The aim of this thesis is to find a reason why the US current account is in deficit, which is in contradiction of theoretical expectation. Prevailing discusion is about savings glut and defects in monetary policy. In our opinion both sides ignore China`s rising influence and real exchange rate. Balassa-Samuelson`s effect predict real exchange rate appreciation in converging economies, as long as their real GDP grows. Analysis of real exchange rate of Renminbi shows contradiction with Balassa-Samuelson effect, which is attributed to conditions on Chinese labour market. Chinese internal imbalance has impacts on global economy and nonappreciating real exchange rate of Renminbi deforming international trade is one of the factors that causes US current account deficit.

The aim of this Master Thesis is to summarize the modern theoretical models of fundamental determination of exchange rates. The Thesis contains of Introduction, four explanatory chapters and the conclusion. The first chapter provides the definition of traditional premises (PPP, IRP, expectations) and in the end of the chapter the 5-equation model is introduced. The second chapter focuses the attention on both equilibrium (Bilson-Frenkel) and non equilibrium (Dornbusch, Frankel) monetary models. In the end of the chapter there are also briefly mentioned Hooper-Morton's and Girton-Ropers models. The third chapter brings in the risk and it is focused on portfolio models. The last chapter describes the Lyons-Evans model of market microstructure based on order flow.

The aim of this thesis is empirical verification of the fundamental theory of exchange rate determination in the case of the currency pair EUR/USD. The theoretical part is devoted to the issue of exchange rate theory, with emphasis on the importance of the currency pair EUR/USD, and major characteristics of the fundamental theory of exchange rate determination. Attention is also paid to methods of analysis of time series, which will be used in the analytical part. The analytical part is devoted to an empirical verification of the underlying theories. On the basis of these theories are developed econometric models, which are then tested using the methods of linear regression and cointegration. The results of the models and their relevance are discussed in conclusion.

[pt] A presente dissertação busca estudar empiricamente a relação entre preço de commodities e taxa de câmbio real para países que possuem alta participação destes produtos em sua pauta de exportação. De fato, os países que estamos estudando (Austrália, Canadá, Nova Zelândia e Brasil) possuem tais características e, desta forma, preços de commodities devem ser determinantes fundamentais de seus termos de troca, tornando-se importantes na determinação de suas taxas de câmbio real de equilíbrio. Compreendemos que o trato cuidadoso das tecnicalidades relacionadas a este estudo é de fundamental importância para uma estimação consistente dos coeficientes de interesse, principalmente quando levamos em consideração as diversas divergências existentes na literatura quanto à qual o mecanismo gerador de dados das séries de preço de commodities e de taxa de câmbio real e quanto à endogeneidade da variável índice de preço de commodities na determinação da taxa de câmbio real. Para contornar tal problema partiremos de diferentes hipóteses para estas questões e utilizaremos técnicas econométricas apropriadas para cada hipótese, buscando obter resultados robustos a estas divergências. / [en] This dissertation intends to study the relationship between commodity prices and real effective exchange rate for countries which exports portfolios accounts on a large share of commodity related products. In fact, all the four countries we study (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Brazil) depends heavily on commodity exports, and therefore commodity prices might be important determinant of their terms of trade, becoming fundamental variable to the real exchange rate determination. It is also of great importance the careful treatment of the technical issues related to the study, so as to provide consistent estimates of the coefficients of interest, mainly when we consider all the divergence related to what the true data generating process of the series and the endogeneity of the commodity price index. To solve this issue we follow considering different assumptions, and for each we use appropriate econometric technical and then compare the results.

