Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Abstract:

This paper examines the empirical relation between market structure and life expectancy for cartels that were active in international commodity markets throughout this century. I consider two alternative empirical formulations and estimate their parameters recognizing that durability cannot take negative values. Both formulations predict that increases in either market shares or intercartel concentration prolong life expectancy but disagree in the relative importance of these two factors. The application of tests to discriminate among the two formulations does not support constant-elasticity models.

Abstract:

This paper reports on the results of an empirical investigation into the objectives of daily foreign exchange market intervention by the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve System in the U.S. dollar-deutsche mark market. Tobit analysis is implemented to estimate the intervention reaction functions consistently. It is found that an increase in the conditional variance in daily exchange rate returns derived from a GARCH model estimated in the paper, led the Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve to increase the volume of intervention, both in case of dollar-sales and purchases on account of their leaning against the wind policy.

Abstract:

This paper investigates the market's expectations for oil prices during the Persian Gulf crisis. To do so a general method for using options markets to recover the implied distribution for futures prices is developed. The method applies to a wide class of distributions. In particular, it is not limited to those distributions arising from diffusion or jump-diffusion processes.

Abstract:

This paper develops a model to examine the economic effects of political instability and military expenditure. In the model, "kleptocracies" use defense as "imperfect" insurance against the probability of being overthrown. Increasing defense has a secondary effect of augmenting the human capital stock (a spin-off effect). However, defense investment comes at the expense of consuming scarce resources (a crowding out effect). The paper's central contribution is to model each of these effects and their relationship to one another. The resulting theory predicts that the equilibrium is Pareto inefficient and that increased political instability and increased defense can inhibit economic growth. Empirically, increases in political instability are found to decrease growth while increases in defense are found to decrease political instability. The paper also finds that increases in defense have a direct negative effect on growth, although the relation is weak. The weak relation implies the aforementioned crowding out effect is largely mitigated by the spin-off effect.

Abstract:

In this paper, I investigate the interactions between foreign­ exchange policy, monetary policy, and developments in Korean capital markets. A large increase in Korea's external position, combined with a relatively inflexible exchange rate, led to very large potential increases in money growth between 1986 and 1989. The sterilization of the foreign exchange intervention required an unprecedented monetary tightening on other fronts--a tightening that could have created serious distortions in the financial markets had direct credit controls been utilized. Consequently, the use of open market operations, rediscount policy, and reserve requirements was expanded and adapted to be more responsive to other market rates.

In addition to its sterilization efforts in 1986-89, the Korean government allowed the won to appreciate against the dollar and liberalized some capital outflows, thereby reducing the external pressure for money growth. Additionally, in March 1990, the government introduced a more flexible exchange rate system that will help reduce future external pressure on the money supply. However, because daily changes in spot rates are currently limited, pressure on the money stock may occur again if market pressures for exchange rate changes exceed the allowed bands.

Abstract:

This paper traces the development of U.S.-Korean negotiations on exchange rates in the second half of the 1980s. Background on Korea's foreign exchange control system is provided, including the evolution of its exchange rate determination mechanisms from 1945 to the current period. The U.S. Congress' rationale for including exchange rates in the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, the U.S. Treasury's Reports to Congress, and the results of the U.S. Treasury's negotiations with Korea on exchange rate "manipulation" are examined.

Korea's current account surpluses emerged at a time when the United States was experiencing record current account deficits, in part due to the rapid appreciation of the dollar in the first half of the 1980s. The fact that the dollar subsequently depreciated against the United. States' industrial-country trading partners but moved little against the currencies of the NIEs prompted the U.S. Congress to examine the exchange rate policies of those economies. Under the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act, Korea and Taiwan were cited in 1988 as "manipulating" their currencies for "unfair" trade gain. With the implementation of the market average-rate system in March 1990, Korea was removed from Treasury's list of exchange rate manipulators. However, the Treasury has complained that even though Korea does not directly manipulate the won within the meaning of the Exchange Rates Act, pervasive capital controls limit potential exchange rate movements and may be used to "manipulate" the value of the won indirectly.

