report high foreign profits to the US authorities. The procedure used to generate the data for reinvested earnings thus has a built-in bias to improve the US current account and – over time – its international investment position. The true picture is likely to be much worse.</p
Topic:
International Relations and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

202. Off-Shoring: How Big Is It?

Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration
Abstract:
This is the second of three Academy Panel reports providing a comprehensive review of services off-shoring. It is in response to direction from the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, State, Commerce and Justice with funding provided by the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). This report focuses primarily on two questions: 1. What do currently available data indicate about the extent of U.S. services off-shoring? 2. What additional data are needed to provide a more complete assessment of U.S. services off-shoring?
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
United States

203. Economic Integration, EU-US Trade Conflicts and WTO Dispute Settlement

Author:
Fritz Breuss
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Research Papers Archive
Abstract:
Since its inception in 1995, more than 330 disputes have been raised under the WTO Dispute Settlement System. The major players in world trade–the EU and the USA–are also the busiest users of this instrument. After looking at links between economic integration and WTO involvement and a survey of the actual transatlantic WTO trade disputes, the welfare implications of the four most prominent trade disputes between the EU and the USA ("mini trade wars") are analyzed with GTAP5: the Hormones, the Bananas, the FSC and the Steel cases. The economic analysis reveals that the level of suspension of concessions hardly coincides with the level of nullification or impairment (expressed in lost trade effects) if one considers the overall welfare implications of retaliation with tariffs. The idea of "rebalancing" retaliation is a myth. Tariffs are a very bad instrument of retaliation. Maybe a mechanism of direct transfers or financial compensation would be better.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and World Trade Organization
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

204. Order Flow and Exchange Rate Dynamics in Electronic Brokerage System Data

Author:
Jonathan H. Wright, David W. Berger, Alain P. Chaboud, Sergey V. Chernenko, Edward Howorka, Raj S. Iyer, and David Liu
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We study the association between order flow and exchange rate returns in five years of high-frequency intraday data from the leading interdealer electronic broking system, EBS. While the association between order flow and exchange rate returns has been studied in several previous papers, these have mostly used relatively short spans of daily data from older bilateral dealing systems and, usually, transaction counts instead of actual trading volume. Using a substantially longer span of recent high-frequency data and measuring order flow as actual signed trading volume, we find a strong positive association between order flow and exchange rate returns at frequencies ranging from one minute to one day, and a more modest but still sizeable association at the monthly frequency. We find, however, no evidence that order flow has predictive power for future exchange rate movements beyond, possibly, the next minute. Focusing on the behavior of order flow and exchange rates at the time of scheduled U.S. economic data releases, we find that the surprise components of these announcements are associated with order flow at high frequency immediately after the data releases. This finding seems inconsistent with a simple efficient markets view of how a public news announcement is incorporated into prices.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

205. Adjusting Chinese Bilateral Trade Data: How Big is China's Trade Surplus

Author:
John W. Schindler and Dustin H. Beckett
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Hong Kong plays a prominent role as a re-exporter of a large percentage of trade bound for or coming from China. Current reporting practices in China and its trading partners do not fully reflect this role and therefore provide a misleading picture of the origin or ultimate destination of Chinese exports and imports. We adjust bilateral trade data for both China and its trading partners to correct for this problem. We also correct for differences due to markups in Hong Kong and different standards for reporting trade (c.i.f. versus f.o.b.). For 2003, we estimate that China's overall trade surplus was between $53 billion and $126 billion, larger than that reported in official Chinese data, but smaller than that reported by China's trading partners. We also provide evidence that, in general, the actual origin of a good that is transshipped through Hong Kong is correctly reported by the importing country, but the final destination of such goods is not correctly reported by the exporting country.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Hong Kong

206. A Flexible Finite-Horizon Identification of Technology Shocks

Author:
Neville Francis, Michael T. Owyang, and Jennifer T. Roush
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Recent empirical studies using infinite horizon long-run restrictions question the validity of the technology-driven real business cycle hypothesis. These results have met with their own controversy, stemming from their sensitivity to changes in model specification and the general poor performance of long run restrictions in Monte Carlo experiments. We propose a alternative identification that maximizes the contribution of technology shocks to the forecast error variance of labor productivity at a long, but finite horizon. In small samples, our identification outperforms its infinite horizon counterpart by producing less biased impulse responses and technology shocks that are more highly correlated with the technology shocks from the underlying model. For U.S. data, we show that the negative hours response is not robust to allowing a greater role for non-technology shocks in the forecast error variance share at a ten year horizon.
Topic:
Development, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

207. Exchange Rate Pass-through to U.S. Import Prices: Some New Evidence

Author:
Jaime Marquez, Mario Marazzi, Nathan Sheets, Joseph Gagnon, Robert J. Vigfusson, Jon Faust, Robert F. Martin, Trevor Reeve, and John Rogers
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper documents a sustained decline in exchange rate pass-through to U.S. import prices, from above 0.5 during the 1980s to somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.2 during the last decade. This decline in the pass-through coefficient is robust to the measure of foreign prices that is included in the regression (i.e., CPI versus PPI), whether the estimation is done in levels or differences, and whether U.S. prices are included as an explanatory variable. Notably, the largest estimates of pass-through are obtained when commodity prices are excluded from the regression. In this case, the pass-through coefficient captures both the direct effect of the exchange rate on import prices and an indirect effect operating through changes in commodity prices. Our work indicates that an increasing share of exchange rate pass-through has occurred through this commodity-price channel in recent years. While the source of the decline in passthrough is difficult to pin down with certainty, our work points to several factors, including the reduced share of (commodity-intensive) industrial supplies in U.S. imports and the increased presence of Chinese exporters in U.S. markets. We detect a particular step down in the passthrough coefficient around the time of the Asian financial crisis and document a shift in the export pricing behavior of emerging Asian firms around that time.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and China