Le système monétaire international articulé autour d'une monnaie cœur et de monnaies périphériques évoluant dans des régimes de change différents s'avère intrinsèquement instable et a favorisé la hausse des déséquilibres de comptes courants et la crise financière de 2007. La littérature traitant des comportements d'épargne laisse présager d'une reprise de ces déséquilibres et des risques qui en découlent. Afin de rechercher des voies de stabilisation politiquement réalisables, nous avons évalué les taux de change d'équilibre des pays les plus impliqués dans les déséquilibres par une approche positive afin d'obtenir des résultats acceptables par les responsables politiques. Notre travail montre que le taux de change n'a joué qu'un rôle modéré dans le développement des déséquilibres et la littérature montre qu'il n'a joué qu'un faible rôle dans leur ajustement.Par ailleurs, les politiques monétaires accommodantes mises en place suite à la crise économique font peser des risques sur la stabilité financière. Compte tenu de la multiplicité des régimes de change et de la difficulté de prévoir et de maitriser les variations des taux de change, les risques liés aux déséquilibres de comptes courants et à l'instabilité financière nécessitent d'être appréhendés par d'autres voies d'ajustement que celles du taux de change. Nous montrons la faisabilité de zones monétaires permettant l'applicabilité de politiques monétaires appropriées en cas d'asynchronisme des cycles économiques favorisant la mise en place de politiques budgétaires à la fois appropriées pour limiter la reprise de déséquilibres mais également contracycliques. / The International Monetary System built around a core currency, the US dollar and peripheral currencies working in various exchange rate regimes appears inherently unstable and has fostered the rise of global current account imbalances and the financial crisis in 2007. The literature on changes in savings behavior suggests a resumption of these imbalances and associated risks. Their partial adjustment would therefore only be cyclical, resulting from the economic crisis in 2008.In view of looking for politically achievable ways to stabilize imbalances, we evaluated the equilibrium exchange rate of the countries or regions most involved in the imbalances by a positive approach to achieve results acceptable by policymakers. Our work shows that the exchange rate has played a moderate role in the development of imbalances and recent literature suggests that it played only a minor role in their adjustment.Moreover, accommodative monetary policies implemented after the economic crisis constitute risks to financial stability. Given the multiplicity of exchange rate regimes and the difficulty to forecast and manage the changes in exchange rates, risks related to global current account imbalances and financial instability need to be tackled by other channels of adjustment than the exchange rate. Our work therefore concerns, in theory but also pragmatically, options that could both reduce the risk of financial instability and that of the resumption of global current account imbalances. We show the feasibility of monetary zones allowing the implementation of appropriate monetary policies in case of asynchrony of economic and financial cycles. We conclude with the stabilizing ro

Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2014. / Dornbusch’s exchange rate overshooting hypothesis has guided monetary policy conduct for many years though empirical evidence on its validity is mixed. This study re-examines the validity of the overshooting hypothesis by using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) procedure. Specifically, the study investigates whether the overshooting hypothesis holds for the United States Dollar/Zambian Kwacha (USD-ZMK) exchange rate. In addition, the study tests if there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between the USD-ZMK exchange rate and the macroeconomic fundamentals (money supply, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), interest rates and inflation rates). The study uses monthly nominal USD/ZMK exchange rates and monetary fundamentals data from January 2000 to December 2012. The study finds no evidence of exchange rate overshooting. The result also show that there is no long run equilibrium relationship between the exchange rate and the differentials of macroeconomic fundamentals. The implication is that macroeconomic fundamentals are insignificant in determining the exchange rate fluctuations in the long run. This finding is inconsistent with the monetary model of exchange rate determination, which asserts that there is a long-run relationship between the exchange rate and macroeconomic fundamentals.

