Exchange rates

• December 22, 2003

  Current Account Imbalances: Some Key Issues for the Major Industrialized Countries

  Bank of Canada Review - Winter 2003-2004 Jocelyn Jacob

  The resurgence of sizable current account imbalances in the major economies in recent years, particularly the tripling of the U.S. deficit, has led to renewed academic and public discussions about their sustainability. Jacob's main objective is to show that current account balances are simply the outcome of various relative structural and cyclical forces between trading partners. He reviews the factors behind the changes in the current account positions of the three largest industrial economies (the United States, Japan, and the euro area). Two strong determinants shaping the current account balances are the faster increase in U.S. productivity compared with that of other major economies and, more recently, the loosening in the U.S. fiscal stance. Jacob also reviews a range of outside assessments from such sources as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the International Monetary Fund, as well as the academic literature, to determine the possible risks to macroeconomic and financial stability.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Exchange rates, International topics

• Anatomy of a Twin Crisis

  Staff Working Paper 2003-41 Raphael Solomon

  The author presents a model of a twin crisis, in which foreign and domestic residents play a banking game. Both "honest" and run equilibria of the post-deposit subgame exist; some run equilibria lead to a currency crisis, as agents convert domestic currency to foreign currency.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial institutions JEL Code(s): E, E5, E58, F, F3, F30, G, G2, G21

• Alternative Targeting Regimes, Transmission Lags, and the Exchange Rate Channel

  Staff Working Paper 2003-39 Jean-Paul Lam

  Using a closed-economy model, Jensen (2002) and Walsh (2003) have, respectively, shown that a policy regime that optimally targets nominal income growth (NIT) or the change in the output gap (SLT) outperforms a regime that targets inflation, because NIT and SLT induce more inertia in the actions of the central bank, effectively replicating the outcome obtained under precommitment. The author obtains a very different result when the analysis is extended to open-economy models.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E5, E52, E58

• Real Exchange Rate Persistence in Dynamic General-Equilibrium Sticky-Price Models: An Analytical Characterization

  Staff Working Paper 2003-35 Hafedh Bouakez

  This paper assesses analytically the ability of dynamic general-equilibrium sticky-price models to generate persistent real exchange rate fluctuations. It develops a tractable general-equilibrium model with Calvo-type price stickiness.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Exchange rates, International topics JEL Code(s): F, F3, F31, F4, F41

• Nominal Rigidities and Exchange Rate Pass-Through in a Structural Model of a Small Open Economy

  Staff Working Paper 2003-29 Steve Ambler, Ali Dib, Nooman Rebei

  The authors analyze exchange rate pass-through in an estimated structural model of a small open economy that incorporates three types of nominal rigidity (wages and the prices of domestically produced and imported goods) and eight different structural shocks. The model is estimated using quarterly data from Canada and the United States.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Economic models, Exchange rates, Inflation and prices, International topics JEL Code(s): F, F2, F3, F31, F33

• Monetary Policy in Estimated Models of Small Open and Closed Economies

  Staff Working Paper 2003-27 Ali Dib

  The author develops and estimates a quantitative dynamic-optimizing model of a small open economy (SOE) with domestic and import price stickiness and capital-adjustment costs. A monetary policy rule allows the central bank to systematically manage the short-term nominal interest rate in response to deviations of inflation, output, and money growth from their steadystate levels.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Exchange rates, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E5, E52, F, F2, F3
• August 22, 2003

  Measuring Interest Rate Expectations in Canada

  Bank of Canada Review - Summer 2003 Grahame Johnson

  Financial market expectations regarding future changes in the target for the overnight rate of interest are an important source of information for the Bank of Canada. Financial markets are the mechanism through which the policy rate affects other financial variables, such as longer-term interest rates, the exchange rate, and other asset prices. An accurate measure of their expectations can therefore help policy-makers assess the potential impact of contemplated changes. Johnson focuses on the expectations hypothesis, which measures expectations of future levels of the target overnight rate as implied by current money market yields. Although expectations can be derived from the current yield on any short-term fixed-income asset, some assets have proven to be more accurate predictors than others. The implementation of a policy of fixed-announcements dates has coincided with the increased predictive power of these short-term assets. As a result of this improvement, a relatively simple model of the yield curve can now provide an accurate measure of financial market expectations.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review articles Topic(s): Exchange rates, Financial markets, Interest rates

• Modélisation et prévision du taux de change réel effectif américain

  Staff Working Paper 2003-3 René Lalonde, Patrick Sabourin

  This study describes a simple model for predicting the real U.S. exchange rate. Starting with a large number of error-correction models, the authors choose the one giving the best out-of-sample forecasts over the period 1992Q3–2002Q1.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Economic models, Exchange rates, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E1, E17, F, F3, F31, F4, F47