208. Investment-Specific and Multifactor Productivity in Multi-Sector Open Economies: Data and Analysis

Author:
Luca Guerrieri, Dale W. Henderson, and Jinill Kim
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
In the last half of the 1990s, labor productivity growth rose in the U.S. and fell almost everywhere in Europe. We document changes in both capital deepening and multifactor productivity (MFP) growth in both the information and communication technology (ICT) and non-ICT sectors. We view MFP growth in the ICT sector as investment-specific productivity (ISP) growth. We perform simulations suggested by the data using a two-country DGE model with traded and nontraded goods. For ISP, we consider level increases and persistent growth rate increases that are symmetric across countries and allow for costs of adjusting capital-labor ratios that are higher in one country because of structural differences. ISP increases generate investment booms unless adjustment costs are too high. For MFP, we consider persistent growth rate shocks that are asymmetric. When such MFP shocks affect only traded goods (as often assumed), movements in 'international' variables are qualitatively similar to those in the data. However, when they also affect nontraded goods (as suggested by the data), movements in some of the variables are not. To obtain plausible results for the growth rate shocks, it is necessary to assume slow recognition.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

209. Financial Market Developments and Economic Activity during Current Account Adjustments in Industrial Economies

Author:
Steven B. Kamin, Sylvain Leduc, and Hilary Croke
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Much has been written about prospects for U.S. current account adjustment, including the possibility of what is sometimes referred to as a “disorderly correction”: a sharp fall in the exchange rate that boosts interest rates, depresses stock prices, and weakens economic activity. This paper assesses some of the empirical evidence bearing on the likelihood of the disorderly correction scenario, drawing on the experience of previous current account adjustments in industrial economies. We examined the paths of key economic performance indicators before, during, and after the onset of adjustment, building on the analysis of Freund (2000).
Topic:
Development, Economics, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

210. International Risk-Sharing and the Transmission of Productivity Shocks

Author:
Sylvain Leduc, Giancarlo Corsetti, and Luca Dedola
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
A central puzzle in international finance is that real exchange rates are volatile and, in stark contradiction to efficient risk-sharing, negatively correlated with cross-country consumption ratios. This paper shows that a standard international business cycle model with incomplete asset markets augmented with distribution services can account quantitatively for these properties of real exchange rates. Distribution services, intensive in local inputs, drive a wedge between producer and consumer prices, thus lowering the impact of terms-of-trade changes on optimal agents' decisions. This reduces the price elasticity of tradables separately from assumptions on preferences.
Topic:
Development, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States

211. Expansionary Fiscal Shocks and the Trade Deficit

Author:
Luca Guerrieri, Christopher Gust, and Christopher Erceg
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
In this paper, we use an open economy DGE model (SIGMA) to assess the quantitative effects of fiscal shocks on the trade balance in the United States. We examine the effects of two alternative fiscal shocks: a rise in government consumption, and a reduction in the labor income tax rate. Our salient finding is that a fiscal deficit has a relatively small effect on the U.S. trade balance, irrespective of whether the source is a spending increase or tax cut. In our benchmark calibration, we find that a rise in the fiscal deficit of one percentage point of GDP induces the trade balance to deteriorate by less than 0.2 percentage point of GDP. Noticeably larger effects are only likely to be elicited under implausibly high values of the short-run trade price elasticity.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

212. GSP in the "spaghetti bowl"; of trade preferences

Author:
Arne Melchior
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The paper examines the relative position of GSP (tariff preferences for developing countries) compared to ordinary tariffs and free trade agreements in Norway, the EU and the USA. On average, ordinary GSP gives a tariff rebate of less than 50% in all countries. “Extended” GSP, given to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and others, implies zero tariffs in Norway and the EU, but only partial liberalisation in the USA. EU provides extended GSP for 119 countries, while the USA does so for 76 and Norway for 52. Considering the shares of trade rather than the number of countries, extended GSP covers 5% or less of total trade in all cases, and ordinary GSP is much more important. Compared to tariffs in free trade agreements, ordinary GSP is inferior in the USA and the EU, but not too far behind in Norway. This is due to recent cuts in MFN tariffs as well as improvements in the GSP system of Norway. For manufacturing, Norway has low tariffs and a generous GSP system. This is however not the case for agriculture.
Topic:
Development, International Trade and Finance, and Third World
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Norway

