National Income Accounting and the Balance of Payments B · 323 chapter13 National Income Accounting and the Balance of Payments B etween 2004 and 2007, the world economy boomed,

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National Income Accounting and the Balance of Payments

Between 2004 and 2007, the world economy boomed, its total real productgrowing at an annual average rate of about 5 percent per year. The growthrate of world production slowed to around 3 percent per year in 2008, before

dropping to minus 0.6 percent in 2009—a reduction in world output unprecedentedin the period since World War II. These aggregate patterns mask sharp differencesamong individual countries. Some, such as China, slowed relatively modestly in2009, while the output of other countries, such as the United States, contractedsharply. Can economic analysis help us to understand the behavior of the globaleconomy and the reasons why individual countries’ fortunes often differ?

Previous chapters have been concerned primarily with the problem of makingthe best use of the world’s scarce productive resources at a single point in time.The branch of economics called microeconomics studies this problem from theperspective of individual firms and consumers. Microeconomics works “from thebottom up” to show how individual economic actors, by pursuing their own inter-ests, collectively determine how resources are used. In our study of internationalmicroeconomics, we have learned how individual production and consumptiondecisions produce patterns of international trade and specialization. We have alsoseen that while free trade usually encourages efficient resource use, governmentintervention or market failures can cause waste even when all factors of produc-tion are fully employed.

With this chapter we shift our focus and ask: How can economic policyensure that factors of production are fully employed? And what determines howan economy’s capacity to produce goods and services changes over time? Toanswer these questions, we must understand macroeconomics, the branch ofeconomics that studies how economies’ overall levels of employment, produc-tion, and growth are determined. Like microeconomics, macroeconomics isconcerned with the effective use of scarce resources. But while microeconomicsfocuses on the economic decisions of individuals, macroeconomics analyzesthe behavior of an economy as a whole. In our study of international macroeco-nomics, we will learn how the interactions of national economies influence theworldwide pattern of macroeconomic activity.

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324 PART THREE Exchange Rates and Open-Economy Macroeconomics

Macroeconomic analysis emphasizes four aspects of economic life that, untilnow, we have usually kept in the background to simplify our discussion of inter-national economics:

1. Unemployment. We know that in the real world, workers may be unemployedand factories may be idle. Macroeconomics studies the factors that causeunemployment and the steps governments can take to prevent it. A main con-cern of international macroeconomics is the problem of ensuring full employ-ment in economies open to international trade.

2. Saving. In earlier chapters we usually assumed that every country consumes anamount exactly equal to its income—no more and no less. In reality, though,households can put aside part of their income to provide for the future, or theycan borrow temporarily to spend more than they earn. A country’s saving orborrowing behavior affects domestic employment and future levels of nationalwealth. From the standpoint of the international economy as a whole, theworld saving rate determines how quickly the world stock of productive capitalcan grow.

3. Trade imbalances. As we saw in earlier chapters, the value of a country’simports equals the value of its exports when spending equals income. Thisstate of balanced trade is seldom attained by actual economies, however. Inthe following chapters, trade imbalances play a large role because they redis-tribute wealth among countries and are a main channel through which onecountry’s macroeconomic policies affect its trading partners. It should be nosurprise, therefore, that trade imbalances, particularly when they are largeand persistent, quickly can become a source of international discord.

4. Money and the price level. The trade theory you have studied so far is abarter theory, one in which goods are exchanged directly for other goods onthe basis of their relative prices. In practice, it is more convenient to usemoney—a widely acceptable medium of exchange—in transactions, and toquote prices in terms of money. Because money changes hands in virtuallyevery transaction that takes place in a modern economy, fluctuations in thesupply of money or in the demand for it can affect both output and employ-ment. International macroeconomics takes into account that every countryuses a currency and that a monetary change (for example, a change inmoney supply) in one country can have effects that spill across its borders toother countries. Stability in money price levels is an important goal of inter-national macroeconomic policy.

This chapter takes the first step in our study of international macroeconomics byexplaining the accounting concepts economists use to describe a country’s level ofproduction and its international transactions. To get a complete picture of themacroeconomic linkages among economies that engage in international trade, wehave to master two related and essential tools. The first of these tools, nationalincome accounting, records all the expenditures that contribute to a country’sincome and output. The second tool, balance of payments accounting, helps us

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CHAPTER 13 National Income Accounting and the Balance of Payments 325

keep track of both changes in a country’s indebtedness to foreigners and thefortunes of its export and import-competing industries. The balance of paymentsaccounts also show the connection between foreign transactions and nationalmoney supplies.

LEARNING GOALS

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

• Discuss the concept of the current account balance.• Use the current account balance to extend national income accounting to

open economies.• Apply national income accounting to the interaction of saving, investment,

and net exports.• Describe the balance of payments accounts and explain their relationship to

the current account balance.• Relate the current account to changes in a country’s net foreign wealth.

The National Income AccountsOf central concern to macroeconomic analysis is a country’s gross national product(GNP), the value of all final goods and services produced by the country’s factors of pro-duction and sold on the market in a given time period. GNP, which is the basic measure ofa country’s output studied by macroeconomists, is calculated by adding up the marketvalue of all expenditures on final output. GNP therefore includes the value of goods likebread sold in a supermarket and textbooks sold in a bookstore, as well as the value of serv-ices provided by stock brokers and plumbers. Because output cannot be produced withoutthe aid of factor inputs, the expenditures that make up GNP are closely linked to theemployment of labor, capital, and other factors of production.

To distinguish among the different types of expenditure that make up a country’s GNP,government economists and statisticians who compile national income accounts divideGNP among the four possible uses for which a country’s final output is purchased:consumption (the amount consumed by private domestic residents), investment (theamount put aside by private firms to build new plant and equipment for future production),government purchases (the amount used by the government), and the current account bal-ance (the amount of net exports of goods and services to foreigners). The term nationalincome accounts, rather than national output accounts, is used to describe this fourfoldclassification because a country’s income in fact equals its output. Thus, the nationalincome accounts can be thought of as classifying each transaction that contributes tonational income according to the type of expenditure that gives rise to it. Figure 13-1shows how U.S. GNP was divided among its four components in 2009.1

Why is it useful to divide GNP into consumption, investment, government purchases,and the current account? One major reason is that we cannot hope to understand the causeof a particular recession or boom without knowing how the main categories of spending

1 Our definition of the current account is not strictly accurate when a country is a net donor or recipient of foreigngifts. This possibility, along with some others, also complicates our identification of GNP with national income.We describe later in this chapter how the definitions of national income and the current account must be changedin such cases.