Thesis advisor: Susanto Basu / Thesis advisor: Peter Ireland / This dissertation consists of three independent chapters analyzing the role that information and credit frictions play in goods and financial markets. Within these chapters, I develop dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models to study the implications of these frictions on the macroeconomy, both at the national and international level. In the first chapter, I provide a novel explanation for the observed large and persistent fluctuations in real exchange rates using a model with noisy, dispersed information among price-setting firms. Chapter two studies how entrepreneurs' attitudes towards risk affect business cycles in a framework with agency frictions between borrowers and lenders. Finally, chapter three introduces a liquidity channel in a business cycle model with agency frictions to rationalize the highly volatile behavior of default recovery rates observed in the data. Real exchange rates have been extremely volatile and persistent since the end of the Bretton Woods system. For many developed economies, real exchange rates are as volatile as nominal exchange rates, and their fluctuations exhibit a half-life in the range of three to five years. Traditional sticky-price models struggle to jointly account for these features under plausible nominal rigidities (Chari, Kehoe, and McGrattan, 2002). Is it possible to reconcile, in a single framework, the enormous short-term volatility of the real exchange rate with its extremely long half-life? The first chapter of this dissertation addresses this question within a framework in which information is noisy and heterogeneous among price-setting firms. In this context, the continuing uncertainty that firms face about the state of the economy and about the beliefs of their competitors, slows down the price adjustment in response to nominal shocks, generating large and long-lived real exchange rate movements. I estimate the model using real output and output deflator data from the US and the Euro Area and show, as an out-of-sample test, that the model successfully explains the observed volatility and persistence of the Euro/Dollar real exchange rate. In a Bayesian model comparison, I show that the data strongly favor the dispersed information model relative to a sticky-price model à la Calvo. The model also accounts for the persistent effects of monetary shocks on the real exchange rate that I document using a structural vector autoregression. The second chapter, joint with Mikhail Dmitriev, studies how entrepreneurs' attitudes towards risk affect business cycles in a model with agency frictions. Entrepreneurs are inevitably exposed to non-diversified risk, which likely affects their willingness to borrow and to invest in risky projects. Nevertheless, the financial friction literature has paid little attention to how entrepreneurs' desire to take on this risk affects their investment choices in a general-equilibrium setting. Indeed, business cycle models with credit market frictions that feature idiosyncratic risk assume, for tractability, that entrepreneurs are risk neutral (Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist, 1999, BGG). In this chapter, we generalize the BGG framework to the case of entrepreneurs with constant-relative-risk-aversion preferences. In doing so, we overcome the aggregation challenges of this setup and maintain an analytically tractable, log-linear framework. Our main result is that higher risk aversion stabilizes business cycle fluctuations in response to financial shocks, such as wealth redistribution or risk shocks, without significantly affecting the dynamic responses to technology and monetary shocks. Our findings suggest that, within this class of models, the ability of financial shocks to account for a large portion of short-run output fluctuations found in previous work (e.g., Christiano, Motto, and Rostagno (2014)) crucially hinges on borrowers' risk neutrality. The third chapter, joint with Mikhail Dmitriev, examines the implications of the cyclical properties of default recovery rates for aggregate fluctuations. We document that recovery rates after default in the United States are highly volatile and strongly pro-cyclical. These facts are hard to reconcile with the existing financial friction literature. Indeed, models with limited enforceability à la Kiyotaki and Moore (1997) do not feature defaults and recovery rates in equilibrium, while agency costs models following Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist (1999) underestimate the volatility of recovery rates by one order of magnitude. In this chapter, we extend the standard agency costs model allowing liquidation costs for creditors to depend on the tightness of the market for physical capital. Creditors do not have expertise in selling entrepreneurial assets, but when buyers are plentiful, this disadvantage is minimal. Instead when sellers are abundant, the disadvantage of being an outsider is higher. Following a negative shock, entrepreneurs sell capital and liquidation costs for creditors increase, driving down recovery rates. With higher liquidation costs, creditors cut lending and cause entrepreneurs to sell even more capital. This liquidity channel works independently from standard balance sheet effects, and amplifies the impact of financial shocks on output by up to 50 percent. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

Recentemente, importantes questionamentos emergiram na literatura sobre repasse cambial. Mais especificamente, foi dada crescente atenção à hipótese de Taylor (2000) de que o pass-through se reduziu em diversos países como conseqüência do ambiente de inflação mais baixa. Esta dissertação investiga o tema através da aplicação de painéis dinâmicos para um conjunto de economias desenvolvidas. Deste modo, são estimados modelos de efeito fixo e Arellano-Bond em janelas fixas (rolling windows), que apontam para uma redução substancial na transmissão do câmbio para a inflação. A análise de potenciais determinantes macroeconômicos dessa queda indica que o ambiente inflacionário foi o principal elemento por trás do fato, sobretudo nos anos oitenta e noventa, em que o processo de desinflação foi mais intenso. Por outro lado, os anos dois mil apresentam um coeficiente de pass-through bastante baixo e estável, visto que o cenário de inflação baixa já estava consolidado para o conjunto de economias analisadas. / Recently, economists have become more interested in studying exchange rate pass-through. More specifically, increasing attention has been given to Taylors (2000) hypothesis that the passthrough has declined in several countries as a result of a lower inflation environment. This dissertation examines this issue through the application of dynamic panels for a number of developed economies. Panel data models are estimated here using fixed effects and Arellano- Bond estimators in rolling windows. The results point to a substantial reduction in the transmission of exchange rate to inflation. The analysis of potential macroeconomic determinants of this decline indicates that the inflationary environment was the main factor behind this fact, mainly in the eighties and nineties when the disinflation process was more intense worldwide. On the other hand, in the first decade of this century the pass-through coefficient was fairly low and stable, perhaps because the scenario of low inflation was already a longstanding reality to the economies analyzed in the present study.