213. GSP in the 'spaghetti bowl' of trade preferences

Author:
Arne Melchior
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Norwegian Institute of International Affairs
Abstract:
The paper examines the relative position of GSP (tariff preferences for developing countries) compared to ordinary tariffs and free trade agreements in Norway, the EU and the USA. On average, ordinary GSP gives a tariff rebate of less than 50% in all countries. “Extended” GSP, given to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and others, implies zero tariffs in Norway and the EU, but only partial liberalisation in the USA. EU provides extended GSP for 119 countries, while the USA does so for 76 and Norway for 52. Considering the shares of trade rather than the number of countries, extended GSP covers 5% or less of total trade in all cases, and ordinary GSP is much more important. Compared to tariffs in free trade agreements, ordinary GSP is inferior in the USA and the EU, but not too far behind in Norway. This is due to recent cuts in MFN tariffs as well as improvements in the GSP system of Norway. For manufacturing, Norway has low tariffs and a generous GSP system. This is however not the case for agriculture.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Norway

214. U.S. Trade Policy Toward China: Discrimination and its Implications

Author:
Rachel McCulloch and Chad P. Bown
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
The bilateral relationship with China has become a major focus of U.S. trade policy. This paper examines recent U.S. policy toward imports from China, highlighting important explicitly and implicitly discriminatory elements. Discriminatory restrictions on U.S. trade with China protect competing domestic industries as well as non-Chinese foreign suppliers with an established presence in the U.S. market. Unlike discriminatory U.S. treatment of Japan in the 1980s, in which "gray-area" measures like voluntary export restraints were prominent, most U.S. actions toward China are fully consistent with current WTO rules, including the special terms of China's 2001 WTO accession. However, as with earlier discriminatory actions directed primarily at Japan, U.S. trade policy toward China is likely to have complex effects on global trade flows and may produce outcomes far different from those intended.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

215. Multilateral Market-Access Reforms of the Doha Round: A Preliminary Assessment of Implications for EU Agricultural Trade

Author:
Wusheng Yu and Hans G. Jensen
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
Abstract:
The July package of the Doha Round of trade negotiations stipulates that a tiered-formula approach should be used to significantly reduce market access barriers across countries, implying that the EU would have to make larger cuts to its high external tariffs, in comparison with many other WTO members such as the US. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of the likely impact of the tiered-formula reform approach on EU agricultural sectors. Numerical simulations of a multilateral market-access reform scenario show that such cuts would lead to across-the-board decreases in intra-EU trade flows, as compared with a baseline projection. While intra-EU trade flows would decrease, the EU's trade with the rest of the world would increase. Yet such increases would not be symmetric – imports into the EU would increase more than exports, resulting in larger external trade deficits or smaller external trade surpluses in many EU agricultural products. Further, the resulting adjustments in member states' production and net trade positions are not equal: the new member states would generally lose part of their export shares in the EU market to external competitors, as highlighted in the cases of bovine meat and dairy products.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

216. Prospects for Regional Free Trade in Asia

Author:
Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Yee Wong
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Frustrated with lackluster momentum in the WTO Doha Round and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and mindful of free trade agreement (FTA) networks centered on the United States and Europe, Asian countries have joined the FTA game. By 2005, Asian countries (excluding China) had ratified 14 bilateral and regional FTAs and had negotiated but not implemented another seven. Asian nations are also actively negotiating some 23 bilateral and regional FTAs, many with non-Asian partners, including Australia, Canada, Chile, the European Union, India, and Qatar. China has been particularly active since 2000. It has completed three bilateral FTAs—Thailand in 2003 and Hong Kong and Macao in 2004—and is initiating another 17 bilateral and regional FTAs. However, a regional Asian economic bloc led by China seems distant, even though China accounts for about 30 percent of regional GDP. As in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, many Asian countries are pursuing FTAs with countries outside the region. On present evidence, the FTA process embraced with some enthusiasm in Asia, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere more closely resembles fingers reaching idiosycratically around the globe rather than politico-economic blocs centered respectively on Beijing, Brussels, and Washington.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States, China, Europe, Washington, Canada, India, Beijing, Asia, Australia, Qatar, Chile, Hong Kong, Brussels, and Macao

217. The US Trade Deficit: A Disaggregated Perspective

Author:
Catherine L. Mann and Katharina Plück
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The paper prepares new estimates for the elasticity of US trade flows using bilateral, commodity-detailed trade data for 31 countries, using measures of expenditure and trade prices matched to commodity groups, and including a commodity-and-country specific proxy for global supply-cum-variety. Using the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade) we construct bilateral trade flows for 31 countries in four categories of goods based on the Bureau of Economic Analysis's "end-use" classification system--autos, industrial supplies and materials-excluding energy, consumer goods, and capital goods. We find that using expenditure matched to commodity category yields more plausible values for the demand elasticities than does using GDP as the measure of demand that drives trade flows. Controlling for country and commodity fixed effects, we find that industrial and developing countries have demand elasticities that are statistically significant and that generally differ between development groups and across product categories. Relative prices for the industrial countries have plausible parameter values, are statistically significant and differ across product groups, but the relative prices for developing countries are poorly estimated. We find that variety is an important variable for the behavior of capital goods trade. Because the commodity composition of trade and of trading partners has changed dramatically, particularly for imports, we find that the demand elasticity for imports is not constant. Comparing the in-sample performance of the disaggregated model against a benchmark that uses aggregated data and GDP as the expenditure variable, our disaggregated model predicts exports better in-sample but does not predict imports as well as the benchmark model.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