Abstract:

This paper documents that a textbook, supply and demand, simultaneous equations model of import prices and quantities can explain many aspects of import price and quantity behavior over the past 25 years, appears to forecast better than standard trade equations, and the instruments we use appear to be valid instruments. On the negative side, although the demand equation and the two reduced form equations satisfy nominal homogeneity restrictions, the supply equation does not. One possible explanation for this is that foreign suppliers do not believe that exchange rate shocks have the same permanence as price or wage shocks. Overall, however, the findings reported in this paper show that a classical simultaneous equations model can explain the behavior of non-oil import prices and quantities fairly successfully.

Abstract:

This paper studies recent models of the liquidity effect of money on interest rates to determine if a systematic relationship between liquidity shocks and the economy could affect the average real interest rate.

Abstract:

A cointegration test statistic based upon estimation of an error cor­rection model can be approximately normally distributed when no cointegration is present. By contrast, the equivalent Dickey-Fuller statistic applied to residuals from a static relationship has a non-standard asymptotic distribution. When cointegration exists, the error-correction test generally is more powerful than the Dickey-Fuller test. These differences arise because the latter imposes a possibly invalid common factor restriction. The issue is general and has ramifications for system-based cointegration tests. Monte Carlo analysis and an empirical study of U.K. money demand demonstrate the differences in power.

Abstract:

This paper was prepared for the meeting of the Panel on International Capital Transactions of the National Research Council (National Academy of Sciences), April 23, 1992. There are well-documented inadequacies in the data on U.S. international capital flows, cross-border holdings of assets, and investment income. In order to set priorities for data improvements, it is necessary to evaluate our needs for information, survey possible additions and alternatives to the current data collection system, and weigh the costs and benefits of proposed improvements.

This paper focuses on only one facet of these issues, the needs of the Federal Reserve for more accurate and complete data on U.S. international financial transactions. The Federal Reserve uses such data in three basic areas: first, in formulating monetary policy, second, in meeting its supervisory responsibilities, and third, in analyzing the implications of economic and financial developments for the U.S. economy and financial system. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for improving the quality, coverage, and usefulness of the data on U.S. international financial transactions.

Abstract:

The Federal Reserve Act erected a unique structure of government decision­making, independent with elaborate rules balancing internal power. Historical evidence suggests that this outcome was a response to public conflict over inflation's redistributive powers. This paper documents and formalizes this argument: in the face of conflict over redistributive inflation, policy by majority can lead to policy that is worse, even for the majority, than obvious alternatives. The bargaining solution of an independent board with properly balanced interests leads to a better outcome. Technically, this paper extends earlier work in making policy preferences fully endogenous and in extending the notion of equilibrium policy to such a world. Substantively, this work provides a simple grounding of policy preferences--largely missing heretofore--linking game theoretic models of policy to historical evidence about the formation of an independent monetary authority.

Abstract:

This paper uses a multicountry econometric model with rational expectations to analyze the effects of alternative monetary policy regimes on the stability of various macroeconomic variables in the face of stochastic shocks to the economy. The policy regimes use a short-term interest-rate instrument to respond to deviations of various target variables from their targeted values. The principal conclusions are that there are significant tradeoffs between stabilizing output and stabilizing prices, and that more aggressive targeting can lead to large increases in interest-rate variability with only small reductions in the variability of the target variable.

Abstract:

That international trade flows respond to changes in real exchange rates is beyond question. What is less clear is whether the measurement of real exchange rates matters for characterizing and predicting such responses. To identify the implications of choosing a given measure of the real exchange rate, I examine how the parameter estimates and the forecast performance of a given model vary in response to alternative measures of real exchange rates. I reject a given measure if its use (a) implies estimates inconsistent with economic theory; (b) contradicts the assumptions needed for statistical inference; (c) leads to systematic forecast errors; or (d) entails a loss of information relative to an alternative measure. Although the analysis rejects several measures of real exchange rates, it cannot identify a unique measure suitable for explaining U.S. trade: relative unit labor costs and relative consumer prices are equally suited for modeling and predicting U.S. trade.

Abstract:

The paper examines the greater use in the past decade of money market instruments in the conduct of monetary policy by the central banks, or their equivalent, in six of the main East Asian developing economies. Some of these economies have been successful in using various money market instruments to control liquidity, while others have been much less successful. A common theme in the case of the successful economies has been one of employing money market instruments that have yields based on actual market demand and supply. In those cases where the yields have been unrealistic due to not being based on market conditions, the open market operations have generally not been successful. Indonesia's past experience would be an example of this. Based on the experience of these economies, it is suggested that a viable market in treasury bills issued by the national government--not the central bank--be developed for the central bank's use in its monetary policy operations. The advantages of a well-developed open market operation over other traditional monetary policy instruments are cited near the end of the paper.

