The Story of the Real Exchange Rate

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleg Itskhoki

The real exchange rate (RER) measures relative price levels across countries, capturing deviations from purchasing power parity (PPP). RER is a key variable in international macroeconomic models as it is central to equilibrium conditions in both goods and asset markets. It is also one of the most starkly behaving variables empirically, tightly comoving with the nominal exchange rate and virtually uncorrelated with most other macroeconomic variables, nominal or real. This review lays out an equilibrium framework of RER determination, focusing separately on each building block and discussing corresponding empirical evidence. We emphasize home bias and incomplete pass-through into prices with expenditure switching and goods market clearing, imperfect international risk sharing, country budget constraint, and monetary policy regime. We show that RER is inherently a general equilibrium variable that depends on the full model structure and policy regime, and therefore partial theories like PPP are insufficient to explain it. We also discuss issues of stationarity and predictability of exchange rates. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 13 is August 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Author(s):  
Menzie D. Chinn

The idea that prices and exchange rates adjust so as to equalize the common-currency price of identical bundles of goods—purchasing power parity (PPP)—is a topic of central importance in international finance. If PPP holds continuously, then nominal exchange rate changes do not influence trade flows. If PPP does not hold in the short run, but does in the long run, then monetary factors can affect the real exchange rate only temporarily. Substantial evidence has accumulated—with the advent of new statistical tests, alternative data sets, and longer spans of data—that purchasing power parity does not typically hold in the short run. One reason why PPP doesn’t hold in the short run might be due to sticky prices, in combination with other factors, such as trade barriers. The evidence is mixed for the longer run. Variations in the real exchange rate in the longer run can also be driven by shocks to demand, arising from changes in government spending, the terms of trade, as well as wealth and debt stocks. At time horizon of decades, trend movements in the real exchange rate—that is, systematically trending deviations in PPP—could be due to the presence of nontraded goods, combined with real factors such as differentials in productivity growth. The well-known positive association between the price level and income levels—also known as the “Penn Effect”—is consistent with this channel. Whether PPP holds then depends on the time period, the time horizon, and the currencies examined.


1992 ◽  
Vol 31 (4II) ◽  
pp. 871-882 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadeem A. Burney ◽  
Naeem Akjitar

It is now generally accepted that the real exchange rate is a key relative price in an econom/ Changes in the real exchange rate influence foreign trade flows, balance of payments, the structure and level of production, allocation of resources, etc. While the real exchange rate is an endogenous variable that responds to both exogenous as well as policy-induced shocks, the nominal exchange rate is usually taken as a policy instrument. The two rates, however, are found to be related to each other. 2 For effective policy-making, it is imperative to have some idea about different factors that influence the real exchange rate. Equally important is the knowledge of the manner in which the real exchange rate responds to changes in the exogenous variables. While there is a general consensus that the impact of various exogenous shocks on the exchange rate is transmitted through four broad channels, namely, (i) absolute prices, (ii) relative prices, (iii) income, and (iv) interest rates, the relative importance of each of these channels is found to vary across countries. In general, it depends on the degree of openness of the economy and the relative effectiveness of the fiscal and the monetary sectors within a country.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nestor Azcona

AbstractThis paper uses a DSGE model of two small open economies to explain certain features of real exchange rate cyclical fluctuations in countries with fixed and flexible exchange rates, focusing on the role of traded and non-traded goods prices. In particular, the model illustrates why the relative price of non-traded goods and the relative price between domestic and foreign traded goods are more volatile than the real exchange rate under a fixed exchange rate but not under a flexible exchange rate, why deviations from purchasing power parity for traded goods prices can be more volatile under a fixed exchange rate than under a flexible exchange rate, and why there is no correlation between the volatility of the real exchange rate and its variance decomposition.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-269
Author(s):  
Florencia Médici ◽  
Augustín Mario ◽  
Alejandro Fiorito

This study provides new evidence showing that the real exchange rate (RER) does not play an important role in the growth of Mexican GDP. Economic growth is not an automatically predetermined result of relative price correction, and it is important to consider distinctive aspects of national institutional arrangements (fiscal and monetary, for example) for understanding theoretical causality of demand. The empirical results show public expenditure is an overlooked variable in regressions where the exchange rate affects product growth. After incorporating public expenditure, the RER impact on growth becomes insignificant. For its part, public expenditure has a positive and significant effect on GDP in the long term. The RER does not lead to greater GDP since exports are not stimulated through price.


1999 ◽  
Vol 169 ◽  
pp. 96-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith B. Church

This article calculates the equilibrium real exchange rate for the UK economy. The long-run trade and supply side relationships from HM Treasury's model are used to estimate the level of the real exchange rate consistent with the UK economy growing at its ‘natural’ rate while achieving a sustainable current account position. The model shows that the real exchange rate associated with macroeconomic equilibrium lies well below the actual rate for most of the 1990s. This result has important implications for possible UK participation in the single European currency as, once the nominal exchange rate is fixed, overvaluation can only be corrected by holding UK inflation lower than that elsewhere. Achieving this may be costly in terms of jobs and output.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 183-210
Author(s):  
Nandeeswara Rao ◽  
TassewDufera Tolcha

Real exchange rate has direct effects on trade particularly on international trade and has indirect effects on productions and employments, so it is crucial to understand the factors which determine its variations. This study analyses the main determinants of the real exchange rate and the dynamic adjustment of the real exchange rate following shocks to those determinants using yearly Ethiopian time series data covering the period 1971 to 2010. It begins with a review of literatures on Exchange rate, real exchange rate, determinants of the real exchange rate and provides an updated background on the exchange rate system in Ethiopia. An empirical model linking the real exchange rate to its theoretical determinants is then specified. This study had employed the cointegration and vector autoregression (VAR) analysis with impulse response and variance decomposition analyses to provide robust long run effects and short run dynamic effects on the real exchange rate. Share of investment, foreign exchange reserve, capital inflow and government consumption of non-tradable goods were the variable that have been found to have a long run relationship with the real exchange rate. The estimate of the speed of adjustment coefficient found in this study indicates that about a third of the variation in the real exchange rate from its equilibrium level is corrected within a year. The regression result of VECM reveals that terms of trade, nominal exchange rate, and one period lag of capital flow were the variables significantly affects the real exchange rate in the short run. However, the impulse response and variance decomposition analysis shows a better picture of the short run dynamics. The their analysis provided evidence that the Shocks to terms of trade, nominal exchange rate, capital inflow and share of investment have persistent effects on the real exchange rate in the short run. In general the regression results of both long run and short run models mostly suggest that the fluctuations of real exchange rates are predominantly responses to monetary policies shocks rather than fiscal policy shocks.


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