218. Importers, Exporters, and Multinationals: A Portrait of Firms in the U.S. that Trade Goods

Author:
J. Bradford Jensen, Peter K. Schott, and Andrew B. Bernard
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
This paper provides an integrated view of globally engaged US firms by exploring a newly developed dataset that links US international trade transactions to longitudinal data on US enterprises. These data permit examination of a number of new dimensions of firm activity, including how many products firms trade, how many countries firms trade with, the characteristics of those countries, the concentration of trade across firms, whether firms transact at arm's length or with related parties, and whether firms import as well as export. Firms that trade goods play an important role in the United States, employing more than a third of the US workforce. We find that the most globally engaged US firms, i.e. those that both export to and import from related parties, dominate US trade flows and employment at trading firms. We also find that firms that begin trading between 1993 and 2000 experience especially rapid employment growth and are a major force in overall job creation.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

219. What Might the Next Emerging-Market Financial Crisis Look Like?

Author:
Morris Goldstein and Anna Wong
Publication Date:
07-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
This paper addresses the following question: If a financial crisis affecting a group of emerging economies were to take place sometime over the next three years, where would the crisis likely originate, how could it be transmitted to other economies, and which economies would be most affected by particular transmission or contagion mechanisms? A set of indicators is presented to gauge the vulnerability of individual emerging economies to various shocks, including a slowdown in import demand in both China and the United States, a fall in primary commodity prices, increased costs and lower availability of external financing, alternative patterns of exchange rate changes, and pressures operating on monetary and fiscal policies in emerging economies.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and China

220. Affinity and International Trade

Author:
Marcus Noland
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
This paper examines the impact of American public attitudes toward foreign countries on the volume of trade. The issue is whether popular attitudes, as elicited in these surveys, convey any information about trust, risk, or transactions costs beyond what can be explained through standard economic models. The results of this paper suggest that they do, with a one standard deviation increase in warmth of feeling associated with a 20 to 31 percent larger trade volume when evaluated at the sample means. These public attitudes are in turn correlated with indices of cultural affinity and political ideology. A one standard deviation increase in the democracy score is associated with a 5 to 7 percent increase in trade. There might be additional secondary effects if democratization was associated with an increased likelihood of the removal of sanctions or the initiation of preferential trade relations.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

221. The Euro and the World Economy

Author:
Fred Bergsten
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The dollar has been the dominant currency of the world economy for almost a century for a single overwhelming reason: It had no competition. No other economy came close to the size of the United States. Hence no currency could acquire the network externalities, economies of scale and scope, and public goods benefits necessary to rival the dollar at the global level. A similar situation for the United Kingdom explains sterling's dominance in the 19th century.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, and Europe

222. The US Economic Outlook

Author:
Martin Neil Baily and Jacob Funk Kirkegaard
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Oil prices have risen and are expected to remain high. Slow job and wage growth result in slow income growth. Low interest rates kept housing and auto sales strong after 2000 – borrowing future growth. No new stimulus from monetary or fiscal policy. The Iraq war and the terrorism threat may be a drag on confidence. Because 9/11 did not have significant macroeconomic effects, the impact of the war and terrorism seems to be mostly on oil prices No new stimulus from monetary or fiscal policy.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Iraq

223. Global Economic Prospects: Slower But Still Solid Growth in 2005; Worries About Growth and Inflation for 2006

Author:
Michael Mussa
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
After surging to the highest growth rate in a generation, world real GDP is set to slow from a rate of just over 5 percent for 2004 to about 4 percent for 2005 and a tad slower for 2006. The economic slowdowns in several important economies in the second half of last year, including much of continental Europe and Japan, already make it clear that year-over-year growth will slow for 2005. But the continued strong growth of domestic demand in other countries, most notably the United States and China, virtually assures that global growth this year will not fall below potential.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, China, Europe, Israel, and East Asia

224. China's Role in the Revived Bretton Woods System: A Case of Mistaken Identity

Author:
Nicholas R. Lardy and Morris Goldstein
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
According to a popular argument put forward by three Deutsche Bank economists (Dooley, Folkerts-Landau, and Garber, here after DFG), one needn't worry about the sustainability of either the large US current account deficit or the undervalued exchange rates of a group of Asian economies (Dooley, Folkerts-Landau, and Garber 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c; Folkerts-Landau 2004). In their view, the United States and the Asian economies have entered into an implicit contract—the so-called revived Bretton Woods system (hereafter BW2)—that can comfortably carry on for another decade or two, with significant net benefits to both parties.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

225. US Trade Policy in 2005

Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Some time ago, Fred Bergsten and I were talking about the fact that, if trade liberalization is to move forward and retrogression is to be prevented, the focus of the policy community and the public on the benefits of trade-in the full sense, including imports-and on the issues around trade needs to increase. The adverse effects trade has on some people are very keenly felt and often lead to vociferous opposition, while the benefits of trade for a far greater number of people are diffuse and usually little if at all understood-for example, by consumers-and seldom generate political activity on behalf of trade.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

226. This is Bangalore Calling: Hang Up or Speed Dial? What Technology-Enable International Trade in Services Means for the US Economy

Author:
Catherine L. Mann
Publication Date:
01-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Globalization, always a contentious issue, has become even more so with media reports of U.S. service-sector jobs being outsourced to emerging-market economies, such as call center operations to Ireland or programming jobs to India. Traditionally, these jobs have been considered “nontradable” and therefore safe from the competitive forces of international trade and investment. But increasingly, technological advances are making it easier to buy services from other companies, even those in developing countries, where savings in the cost of labor or the opportunity to use the 24- hour clock to speed product develop- ment can be irresistible.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States and Ireland