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Billionsof dollars

12000

16000

0

–2000

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

GNP

Consumption

Investment

14000

Currentaccount

Governmentpurchases

Figure 13-1

U.S. GNP and Its Components

America’s $14.4 trillion 2009 grossnational product can be broken downinto the four components shown.

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce,Bureau of Economic Analysis.

have changed. And without such an understanding, we cannot recommend a sound policyresponse. In addition, the national income accounts provide information essential forstudying why some countries are rich—that is, have a high level of GNP relative to popu-lation size—while some are poor.

National Product and National IncomeOur first task in understanding how economists analyze GNP is to explain in greater detailwhy the GNP a country generates over some time period must equal its national income,the income earned in that period by its factors of production.

The reason for this equality is that every dollar used to purchase goods or services auto-matically ends up in somebody’s pocket. A visit to the doctor provides a simple example ofhow an increase in national output raises national income by the same amount. The $75 youpay the doctor represents the market value of the services he or she provides for you, soyour visit raises GNP by $75. But the $75 you pay the doctor also raises his or her income.So national income rises by $75.

The principle that output and income are the same also applies to goods, even goodsthat are produced with the help of many factors of production. Consider the example of aneconomics textbook. When you purchase a new book from the publisher, the value of yourpurchase enters GNP. But your payment enters the income of the productive factors thatcooperated in producing the book, because the publisher must pay for their services withthe proceeds of sales. First, there are the authors, editors, artists, and compositors who pro-vide the labor inputs necessary for the book’s production. Second, there are the publishingcompany’s shareholders, who receive dividends for having financed acquisition of the cap-ital used in production. Finally, there are the suppliers of paper and ink, who provide theintermediate materials used in producing the book.

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The paper and ink purchased by the publishing house to produce the book are notcounted separately in GNP because their contribution to the value of national output isalready included in the book’s price. It is to avoid such double counting that we allow onlythe sale of final goods and services to enter into the definition of GNP. Sales of intermedi-ate goods, such as paper and ink purchased by a publisher, are not counted. Notice alsothat the sale of a used textbook does not enter GNP. Our definition counts only final goodsand services that are produced, and a used textbook does not qualify: It was counted inGNP at the time it was first sold. Equivalently, the sale of a used textbook does not gener-ate income for any factor of production.

Capital Depreciation and International TransfersBecause we have defined GNP and national income so that they are necessarily equal,their equality is really an identity. Two adjustments to the definition of GNP must bemade, however, before the identification of GNP and national income is entirely correct inpractice.

1. GNP does not take into account the economic loss due to the tendency of machineryand structures to wear out as they are used. This loss, called depreciation, reduces theincome of capital owners. To calculate national income over a given period, we musttherefore subtract from GNP the depreciation of capital over the period. GNP lessdepreciation is called net national product (NNP).

2. A country’s income may include gifts from residents of foreign countries, calledunilateral transfers. Examples of unilateral transfers of income are pension paymentsto retired citizens living abroad, reparation payments, and foreign aid such as relieffunds donated to drought-stricken nations. For the United States in 2009, the balanceof such payments amounted to around –$130.2 billion, representing a 0.9 percent ofGNP net transfer to foreigners. Net unilateral transfers are part of a country’s incomebut are not part of its product, and they must be added to NNP in calculations ofnational income.

National income equals GNP less depreciation plus net unilateral transfers. The differ-ence between GNP and national income is by no means an insignificant amount, butmacroeconomics has little to say about it, and it is of little importance for macroeconomicanalysis. Therefore, for the purposes of this text, we usually use the terms GNP andnational income interchangeably, emphasizing the distinction between the two only whenit is essential.2

Gross Domestic ProductMost countries other than the United States have long reported gross domestic product(GDP) rather than GNP as their primary measure of national economic activity. In 1991 theUnited States began to follow this practice as well. GDP is supposed to measure the volumeof production within a country’s borders, whereas GNP equals GDP plus net receipts offactor income from the rest of the world. For the U.S., these net receipts are primarily the

2 Strictly speaking, government statisticians refer to what we have called “national income” as national disposableincome. Their official concept of national income omits foreign net unilateral transfers. Once again, however, thedifference between national income and national disposable income is usually unimportant for macroeconomicanalysis. Unilateral transfers are alternatively referred to as secondary income payments to distinguish them fromprimary income payments consisting of cross-border wage and investment income. We will see this terminologylater when we study balance of payments accounting.

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income domestic residents earn on wealth they hold in other countries less the paymentsdomestic residents make to foreign owners of wealth that is located in the domestic country.

GDP does not correct, as GNP does, for the portion of countries’ production carried outusing services provided by foreign-owned capital and labor. Consider an example: The earn-ings of a Spanish factory with British owners are counted in Spain’s GDP but are part ofBritain’s GNP. The services British capital provides in Spain are a service export from Britain,therefore they are added to British GDP in calculating British GNP. At the same time, to figureSpain’s GNP, we must subtract from its GDP the corresponding service import from Britain.

As a practical matter, movements in GDP and GNP usually do not differ greatly. Wewill focus on GNP in this book, however, because GNP tracks national income moreclosely than GDP does, and national welfare depends more directly on national incomethan on domestic product.

National Income Accounting for an Open EconomyIn this section we extend to the case of an open economy the closed-economy nationalincome accounting framework you may have seen in earlier economics courses. We beginwith a discussion of the national income accounts because they highlight the key role ofinternational trade in open-economy macroeconomic theory. Since a closed economy’sresidents cannot purchase foreign output or sell their own to foreigners, all of nationalincome must be allocated to domestic consumption, investment, or government purchases.In an economy open to international trade, however, the closed-economy version ofnational income accounting must be modified because some domestic output is exportedto foreigners while some domestic income is spent on imported foreign products.