Abstract:

This paper examines the factors behind long-run movements of the dollar. Most recent work has concluded that structural exchange rate models explain only a small proportion of exchange rate movements. However, many economists still find the theory that links exchange rates and interest rates persuasive. We investigate the relationship between exchange rates, prices, and interest rates using multivariate maximum likelihood cointegration tests. In particular, we explicitly test for purchasing power parity and uncovered interest rate parity when using nominal exchange rates, and implicitly test for these two hypothesis when using real exchange rates. The conclusion that emerges from this study is that we almost always identify at least one cointegrating vector among the variables, but we can not verify the theoretical models that show how exchange rates and interest rates are linked.

Abstract:

The transition from a centrally planned to a market-based economic system should change fundamentally the roles of government and public enterprises in the East-Central European countries of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech and Slovak Federated Republic (CSFR). The size of government should diminish, and that of the private sector increase, as subsidies, which are difficult to justify at market prices, are phased out. Taxes in centrally planned economies tend to be highly distortionary relative to those in market economies, making a restructuring of the tax system desirable to improve efficiency and growth prospects. These changes, in combination with competitive pressures and the objective of eventual membership in the European Community, should cause expenditure and tax systems in East-Central Europe to resemble the Western European model. This paper attempts to establish the extent to which these systems are moving towards the Western European model and the structure of taxes and expenditures likely to result. It also identifies risks to the reform process resulting from pressures on budget balances during the transition, as tax revenues decline and countries are reluctant to phase out subsidies to unprofitable enterprises.

Abstract:

An important but apparently neglected fact about U.S. exports is that export variation over time is dominated by variation in exports of capital goods and industrial supplies rather than consumer goods. This fact suggests that world investment demand rather than world consumption demand may be an important yet neglected determinant of U.S. exports. This paper documents a remarkably robust statistical relationship between U.S. exports and world investment demand, and shows that controlling for world investment changes other aspects of traditional export demand equations. To the extent that world investment behaves differently than world consumption, this finding may lead to a revision of current thinking about the ultimate determinants of U.S. exports and the mechanisms through which world economic shocks are transmitted to the U.S. economy.

Abstract:

Fifty years of econometric work on trade assumes that trade elasticities are invariant to changes in spending patterns, that prices can be taken as given, and that expenditures on domestic and foreign goods can be studied independently of each other. To relax these assumptions, this paper assembles a simultaneous model explaining trade among Canada, Japan, and the United States. Spending behaves according to the Rotterdam model which, by design, embodies all of the properties of utility maxi­mization and does not treat trade elasticities as autonomous parameters. Pricing behaves according to the pricing-to-market hypothesis which recognizes exporters' incentives to discriminate across export markets. Parameter estimation relies on the Full Information Maximum Likelihood approach and uses bilateral price data for 1965-1987. According to the evidence, treating trade elasticities as autonomous parameters and ignoring the statistical implications of simultaneity and optimization un­dermines our effectiveness in addressing questions relevant to economic interactions among nations. Specifically, the estimates from the Rotterdam model predict that asymmetries in income elasticities, which were important once, have vanished.

Abstract:

This paper uses a macroeconomic model with rational expectations to analyze issues related to German unification. A principal focus of the paper is the effect of unification on member countries of the European Monetary System. Under certain conditions, German unification has a contractionary effect on other EMS countries. We explore the implications for EMS and other countries of alternative German fiscal and monetary policies.

Abstract:

In a world of mobile capital, the current system of nominal interest taxation implies that the cost of capital and the return to saving in each country are strongly and negatively correlated with the rate of inflation. It follows that a country's net foreign asset position (and its current account balance) ought to be negatively correlated with its inflation rate. The magnitude of these effects is shown to be large, both theoretically and empirically. For OECD countries, cross-sectional regressions confirm that inflation rates are good predictors of current accounts, even after controlling for business cycles and government budget deficits. These results imply that existing current account imbalances largely reflect tax distortions rather than an optimal allocation of world savings.