227. The Financial Front in the Global War on Terrorism

Author:
Patrick D. Buckley and Michael J. Meese
Publication Date:
01-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
Abstract:
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has aggressively executed the Global War on Terrorism on many different fronts. The approval of Executive Order 13224 on September 24, 2001, marked a bold initial step toward targeting terrorists' financial networks. The success of terrorist organizations is dependent upon these financial networks because though terrorist attacks are not necessarily expensive, the support of international terrorist networks, training camps, command and control, and infrastructure requires either a large reserve of available finances or the ability to raise significant funding. Estimates of al-Qaeda's current funding vary widely, but it is believed that prior to the Taliban's removal from power, al-Qaeda's annual expenses were at least $36 million on top of an initial fixed cost of approximately $50 million for equipment and infrastructure.
Topic:
Defense Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
United States

228. On the Role of Distance for Outward Foreign Direct Investment

Author:
Peter Egger
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper focuses on the estimation of three distance-related effects on outward foreign direct investment (FDI). (i) Distance harms vertical multinationals, since they engage in trade. (ii) It makes non-trading multinationals better off than exporters. (iii) This positive effect on horizontal FDI is expected to rise with bilateral country size due to the home market effect. The use of panel data and related econometric methods is highly recommended to avoid parameter bias from endogenous, unobserved, time-invariant effects. A unified estimation approach to assess all three hypotheses then has to rely on instrumental variable techniques for generalized leastsquares methods. In the empirical analysis of 1989–1999 bilateral US outward FDI stocks at the industry level, it is shown that testing and accounting for autocorrelation is extremely important for parameter inference. In sum, the paper lends strong support to the theory of horizontally organized multinationals as outlined in Markusen and Venables (2000).
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

229. International Diversification at Home and Abroad

Author:
Fang Cai and Francis E. Warnock
Publication Date:
12-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We analyze foreigners' and domestic institutional investors' positions in U.S. equities. Controlling for many factors, we uncover a common preference for large firms and firms that are diversified internationally. The domestic preference for internationally diversified firms implies that investors might obtain substantial international diversification by investing at home. Using an international factor model, we show that exposure to foreign equity markets is indeed greater for domestic firms that are more diversified internationally, suggesting that at least some of the home-grown foreign exposure translates into international diversification benefits. After accounting for home-grown foreign exposure, the share of 'foreign' equities in investors' portfolios nearly doubles, reducing (but not eliminating) the observed home bias.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

230. The High-Frequency Effects of U.S. Macroeconomic Data Releases on Prices and Trading Activity in the Global Interdealer Foreign Exchange Market

Author:
Jonathan H. Wright, Alain P. Chaboud, Edward Howorka, David Liu, Sergey Chernenko, and Raj S. Krishnasami Iyer
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We introduce a new high-frequency foreign exchange dataset from EBS (Electronic Broking Service) that includes trading volume in the global interdealer spot market, data not previously available to researchers. The data also gives live transactable quotes, rather than the indicative quotes that have been used in most previous high frequency foreign exchange analysis. We describe intraday volume and volatility patterns in euro-dollar and dollar-yen trading. We study the effects of scheduled U.S. macroeconomic data releases, first confirming the finding of recent literature that the conditional mean of the exchange rate responds very quickly to the unexpected component of data releases. We next study the effects of data releases on trading volumes. News releases cause volume to rise, and to remain elevated for a longer period. However, in contrast to the result for the level of the exchange rate, even if the data release is entirely in line with expectations, we find that there is still typically a large pickup in trading volume.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

231. Growth-Led Exports: Is Variety the Spice of Trade?

Author:
Joseph E. Gagnon
Publication Date:
11-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Fast-growing countries tend to experience rapid export growth with little secular change in their terms of trade. This contradicts the standard Armington trade model, which predicts that fast-growing countries can experience rapid export growth only to the extent that they accept declining terms of trade. This paper generalizes the monopolistic competition trade model of Helpman and Krugman (1985), providing a basis for growth-led exports without declining terms of trade. The key mechanism behind this result is that fast-growing countries are able to develop new varieties of products that can be exported without pushing down the prices of existing products. There is strong support for the new model in long-run export growth of many countries in the post-war era.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

232. Global Financial Integration: A Collection of New Research

Author:
Mark Carey
Publication Date:
10-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This introductory note summarizes and draws together the work reported in eight research papers written by staff economists of the Board's Division of International Finance as part of a project on global financial integration. The eight papers are also International Discussion Finance Discussion Papers (IFDPs), the numbers of which are specified on the table of contents that appears herein. When viewing this introduction online, the paper titles appearing on the table-of-contents page are web links that may be used to navigate directly to each paper's on-line file.
Topic:
Economics, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