The main lesson of this section is the relationship among national saving, investment,and trade imbalances. We will see that in open economies, saving and investment are notnecessarily equal, as they are in a closed economy. This occurs because countries can savein the form of foreign wealth by exporting more than they import, and they can dissave—that is, reduce their foreign wealth—by exporting less than they import.

ConsumptionThe portion of GNP purchased by private households to fulfill current wants is calledconsumption. Purchases of movie tickets, food, dental work, and washing machines allfall into this category. Consumption expenditure is the largest component of GNP in mosteconomies. In the United States, for example, the fraction of GNP devoted to consumptionhas fluctuated in a range from about 62 to 70 percent over the past 60 years.

InvestmentThe part of output used by private firms to produce future output is called investment.Investment spending may be viewed as the portion of GNP used to increase the nation’sstock of capital. Steel and bricks used to build a factory are part of investment spending, asare services provided by a technician who helps build business computers. Firms’ pur-chases of inventories are also counted in investment spending because carrying inventoriesis just another way for firms to transfer output from current use to future use.

Investment is usually more variable than consumption. In the United States, (gross) invest-ment has fluctuated between 11 and 22 percent of GNP in recent years. We often use the wordinvestment to describe individual households’ purchases of stocks, bonds, or real estate, butyou should be careful not to confuse this everyday meaning of the word with the economicdefinition of investment as a part of GNP. When you buy a share of Microsoft stock, you arebuying neither a good nor a service, so your purchase does not show up in GNP.

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Government PurchasesAny goods and services purchased by federal, state, or local governments are classified asgovernment purchases in the national income accounts. Included in government purchasesare federal military spending, government support of cancer research, and governmentfunds spent on highway repair and education. Government purchases include investment aswell as consumption purchases. Government transfer payments such as social security andunemployment benefits do not require the recipient to give the government any goods or serv-ices in return. Thus, transfer payments are not included in government purchases.

Government purchases currently take up about 20 percent of U.S. GNP, and this share hasnot changed much since the late 1950s. (The corresponding figure for 1959, for example, wasaround 20 percent.) In 1929, however, government purchases accounted for only 8.5 percentof U.S. GNP.

The National Income Identity for an Open EconomyIn a closed economy, any final good or service that is not purchased by households or thegovernment must be used by firms to produce new plant, equipment, and inventories. Ifconsumption goods are not sold immediately to consumers or the government, firms(perhaps reluctantly) add them to existing inventories, thereby increasing their investment.

This information leads to a fundamental identity for closed economies. Let Y stand for GNP,C for consumption, I for investment, and G for government purchases. Since all of a closedeconomy’s output must be consumed, invested, or bought by the government, we can write

We derived the national income identity for a closed economy by assuming that alloutput is consumed or invested by the country’s citizens or purchased by its government.When foreign trade is possible, however, some output is purchased by foreigners whilesome domestic spending goes to purchase goods and services produced abroad. The GNPidentity for open economies shows how the national income a country earns by selling itsgoods and services is divided between sales to domestic residents and sales to foreignresidents.

Since residents of an open economy may spend some of their income on imports, thatis, goods and services purchased from abroad, only the portion of their spending that is notdevoted to imports is part of domestic GNP. The value of imports, denoted by IM, must besubtracted from total domestic spending, , to find the portion of domesticspending that generates domestic national income. Imports from abroad add to foreigncountries’ GNPs but do not add directly to domestic GNP.

Similarly, the goods and services sold to foreigners make up a country’s exports.Exports, denoted by EX, are the amount foreign residents’ purchases add to the nationalincome of the domestic economy.

The national income of an open economy is therefore the sum of domestic and foreignexpenditures on the goods and services produced by domestic factors of production. Thus,the national income identity for an open economy is

(13-1)

An Imaginary Open EconomyTo make identity (13-1) concrete, let’s consider an imaginary closed economy, Agraria,whose only output is wheat. Each citizen of Agraria is a consumer of wheat, but each isalso a farmer and therefore can be viewed as a firm. Farmers invest by putting aside a

Y = C + I + G + EX - IM.

C + I + G

Y = C + I + G.

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portion of each year’s crop as seed for the next year’s planting. There is also a govern-ment that appropriates part of the crop to feed the Agrarian army. Agraria’s total annualcrop is 100 bushels of wheat. Agraria can import milk from the rest of the world inexchange for exports of wheat. We cannot draw up the Agrarian national incomeaccounts without knowing the price of milk in terms of wheat because all the compo-nents in the GNP identity (13-1) must be measured in the same units. If we assume theprice of milk is 0.5 bushel of wheat per gallon, and that at this price, Agrarians want toconsume 40 gallons of milk, then Agraria’s imports are equal in value to 20 bushelsof wheat.

In Table 13-1 we see that Agraria’s total output is 100 bushels of wheat. Consumptionis divided between wheat and milk, with 55 bushels of wheat and 40 gallons of milk (equalin value to 20 bushels of wheat) consumed over the year. The value of consumption interms of wheat is .

The 100 bushels of wheat produced by Agraria are used as follows: 55 are consumed bydomestic residents, 25 are invested, 10 are purchased by the government, and 10 are exportedabroad. National income equals domestic spending plusexports less imports .

The Current Account and Foreign IndebtednessIn reality, a country’s foreign trade is exactly balanced only rarely. The difference betweenexports of goods and services and imports of goods and services is known as the currentaccount balance (or current account). If we denote the current account by CA, we canexpress this definition in symbols as

When a country’s imports exceed its exports, we say the country has a current accountdeficit. A country has a current account surplus when its exports exceed its imports.3

The GNP identity, equation (13-1), shows one reason why the current account is importantin international macroeconomics. Since the right-hand side of (13-1) gives total expenditureson domestic output, changes in the current account can be associated with changes in outputand, thus, employment.