O objetivo desta dissertação é avaliar o impacto de mudanças de rating soberano sobre a taxa de câmbio de países emergentes. Embora a literatura relacionada já tenha estudado o impacto de mudanças de rating soberano sobre ações, títulos e até fluxo de capital, nada foi feito sobre taxas de câmbio. Todavia, taxas de câmbio devem responder de maneira interessante a mudanças de rating, pois além de serem ativos financeiros, as moedas desempenham a função de intermediar o investimento estrangeiro nos demais ativos domésticos. Empregamos a metodologia de estudo de evento acrescentando a ela uma modificação que nos permite controlar a análise por efeitos agregados. Utilizando uma base de dados diária de taxas de câmbio de 23 países emergentes encontramos, grosso modo, evidências de que downgrades estão associados a depreciações da moeda doméstica, ao passo que, upgrades não provocam nenhuma reação significativa na taxa de câmbio. Este resultado vai ao encontro da literatura que estuda o impacto de mudanças de rating em ações, títulos e fluxo de capitais. Além disso, dentre ainda outros resultados, encontramos evidências de que o mercado antecipa o evento relevante e que não há efeitos defasados. / The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the impact of sovereign rating changes on the exchange rate of emerging markets. Although the related literature has studied the impact of sovereign rating changes on stocks, bonds and even capital flows, nothing has been done on exchange rates. However, exchange rates should respond in an interesting way to rating changes because the currency is a financial asset and has a role in intermediating foreign investment in other domestic assets. We employ the event study methodology by adding to it an amendment that allows us to control the analysis by aggregate effects. Using a database of daily exchange rates of 23 developing countries, we found evidence that downgrades are associated with depreciations of the domestic currency, whereas, upgrades do not cause any significant reaction in the exchange rate. This result is consistent with the literature that studies the impact of rating changes on stocks, bonds and capital flows. Moreover, even among other results, we find evidence that the market anticipates the relevant event and there is no lagged effects on the market.

Este trabalho investiga para o Brasil um dos mais importantes debates da literatura da Nova Macroeconomia Aberta: a escolha da moeda na qual a firma exportadora fixará os preços de seu produto vendido no exterior. Duas são as hipóteses possíveis: ou a firma exportadora fixa seu preço com base na sua própria moeda, conhecida como producer currency pricing (PCP),ou ela fixa seu preço com base na moeda do mercado de destino de seu produto, chamada de local currency pricing (LCP). Como muitos dos problemas verificados na literatura macroeconômica têm origem microeconômica, procuramos responder a questão através das observações encontradas na literatura de passthrough e pricing-to-market. Além disto, assumimos que, no agregado, os setores exportadores e importadores brasileiros se comportam como uma firma maximizadora de lucros que vende seus produtos para importadores locais. Isto permite que parte das variações cambiais seja repassada para os preços e parte seja absorvida pelo markup do setor. A metodologia empírica incluiu a estimação de dois VEC’s (vector error correction), um para as exportações e outro para as importações, pelos quais foram calculadas funções de resposta ao impulso e decomposições da variância dos erros de previsão nos preços. Os resultados obtidos indicam casos intermediários das hipóteses de LCP e PCP para o Brasil. Enquanto os preços em dólares das exportações brasileiras estão mais próximos da hipótese de LCP, os preços em reais das importações estão mais próximos da hipótese de PCP. Outros aspectos interessantes também foram observados. Para os preços das exportações brasileiras, a variável mais importante para sua determinação é a condição econômica do resto do mundo, seguida pelos custos do setor exportador. Já para as importações, tanto as condições econômicas domésticas quanto a taxa de câmbio são variáveis importantes, ao passo que os preços em moeda estrangeira das importações não se mostraram significantes no longo prazo, mas apenas no curto prazo. / This work analyzes to Brazil one of the most important debates on the New Open Economy Macroeconomic literature: the choice of the currency in which international prices are fixed. There are two possible hypotheses: either the export firm establishes his prices in your own currency, named producer currency pricing (PCP) or the export firm fix his price in the currency of the market in which his products is sold, named local currency pricing (LCP). Many questions treated in macroeconomic literature have microeconomic foundations. So we look for answering the question using the literature of passthrough and pricing-to-market. In addition to this, we assume that macroeconomic data for Brazilian’s export and import sectors are generated of profit maximizing firms’ behavior. The firms sell their products to local importers, allowing that some piece of exchange rate variations are passed through prices and another piece are passed through specific markup sector. Methodology employed here includes vector error correction (VEC) estimation, one for export prices in dollar and other for import prices in reais, through which were calculated impulse response functions and forecast variance error decompositions for prices. Results point the validity of intermediate cases of LCP and PCP for Brazil. While Brazilian export prices in dollars are closer to LCP hypothesis, Brazilian import prices in reais are closer to PCP hypothesis. Other interesting aspects were obtained. For Brazilian export prices, the most important variable explaining it is the world economic growth. The second most important variable is the export sector cost. For Brazilian import prices in reais, both domestic economic growth and exchange rate are important in its determination, while import prices in dollars were not showed significant in the long run, but just in the short run.