233. The Value of Financial Intermediaries: Empirical Evidence from Syndicated Loans to Emerging Market Borrowers

Author:
Gregory P. Nini
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Empirical estimates of the benefit of financial intermediation are constructed by examining the role played by local banks in facilitating syndicated loans to borrowers in emerging market countries. Assuming that local banks possess a superior monitoring ability, the market is ideal for studying the value of intermediation since cross-border lending into emerging markets is plagued by particularly high information and agency costs and the supply of local bank capital is in limited short run supply. Using variation in the propensity of local banks to participate in foreign arranged syndicates, there are two economically important results. First, local banks are much more likely to participate in unconditionally riskier loans. Second, after controlling for borrower characteristics, loan characteristics, and the endogeneity of the local bank lending decision, loans with local bank participation have spreads that are 10 percent lower (29 basis points) than otherwise similar loans. Combined, the results support the conclusion that local banks, a particularly special type of financial intermediary, provide value by considerably reducing financing costs, especially for riskier borrowers.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

234. What Makes Investors Over or Underweight? Explaining International Appetites for Foreign Equities

Author:
Carol C. Bertaut and Linda S. Kole
Publication Date:
09-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Using data from the IMF Coordinated Portfolio Investment Surveys conducted in 2001, we analyze the determinants of 31 countries' international equity holdings. We show that investors in all countries underweight U.S. equities in their portfolios, many by more than they underweight foreign equities in general. Such behavior is surprising given the common perception of the United States as a desirable investment destination due to its well-developed legal and regulatory environment. Instead we find that investors in some countries are overweight in equities from other countries with which they have close regional or political ties. Such ties, along with distance, trade, issuance of U.S. ADRs or cross-listing on the London Stock exchange, market concentration, and estimated betas help explain patterns of diversification. However, even when all these variables are included, we find significant fixed effects for most countries, suggesting that a considerable amount of cross-country variation in investment positions and in home bias remains to be explained. Our work confirms previous findings and extends results most completely documented for the United States to other major investor countries. But it also suggests caution should be used when interpreting results derived from studies of one or a few countries.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and London

235. The Performance of International Portfolios

Author:
Francis E. Warnock, Charles P. Thomas, and Jon Wongswan
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the performance of U.S. investors' portfolios in the equities of over 40 countries over a 25-year period. We find that these portfolios achieved a significantly higher Sharpe ratio than foreign benchmarks, especially since 1990. We uncover three potential reasons for this success. First, U.S. investors abstained from momentum trading and instead sold past winners. Second, conditional performance tests provide no evidence that the superior (unconditional) performance owed to private information, suggesting that the successful exploitation of publicly available information played a role. Third, the documented preference for cross-listed and well-governed foreign firms appears to have served U.S. investors well. We conclude with a short discussion of the implications of our findings for the home bias literature.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

236. Corporate Governance and the Shareholder Base

Author:
Francis E. Warnock and Karl V. Lins
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper uses a sample of 4,410 firms from 29 countries to investigate the relation between corporate governance and the shareholder base. In contrast to previous work, our results strongly support the notion that poor corporate governance, at both the firm and country level, negatively impacts the willingness of foreign investors to hold a firm's equity. Specifically, we find that firms whose managers have sufficiently high control rights that they may reasonably be expected to expropriate minority equity investors attract significantly less U.S. investment, especially in countries with poor external governance. Our findings suggest that the prices U.S. investors are asked to pay for firms with poor governance are not low enough to fully compensate them for expected expropriation or increased estimation risk associated with expected poor disclosure by these firms. Because prior research shows that a smaller shareholder base is associated with a lower firm value, our results are consistent with the notion that the shareholder base represents an important channel through which poor expected corporate governance contributes to a reduction in firm value.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

237. Look at Me Now: The Role of Cross-Listing in Attracting U.S. Investors

Author:
Francis E. Warnock, John Ammer, Sara B. Holland, and David C. Smith
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We use a comprehensive 1997 survey to examine U.S. investors' preferences for foreign equities. We document a variety of firm characteristics that can influence U.S. investment, but the most important determinant is whether the stock is cross-listed on a U.S. exchange. Our selection bias-corrected estimates imply that firms that cross-list can increase their U.S. holdings by 8 to 11 percent of their market capitalization, roughly doubling the amount held without cross-listing. All else equal, we find that firms experience smaller increases in U.S. shareholdings upon cross-listing if they are Canadian, from English speaking countries, are members of the MSCI World index, or had higher quality accounting standards prior to crosslisting. We argue that these findings suggest that improvements in information production explain U.S. investors' attraction to foreign stocks that cross-list in the United States.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Canada

238. PPP Rules, Macroeconomic (In)stability and Learning

Author:
Luis-Felipe Zanna
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Governments in emerging economies have pursued real exchange rate targeting through Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) rules that link the nominal depreciation rate to either the deviation of the real exchange rate from its long run level or to the difference between the domestic and the foreign CPI-inflation rates. In this paper we disentangle the conditions under which these rules may lead to endogenous fluctuations due to self-fulfilling expectations in a small open economy that faces nominal rigidities. We find that besides the specification of the rule, structural parameters such as the share of traded goods (that measures the degree of openness of the economy) and the degrees of imperfect competition and price stickiness in the non-traded sector play a crucial role in the determinacy of equilibrium. To evaluate the relevance of the real (in)determinacy results we pursue a learnability (E-stability) analysis for the aforementioned PPP rules. We show that for rules that guarantee a unique equilibrium, the fundamental solution that represents this equilibrium is learnable in the E-stability sense. Similarly we show that for PPP rules that open the possibility of sunspot equilibria, a common factor representation that describes these equilibria is also E-stable. In this sense sunspot equilibria and therefore aggregate instability are more likely to occur due to PPP rules than previously recognized.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