The current account is also important because it measures the size and direction ofinternational borrowing. When a country imports more than it exports, it is buying more

CA = EX - IM.

(IM = 20)(EX = 10)(C + I + G = 110)(Y = 100)

55 + (0.5 * 40) = 55 + 20 = 75

TABLE 13-1 National Income Accounts for Agraria, an Open Economy (bushels of wheat)

GNP � Consumption � Investment � Government � Exports � Imports(total output) purchases

100 75a 25 10 10 20b-+++=

a

b0.5 bushel per gallon * 40 gallons of milk.

55 bushels of wheat + 10.5 bushel per gallon2 * 140 gallons of milk2.

3 In addition to net exports of goods and services, the current account balance includes net unilateral transfers ofincome, which we discussed briefly above. Following our earlier assumption, we continue to ignore such trans-fers for now to simplify the discussion. Later in this chapter, when we analyze the U.S. balance of payments indetail, we will see how transfers of current income enter the current account.

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from foreigners than it sells to them and must somehow finance this current accountdeficit. How does it pay for additional imports once it has spent its export earnings? Sincethe country as a whole can import more than it exports only if it can borrow the differencefrom foreigners, a country with a current account deficit must be increasing its net foreigndebts by the amount of the deficit. This is currently the position of the United States,which has a significant current account deficit (and borrowed a sum equal to roughly3 percent of its GNP in 2009).4

Similarly, a country with a current account surplus is earning more from its exportsthan it spends on imports. This country finances the current account deficit of its tradingpartners by lending to them. The foreign wealth of a surplus country rises because foreign-ers pay for any imports not covered by their exports by issuing IOUs that they will eventu-ally have to redeem. The preceding reasoning shows that a country’s current accountbalance equals the change in its net foreign wealth.

We have defined the current account as the difference between exports and imports.Equation (13-1) says that the current account is also equal to the difference betweennational income and domestic residents’ total spending :

It is only by borrowing abroad that a country can have a current account deficit and usemore output than it is currently producing. If it uses less than its output, it has a currentaccount surplus and is lending the surplus to foreigners.5 International borrowing andlending were identified with intertemporal trade in Chapter 6. A country with a currentaccount deficit is importing present consumption and exporting future consumption.A country with a current account surplus is exporting present consumption and importingfuture consumption.

As an example, consider again the imaginary economy of Agraria described in Table 13-1.The total value of its consumption, investment, and government purchases, at 110 bushels ofwheat, is greater than its output of 100 bushels. This inequality would be impossible in aclosed economy; it is possible in this open economy because Agraria now imports 40 gallonsof milk, worth 20 bushels of wheat, but exports only 10 bushels of wheat. The current accountdeficit of 10 bushels is the value of Agraria’s borrowing from foreigners, which the countrywill have to repay in the future.

Figure 13-2 gives a vivid illustration of how a string of current account deficits can addup to a large foreign debt. The figure plots the U.S. current account balance since the late1970s along with a measure of the nation’s stock of net foreign wealth. As you can see, theUnited States had accumulated substantial foreign wealth by the early 1980s, when a sus-tained current account deficit of proportions unprecedented in the 20th century opened up.In 1987, the country became a net debtor to foreigners for the first time since World War I.That foreign debt has continued to grow, and at the end of 2009, it stood at just below20 percent of GNP.

Y - 1C + I + G2 = CA.

C + I + G

4 Alternatively, a country could finance a current account deficit by using previously accumulated foreign wealthto pay for imports. This country would be running down its net foreign wealth, which is the same as running upits net foreign debts.

Our discussion here is ignoring the possibility that a country receives gifts of foreign assets (or gives suchgifts), such as when one country agrees to forgive another’s debts. As we will discuss below, such asset transfers(unlike transfers of current income) are not part of the current account, but they nonetheless do affect net foreignwealth. They are recorded in the capital account of the balance of payments.5 The sum is often called domestic absorption in the literature on international macroeconomics.Using this terminology, we can describe the current account surplus as the difference between income and absorp-tion, .Y - A

A = C + I + G

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–3000

–3200

–3600

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–2800

–2200

–2000

–1800

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0

200

400Net foreign wealth

Current account

1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

Current account,net foreign wealth (billions of dollars)

–3400

Figure 13-2

The U.S. Current Account and Net Foreign Wealth Position, 1976–2009

A string of current account deficits starting in the 1980s reduced America’s net foreign wealth until, by theearly 21st century, the country had accumulated a substantial net foreign debt.

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Saving and the Current AccountSimple as it is, the GNP identity has many illuminating implications. To explain the mostimportant of these implications, we define the concept of national saving, that is, the portionof output, Y, that is not devoted to household consumption, C, or government purchases, G.6

In a closed economy, national saving always equals investment. This tells us that the closedeconomy as a whole can increase its wealth only by accumulating new capital.

Let S stand for national saving. Our definition of S tells us that

S = Y - C - G.

6 The U.S. national income accounts assume that government purchases are not used to enlarge the nation’s capitalstock. We follow this convention here by subtracting all government purchases from output to calculate nationalsaving. Most other countries’ national accounts distinguish between government consumption and governmentinvestment (for example, investment by publicly owned enterprises) and include the latter as part of nationalsaving. Often, however, government investment figures include purchases of military equipment.

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Since the closed-economy GNP identity, , may also be written as, then

and national saving must equal investment in a closed economy. Whereas in a closed econ-omy, saving and investment must always be equal, in an open economy they can differ.Remembering that national saving, S, equals and that , wecan rewrite the GNP identity (13-1) as

The equation highlights an important difference between open and closed economies:An open economy can save either by building up its capital stock or by acquiring foreignwealth, but a closed economy can save only by building up its capital stock.