239. Is The Corporate Loan Market Globally Integrated? A Pricing Puzzle

Author:
Mark Carey and Gregory P. Nini
Publication Date:
08-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We offer evidence that interest rate spreads on syndicated loans to corporate borrowers are economically significantly smaller in Europe than in the U.S., other things equal. Differences in borrower, loan and lender characteristics associated with equilibrium mechanisms suggested in the literature do not appear to explain the phenomenon. Borrowers overwhelmingly issue in their natural home market, and bank portfolios display significant home “bias.” This may explain why pricing discrepancies are not competed away, but the fundamental causes of the discrepancies remain a puzzle. Thus, important determinants of loan origination market outcomes remain to be identified, home “bias” appears to be material for pricing, and corporate financing costs differ in Europe and the U.S.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

240. Does Monetary Policy Keep Up with the Joneses? Optimal Interest-Rate Smoothing with Consumption Externalities

Author:
Sanjay Chugh
Publication Date:
07-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Changes in monetary policy are typically implemented gradually, an empirical observation known as interest-rate smoothing. We propose the explanation that timenon- separable preferences may render interest-rate smoothing optimal. We find that when consumers have “catching-up-with-the-Joneses” preferences, optimal monetary policy reacts gradually to shocks to prevent inefficiently fast adjustments in consumption. We also extend our basic model to investigate the effects of capital formation and nominal rigidities on the dynamics of optimal monetary policy. Optimal policy responses continue to be gradual in the presence of capital and sticky prices, with a size and speed that are in line with empirical findings for the U.S. economy. Our results emphasize that gradualism in monetary policy may be needed simply to guide the economy on an optimally smooth path.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

241. The ET Interview: Professor David F. Hendry

Author:
Neil R. Ericsson
Publication Date:
07-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This interview for Econometric Theory explores David Hendry's research. Issues discussed include estimation and inference for nonstationary time series; econometric methodology; strategies, concepts, and criteria for empirical modeling; the general-to-specific approach, as implemented in the computer packages PcGive and PcGets; computer-automated model selection procedures; David's textbook Dynamic Econometrics; Monte Carlo techniques (PcNaive); evaluation of these developments in simulation studies and in empirical investigations of consumer expenditure, money demand, inflation, and the housing and mortgage markets; economic forecasting and policy analysis; the history of econometric thought; and the use of computers for live empirical and Monte Carlo econometrics.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

242. Good News Is No News? The Impact of Credit Rating Changes on the Pricing of Asset-Backed Securities

Author:
John Ammer and Nathanael Clinton
Publication Date:
07-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We assess the impact of credit ratings on the pricing of structured financial products, using a sample of more than 1300 changes in Moody's or Standard and Poor's (S) ratings of U.S. asset-backed securities (ABS). We find that rating downgrades tend to be accompanied by negative returns and widening spreads, with the average effects stronger than those that have been reported in prior research on corporate and sovereign bond ratings. A portion of the negative implications of ABS downgrades are anticipated by price movements ahead of the rating action, although to a lesser degree than has been found for bond ratings. Accordingly, ABS market participants appear to rely somewhat more on rating agencies as a source of negative news about credit risk. Nevertheless, because ABS rating downgrades are relatively rare events, their effects account for only a small fraction of the variance of returns. In contrast to our results on downgrades, market reactions to ABS rating upgrades are virtually zero, on average. Together, the results imply even greater asymmetry in the value-relevance of ABS rating changes than has been found in event studies of changes in bond ratings.
Topic:
Security, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

243. The Information Content of Forward and Futures Prices: Market Expectations and the Price of Risk

Author:
Jonathan H. Wright, Sergey V. Chernenko, and Krista B. Schwarz
Publication Date:
06-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Forward and futures rates are frequently used as measures of market expectations. In this paper we apply standard forecast efficiency tests, and some newer exact sign and rank tests, to a wide range of forward and futures rates, and in this way test whether these are in fact rational expectations of future actual prices. The forward and futures rates that we study under a common methodology include foreign exchange forward rates, U.S. and foreign interest rate futures and forward rates, oil futures and natural gas futures. For most, but not all, of these instruments, we find that we can reject the hypothesis that the forward or futures rates are rational expectations of actual future prices. It is well known that foreign exchange forward rates give less accurate forecasts than a random walk, but we show that this is also true for some interest rate futures and forward rates. We conclude that forward and futures prices are not generally pure measures of market expectations: they are also heavily affected by the market price of risk.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

244. The Decline of Activist Stabilization Policy: Natural Rate Misperceptions, Learning, and Expectations

Author:
Athanasios Orphanides and John C. Williams
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We develop an estimated model of the U.S. economy in which agents form expectations by continually updating their beliefs regarding the behavior of the economy and monetary policy. We explore the effects of policymakers' misperceptions of the natural rate of unemployment during the late 1960s and 1970s on the formation of expectations and macroeconomic outcomes. We find that the combination of monetary policy directed at tight stabilization of unemployment near its perceived natural rate and large real-time errors in estimates of the natural rate uprooted heretofore quiescent inflation expectations and destabilized the economy. Had monetary policy reacted less aggressively to perceived unemployment gaps, inflation expectations would have remained anchored and the stagflation of the 1970s would have been avoided. Indeed, we find that less activist policies would have been more effective at stabilizing both inflation and unemployment. We argue that policymakers, learning from the experience of the 1970s, eschewed activist policies in favor of policies that concentrated on the achievement of price stability, contributing to the subsequent improvements in macroeconomic performance of the U.S. economy.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