Unlike a closed economy, an open economy with profitable investment opportunities doesnot have to increase its saving in order to exploit them. The preceding expression shows that itis possible simultaneously to raise investment and foreign borrowing without changing sav-ing. For example, if New Zealand decides to build a new hydroelectric plant, it can import thematerials it needs from the United States and borrow American funds to pay for them. Thistransaction raises New Zealand’s domestic investment because the imported materialscontribute to expanding the country’s capital stock. The transaction also raises New Zealand’scurrent account deficit by an amount equal to the increase in investment. New Zealand’s sav-ing does not have to change, even though investment rises. For this to be possible, however,U.S. residents must be willing to save more so that the resources needed to build the plant arefreed for New Zealand’s use. The result is another example of intertemporal trade, in whichNew Zealand imports present consumption (when it borrows from the United States) andexports future consumption (when it pays off the loan).

Because one country’s savings can be borrowed by a second country in order toincrease the second country’s stock of capital, a country’s current account surplus is oftenreferred to as its net foreign investment. Of course, when one country lends to another tofinance investment, part of the income generated by the investment in future years must beused to pay back the lender. Domestic investment and foreign investment are two differentways in which a country can use current savings to increase its future income.

Private and Government SavingSo far our discussion of saving has not stressed the distinction between saving decisionsmade by the private sector and saving decisions made by the government. Unlike privatesaving decisions, however, government saving decisions are often made with an eyetoward their effect on output and employment. The national income identity can help us toanalyze the channels through which government saving decisions influence macroeco-nomic conditions. To use the national income identity in this way, we first have to dividenational saving into its private and government components.

Private saving is defined as the part of disposable income that is saved rather than con-sumed. Disposable income is national income, Y, less the net taxes collected from house-holds and firms by the government, T.7 Private saving, denoted , can therefore beexpressed as

Sp= Y - T - C.

Sp

S = I + CA.

CA = EX - IMY - C - G

S = I,

I = Y - C - GY = C + I + G

7 Net taxes are taxes less government transfer payments. The term government refers to the federal, state, andlocal governments considered as a single unit.

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Government saving is defined similarly to private saving. The government’s “income”is its net tax revenue, T, while its “consumption” is government purchases, G. If we let stand for government saving, then

The two types of saving we have defined, private and government, add up to nationalsaving. To see why, recall the definition of national saving, S, as . Then

We can use the definitions of private and government saving to rewrite the nationalincome identity in a form that is useful for analyzing the effects of government savingdecisions on open economies. Because ,

(13-2)

Equation (13-2) relates private saving to domestic investment, the current account sur-plus, and government saving. To interpret equation (13-2), we define the governmentbudget deficit as , that is, as government saving preceded by a minus sign. Thegovernment budget deficit measures the extent to which the government is borrowing tofinance its expenditures. Equation (13-2) then states that a country’s private saving can takethree forms: investment in domestic capital (I), purchases of wealth from foreigners ,and purchases of the domestic government’s newly issued debt .8 The usefulnessof equation (13-2) is illustrated by the following Case Study.

Case Study

Government Deficit Reduction May Not Increase the Current Account SurplusThe linkage among the current account balance, investment, and private and governmentsaving given by equation (13-2) is very useful for thinking about the results of economicpolicies and events. Our predictions about such outcomes cannot possibly be correct unlessthe current account, investment, and saving rates are assumed to adjust in line with (13-2).Because that equation is an identity, however, and is not based on any theory of economicbehavior, we cannot forecast the results of policies without some model of the economy.Equation (13-2) is an identity because it must be included in any valid economic model,but there are any number of models consistent with identity (13-2).

A good example of how hard it can be to forecast policies’ effects comes from think-ing about the effects of government deficits on the current account. During the adminis-tration of President Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, the United States slashed taxes andraised some government expenditures, which generated both a big government deficit anda sharply increased current account deficit. Those events gave rise to the argument thatthe government and the current account deficits were “twin deficits,” both generated pri-marily by the Reagan policies. If you rewrite identity (13-2) in the form

CA = Sp- I - 1G - T2,

(G - T )(CA)

G - T

Sp= I + CA - Sg

= I + CA - 1T - G2 = I + CA + 1G - T2.

S = Sp+ Sg

= I + CA

S = Y - C - G = 1Y - T - C2 + 1T - G2 = Sp+ Sg.

Y - C - G

Sg= T - G.

Sg

8 In a closed economy, the current account is always zero, so equation (13-2) is simply .Sp= I + (G - T )

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you can see how that outcome could have occurred. If the government deficit rises( goes up) and private saving and investment don’t change much, the currentaccount surplus must fall by roughly the same amount as the increase in the fiscaldeficit. In the United States between 1981 and 1985, the government deficit increasedby a bit more than 2 percent of GNP, while fell by about half a percent of GNP,so the current account fell from an approximately balanced position to about –3 percentof GNP. (The variables in identity (13-2) are expressed as percentages of GNP for easycomparison.) Thus, the twin deficits prediction is not too far off the mark.

The twin deficits theory can lead us seriously astray, however, when changes in gov-ernment deficits lead to bigger changes in private saving and investment behavior. A goodexample of these effects comes from European countries’ efforts to cut their governmentbudget deficits prior to the launch of their new common currency, the euro, in January1999. As we will discuss in Chapter 20, the European Union (EU) had agreed that nomember country with a large government deficit would be allowed to adopt the new cur-rency along with the initial wave of euro zone members. As 1999 approached, therefore,EU governments made frantic efforts to cut government spending and raise taxes.

Under the twin deficits theory, we would have expected the EU’s current accountsurplus to increase sharply as a result of the fiscal change. As the table below shows,however, nothing of the sort actually happened. For the EU as a whole, governmentdeficits fell by about 4.5 percent of output, yet the current account surplus remainedabout the same.

The table reveals the main reason the current account didn’t change much: a sharpfall in the private saving rate, which declined by about 4 percent of output, almost asmuch as the increase in government saving. (Investment rose slightly at the same time.)In this case, the behavior of private savers just about neutralized governments’ effortsto raise national saving!

It is difficult to know why this offset occurred, but there are a number of possibleexplanations. One is based on an economic theory known as the Ricardian equivalenceof taxes and government deficits. (The theory is named after the same David Ricardowho discovered the theory of comparative advantage—recall Chapter 3—although hehimself did not believe in Ricardian equivalence.) Ricardian equivalence argues thatwhen the government cuts taxes and raises its deficit, consumers anticipate that theywill face higher taxes later to pay off the resulting government debt. In anticipation,they raise their own (private) saving to offset the fall in government saving. Conversely,governments that lower their deficits through higher taxes (thereby increasing govern-ment saving) will induce the private sector to lower its own saving. Qualitatively, this isthe kind of behavior we saw in Europe in the late 1990s.

Sp- I

G - T

European Union (percentage of GNP)

Year CA SP I G - T1995 0.6 25.9 19.9 -5.41996 1.0 24.6 19.3 -4.31997 1.5 23.4 19.4 -2.51998 1.0 22.6 20.0 -1.61999 0.2 21.8 20.8 -0.8

Source: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Economic Outlook 68 (December 2000), annex tables 27, 30, and 52 (with investment calculated as the residual).

13


Economists’ statistical studies suggest, however, that Ricardian equivalence doesn’thold exactly in practice. Most economists would attribute no more than half the declinein European private saving to Ricardian effects. What explains the rest of the decline?The values of European financial assets were generally rising in the late 1990s, a devel-opment fueled in part by optimism over the beneficial economic effects of the plannedcommon currency. It is likely that increased household wealth was a second factor low-ering the private saving rate in Europe.

Because private saving, investment, the current account, and the government deficitare jointly determined variables, we can never fully determine the cause of a currentaccount change using identity (13-2) alone. Nonetheless, the identity provides anessential framework for thinking about the current account and can furnish useful clues.

The Balance of Payments AccountsIn addition to national income accounts, government economists and statisticians alsokeep balance of payments accounts, a detailed record of the composition of the currentaccount balance and of the many transactions that finance it.9 Balance of payments figuresare of great interest to the general public, as indicated by the attention that various newsmedia pay to them. But press reports sometimes confuse different measures of interna-tional payments flows. Should we be alarmed or cheered by a Wall Street Journal headlineproclaiming, “U.S. Chalks Up Record Balance of Payments Deficit”? A thorough under-standing of balance of payments accounting will help us evaluate the implications of acountry’s international transactions.

A country’s balance of payments accounts keep track of both its payments to and itsreceipts from foreigners. Any transaction resulting in a receipt from foreigners is enteredin the balance of payments accounts as a credit. Any transaction resulting in a payment toforeigners is entered as a debit. Three types of international transaction are recorded in thebalance of payments:

1. Transactions that arise from the export or import of goods or services and thereforeenter directly into the current account. When a French consumer imports Americanblue jeans, for example, the transaction enters the U.S. balance of payments accountsas a credit on the current account.

2. Transactions that arise from the purchase or sale of financial assets. An asset is anyone of the forms in which wealth can be held, such as money, stocks, factories, orgovernment debt. The financial account of the balance of payments records allinternational purchases or sales of financial assets. When an American companybuys a French factory, the transaction enters the U.S. balance of payments as a debitin the financial account. It enters as a debit because the transaction requires a

9 The U.S. government is in the process of changing its balance of payments presentation to conform to prevail-ing international standards, so our discussion in this chapter differs in some respects from that in prior editions ofthis book. We follow the methodology described by Kristy L. Howell and Robert E. Yuskavage, “Modernizingand Enhancing BEA’s International Economic Accounts: Recent Progress and Future Directions,” Survey ofCurrent Business (May 2010), pp. 6–20. As of this writing the U.S. has not completed a full transition to the newsystem, but it is expected to do so over the early 2010s.

14


payment from the United States to foreigners. Correspondingly, a U.S. sale of assetsto foreigners enters the U.S. financial account as a credit. The difference between acountry’s purchases and sales of foreign assets is called its financial account balance,or its net financial flows.

3. Certain other activities resulting in transfers of wealth between countries are recordedin the capital account. These international asset movements—which are generallyvery small for the United States—differ from those recorded in the financial account.For the most part they result from nonmarket activities or represent the acquisition ordisposal of nonproduced, nonfinancial, and possibly intangible assets (such as copy-rights and trademarks). For example, if the U.S. government forgives $1 billion in debtowed to it by the government of Pakistan, U.S. wealth declines by $1 billion and a $1 billion debit is recorded in the U.S. capital account.

You will find the complexities of the balance of payments accounts less confusing ifyou keep in mind the following simple rule of double-entry bookkeeping: Every inter-national transaction automatically enters the balance of payments twice, once as acredit and once as a debit. This principle of balance of payments accounting holds truebecause every transaction has two sides: If you buy something from a foreigner, youmust pay him in some way, and the foreigner must then somehow spend or store yourpayment.

Examples of Paired TransactionsSome examples will show how the principle of double-entry bookkeeping operates inpractice.

1. Imagine you buy an ink-jet fax machine from the Italian company Olivetti and pay foryour purchase with a $1,000 check. Your payment to buy a good (the fax machine)from a foreign resident enters the U.S. current account as a debit. But where is the off-setting balance of payments credit? Olivetti’s U.S. salesperson must do somethingwith your check—let’s say he deposits it in Olivetti’s account at Citibank in New York.In this case, Olivetti has purchased, and Citibank has sold, a U.S. asset—a bankdeposit worth $1,000—and the transaction shows up as a $1,000 credit in the U.S.financial account. The transaction creates the following two offsetting bookkeepingentries in the U.S. balance of payments:

Credit Debit

Fax machine purchase (Current account, U.S. good import) $1,000Sale of bank deposit by Citibank

(Financial account, U.S. asset sale) $1,000

2. As another example, suppose that during your travels in France, you pay $200 for afine dinner at the Restaurant de l’Escargot d’Or. Lacking cash, you place the charge onyour Visa credit card. Your payment, which is a tourist expenditure, will be counted asa service import for the United States, and therefore as a current account debit. Whereis the offsetting credit? Your signature on the Visa slip entitles the restaurant to receive$200 (actually, its local currency equivalent) from First Card, the company that issuedyour Visa card. It is therefore an asset, a claim on a future payment from First Card.So when you pay for your meal abroad with your credit card, you are selling an asset