245. Equal Size, Equal Role? Interest Rate Interdependence Between the Euro Area and the United States

Author:
Michael Ehrmann and Marcel Fratzscher
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether the degree and the nature of economic and monetary policy interdependence between the United States and the euro area have changed with the advent of EMU. Using real-time data, it addresses this issue from the perspective of financial markets by analysing the effects of monetary policy announcements and macroeconomic news on daily interest rates in the United States and the euro area. First, the paper finds that the interdependence of money markets has increased strongly around EMU. Although spillover effects from the United States to the euro area remain stronger than in the opposite direction, we present evidence that US markets have started reacting also to euro area developments since the onset of EMU. Second, beyond these general linkages, the paper finds that certain macroeconomic news about the US economy has a large and significant effect on euro area money markets, and that these effects have become stronger in recent years. Finally, we show that US macroeconomic news has become good leading indicators for economic developments in the euro area. This indicates that the higher money market interdependence between the United States and the euro area is at least partly explained by the increased real integration of the two economies in recent years.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

246. The Great Inflation of the 1970s

Author:
Fabrice Collard and Harris Dellas
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Was the high inflation of the 1970s mostly due to incomplete information about the structure of the economy (an unavoidable mistake as suggested by Orphanides, 2000)? Or, to weak reaction to expected inflation and/or excessive policy activism that led to indeterminacies (a policy mistake, a scenario suggested by Clarida, Gali and Gertler, 2000)? We study this question within the NNS model with policy commitment and imperfect information, requiring that the model have satisfactory overall empirical performance. We find that both explanations do a good job in accounting for the great inflation. Even with the commonly used specification of the interest policy rule, high and persistent inflation can occur following a significant productivity slowdown if policymakers significantly and persistently underestimate ”core” inflation.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States

247. Ramsey Monetary Policy and International Relative Prices

Author:
Ester Faia and Tommaso Monacelli
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We analyze welfare maximizing monetary policy in a dynamic two-country model with price stickiness and imperfect competition. In this context, a typical terms of trade externality affects policy interaction between independent monetary authorities. Unlike the existing literature, we remain consistent to a public finance approach by an explicit consideration of all the distortions that are relevant to the Ramsey planner. This strategy entails two main advantages. First, it allows an accurate characterization of optimal policy in an economy that evolves around a steady-state which is not necessarily efficient. Second, it allows to describe a full range of alternative dynamic equilibria when price setters in both countries are completely forward looking and households' preferences are not restricted. In this context, we study optimal policy both in the long-run and along a dynamic path, and we compare optimal commitment policy under Nash competition and under cooperation. By deriving a second order accurate solution to the policy functions, we also characterize the welfare gains from international policy cooperation.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

248. Indeterminacy with Inflation-Forecast-Based Rules in a Two-Bloc Model

Author:
Nicoletta Batini, Paul Levine, and Joseph Pearlman
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We examine the performance of forward-looking inflation-forecast-based rules in open economies. In a New Keynesian two-bloc model, a methodology first employed by Batini and Pearlman (2002) is used to obtain analytically the feedback parameters/horizon pairs associated with unique and stable equi-libria. Three key findings emerge: first, indeterminacy occurs for any value of the feedback parameter on inflation if the forecast horizon lies too far into the future. Second, the problem of indeterminacy is intrinsically more serious in the open economy. Third, the problem is compounded further in the open economy when central banks respond to expected consumer, rather than pro-ducer price inflation.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

249. Price-level Determinacy, Lower Bounds on the Nominal Interest Rate, and Liquidity Traps

Author:
Dale W. Henderson and Ragna Alstadheim
Publication Date:
04-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We consider monetary-policy rules with inflation-rate targets and interest-rate or money-growth instruments using a flexible-price, perfect-foresight model. There is always a locally-unique target equilibrium. There may also be below-target equilibria (BTE) with inflation always below target and constant, asymptotically approaching or eventually reaching a below-target value, or oscillating. Liquidity traps are neither necessary nor sufficient for BTE which can arise if monetary policy keeps the interest rate above a lower bound. We construct monetary rules that preclude BTE when fiscal policy does not. Plausible fiscal policies preclude BTE for any monetary policy; those policies exclude surpluses and, possibly, balanced budgets.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States

250. Foreign Participation in Local-Currency Bond Markets

Author:
Francis E. Warnock and John D. Burger
Publication Date:
02-2004
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
We analyze the development of, and foreign participation in, 49 local bond markets. Countries with stable inflation rates and strong creditor rights have more developed local bond markets and rely less on foreign-currency-denominated bonds. Less developed bond markets have returns characterized by high variance and negative skewness, factors eschewed by U.S. investors. Results based on a three-moment CAPM indicate, however, that it is diversifiable idiosyncratic risk that U.S. investors appear to shun. Taken as a whole our results hint at a virtuous cycle of bond market development: Creditor friendly policies and laws can spark local bond market development that enables the development of derivatives markets and, in turn, attracts foreign participation.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States