15

3. Imagine next that your Uncle Sid from Los Angeles buys a newly issued share of stockin the U.K. oil giant British Petroleum (BP). He places his order with his stockbroker,Go-for-Broke, Inc., paying $95 with a check drawn on his Go-for-Broke money mar-ket account. BP, in turn, deposits the $95 Sid has paid into its own U.S. bank accountat Second Bank of Chicago. Uncle Sid’s acquisition of the stock creates a $95 debit inthe U.S. financial account (he has purchased an asset from a foreign resident, BP),while BP’s $95 deposit at its Chicago bank is the offsetting financial account credit(BP has expanded its U.S. asset holdings). The mirror-image effects on the U.S. bal-ance of payments therefore both appear in the financial account:


4. Finally, let’s consider how the U.S. balance of payments accounts are affected whenU.S. banks forgive (that is, announce that they will simply forget about) $5,000 in debtowed to them by the government of the imaginary country of Bygonia. In this case, theUnited States makes a $5,000 capital transfer to Bygonia, which appears as a $5,000debit entry in the capital account. The associated credit is in the financial account, inthe form of a $5,000 reduction in U.S. assets held abroad (a negative “acquisition” offoreign assets, and therefore a balance of payments credit):

These examples show that many circumstances can affect the way a transactiongenerates its offsetting balance of payments entry. We can never predict with certaintywhere the flip side of a particular transaction will show up, but we can be sure that itwill show up somewhere.

The Fundamental Balance of Payments IdentityBecause any international transaction automatically gives rise to offsetting credit and debitentries in the balance of payments, the sum of the current account balance and the capitalaccount balance automatically equals the financial account balance:

(13-3)Current account + capital account = Financial account.

Credit Debit

Uncle Sid’s purchase of a share of BP (Financial account, U.S. asset purchase)

$95

BP’s deposit of Uncle Sid’s payment at Second Bank of Chicago (Financial account, U.S. asset sale)

$95

Credit Debit

U.S. banks’ debt forgiveness (Capital account, U.S. transfer payment)

$5,000

Reduction in banks’ claims on Bygonia (Financial account, U.S. asset sale)

$5,000

Credit Debit

Meal purchase (Current account, U.S. service import) $200Sale of claim on First Card

(Financial account, U.S. asset sale) $200

to France and generating a $200 credit in the U.S. financial account. The pattern ofoffsetting debits and credits in this case is:

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In examples 1, 2, and 4 above, current or capital account entries have offsetting counterpartsin the financial account, while in example 3, two financial account entries offset each other.

You can understand this identity another way. Recall the relationship linking the cur-rent account to international lending and borrowing. Because the sum of the current andcapital accounts is the total change in a country’s net foreign assets (including, through thecapital account, nonmarket asset transfers), that sum necessarily equals the differencebetween a country’s purchases of assets from foreigners and its sales of assets to them—that is, the financial account balance (also called net financial flows).

We now turn to a more detailed description of the balance of payments accounts, usingas an example the U.S. accounts for 2009.

The Current Account, Once AgainAs you have learned, the current account balance measures a country’s net exports ofgoods and services. Table 13-2 shows that U.S. exports (on the credit side) were $2,159.0billion in 2009, while U.S. imports (on the debit side) were $2,412.5 billion.

TABLE 13-2 U.S. Balance of Payments Accounts for 2009 (billions of dollars)

Current Account(1) Exports 2,159.0

Of which:Goods 1,068.5Services 502.3Income receipts (primary income) 588.2

(2) Imports 2,412.5Of which:

Goods 1,575.4Services 370.3Income payments (primary income) 466.8

(3) Net unilateral transfers (secondary income) -124.9Balance on current account -378.4

[112 + 122 + 132]

Capital Account

(4) -0.1Financial Account

(5) Net U.S. acquisition of financial assets, excluding financial derivatives 140.5Of which:

Official reserve assets 52.3Other assets 88.2

(6) Net U.S. incurrence of liabilities, excluding financial derivatives 305.7Of which:

Official reserve assets 450.0Other assets -144.3

(7) Financial derivatives, net -50.8Net financial flows -216.0[(5) - (6) + (7)]Net errors and omissions 162.5[Net financial flows less sum of current and capital accounts]

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, June 17, 2010, release. Totals maydiffer from sums because of rounding.

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The balance of payments accounts divide exports and imports into three finer cate-gories. The first is goods trade, that is, exports or imports of merchandise. The secondcategory, services, includes items such as payments for legal assistance, tourists’ expendi-tures, and shipping fees. The final category, income, is made up mostly of internationalinterest and dividend payments and the earnings of domestically owned firms operatingabroad. If you own a share of a German firm’s stock and receive a dividend payment of $5,that payment shows up in the accounts as a U.S. investment income receipt of $5. Wagesthat workers earn abroad can also enter the income account.

We include income on foreign investments in the current account because that incomereally is compensation for the services provided by foreign investments. This idea, as wesaw earlier, is behind the distinction between GNP and GDP. When a U.S. corporationbuilds a plant in Canada, for instance, the productive services the plant generates areviewed as a service export from the United States to Canada equal in value to the profitsthe plant yields for its American owner. To be consistent, we must be sure to include theseprofits in American GNP and not in Canadian GNP. Remember, the definition of GNPrefers to goods and services generated by a country’s factors of production, but it does notspecify that those factors must work within the borders of the country that owns them.

Before calculating the current account, we must include one additional type of inter-national transaction that we have largely ignored until now. In discussing the relationshipbetween GNP and national income, we defined unilateral transfers between countries asinternational gifts, that is, payments that do not correspond to the purchase of any good,service, or asset. Net unilateral transfers are considered part of the current account aswell as a part of national income, and the identity holds exactly ifY is interpreted as GNP plus net transfers. In 2009, the U.S. balance of unilateral transferswas .

The table shows a 2009 current account balance of $2,159.0 billion , a deficit. The negative sign means that cur-

rent payments to foreigners exceeded current receipts and that U.S. residents usedmore output than they produced. Since these current account transactions were paid forin some way, we know that this $378.4 billion net debit entry must be offset by a net$378.4 billion credit elsewhere in the balance of payments.

The Capital AccountThe capital account entry in Table 13-2 shows that in 2009, the United States paid out netcapital asset transfers of roughly $0.1 billion. These payments by the United States are a netbalance of payments debit. After we add them to the payments deficit implied by the cur-rent account, we find that the United States’ need to cover its excess payments to foreignersis raised very slightly, from $378.4 billion to $378.5 billion. Because an excess of nationalspending over income must be covered by net borrowing from foreigners, this negative cur-rent plus capital account balance must be matched by an equal negative balance of netfinancial flows, representing the net liabilities the United States incurred to foreigners in2009 in order to fund its deficit.

The Financial AccountWhile the current account is the difference between sales of goods and services to foreignersand purchases of goods and services from them, the financial account measures the differ-ence between acquisitions of assets from foreigners and the buildup of liabilities to them.When the United States borrows $1 from foreigners, it is selling them an asset—a promisethat they will be repaid $1, with interest, in the future. Likewise, when the United Stateslends abroad, it acquires an asset: the right to claim future repayment from foreigners.

billion - $124.9 billion = - $378.4 billion- $2,412.5

- $124.9 billion

Y = C + I + G + CA

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To cover its 2009 current plus capital account deficit of $378.5 billion, the UnitedStates needed to borrow from foreigners (or otherwise sell assets to them) in the netamount of $378.5 billion. We can look again at Table 13-2 to see exactly how this net saleof assets to foreigners came about.

The table records separately U.S. acquisitions of foreign financial assets (which arebalance of payments debits, because the United States must pay foreigners for thoseassets) and increases in foreign claims on residents of the United States (which are balanceof payments credits, because the United States receives payments when it sells assetsoverseas).

These data on increases in U.S. asset holdings abroad and foreign holdings of U.S.assets do not include holdings of financial derivatives, which are a class of assets that aremore complicated than ordinary stocks and bonds, but have values that can depend onstock and bond values. (We will describe some specific derivative securities in the nextchapter.) Starting in 2006, the U.S. Department of Commerce was able to assemble dataon net cross-border derivative flows for the United States (U.S. net purchases of foreign-issued derivatives less foreign net purchases of U.S.-issued derivatives). Derivatives trans-actions enter the balance of payments accounts in the same way as do other internationalasset transactions.

According to Table 13-2, U.S.-owned assets abroad (other than derivatives)increased (on a net basis) by $140.5 billion in 2009. The figure is “on a net basis”because some U.S. residents bought foreign assets while others sold foreign assets theyalready owned, the difference between U.S. gross purchases and sales of foreign assetsbeing $140.5 billion. In the same year (again on a net basis), the United States incurrednew liabilities to foreigners equal to $305.7 billion. Some U.S. residents undoubtedlyrepaid foreign debts, but new borrowing from foreigners exceeded these repaymentsby $305.7 billion. The balance of U.S. sales and purchases of financial derivatives was

: The United States sold more derivative claims to foreigners than itacquired. We calculate the balance on financial account (net financial flows) as

. The negative value fornet financial flows means that in 2009, the United States increased its net liability toforeigners (liabilities minus assets) by $216.0 billion.

Net Errors and OmissionsWe come out with net financial flows of rather than thethat we’d expected. According to our data on trade and financial flows, the United Statesfound less financing abroad than it needed to fund its current plus capital account deficit. Ifevery balance of payments credit automatically generates an equal counterpart debit and viceversa, how is this difference possible? The reason is that information about the offsettingdebit and credit items associated with a given transaction may be collected from differentsources. For example, the import debit that a shipment of DVD players from Japan generatesmay come from a U.S. customs inspector’s report and the corresponding financial accountcredit from a report by the U.S. bank in which the check paying for the DVD players isdeposited. Because data from different sources may differ in coverage, accuracy, and timing,the balance of payments accounts seldom balance in practice as they must in theory. Accountkeepers force the two sides to balance by adding to the accounts a net errors and omissionsitem. For 2009, unrecorded (or misrecorded) international transactions generated a balancingaccounting credit of $162.5 billion—the difference between the recorded net financial flowsand the sum of the recorded current and capital accounts.

We have no way of knowing exactly how to allocate this discrepancy among the current,capital, and financial accounts. (If we did, it wouldn’t be a discrepancy!) The financial

- $378.5 billion- $216.0 billion

- $50.8 billion = - $216.0 billion$140.5 billion - $305.7 billion

- $50.8 billion

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account is the most likely culprit, since it is notoriously difficult to keep track of the compli-cated financial trades between residents of different countries. But we cannot conclude thatnet financial flows were $162.5 billion lower than recorded, because the current account isalso highly suspect. Balance of payments accountants consider merchandise trade data rela-tively reliable, but data on services are not. Service transactions such as sales of financialadvice and computer programming assistance may escape detection. Accurate measurementof international interest and dividend receipts is particularly difficult.

Official Reserve TransactionsAlthough there are many types of financial account transactions, one type is importantenough to merit separate discussion. This type of transaction is the purchase or sale ofofficial reserve assets by central banks.

An economy’s central bank is the institution responsible for managing the supply ofmoney. In the United States, the central bank is the Federal Reserve System. Officialinternational reserves are foreign assets held by central banks as a cushion againstnational economic misfortune. At one time, official reserves consisted largely of gold, buttoday, central banks’ reserves include substantial foreign financial assets, particularly U.S.dollar assets such as Treasury bills. The Federal Reserve itself holds only a small level ofofficial reserve assets other than gold; its own holdings of U.S. dollar assets are not con-sidered international reserves.

Central banks often buy or sell international reserves in private asset markets to affectmacroeconomic conditions in their economies. Official transactions of this type are calledofficial foreign exchange intervention. One reason why foreign exchange interventioncan alter macroeconomic conditions is that it is a way for the central bank to inject moneyinto the economy or withdraw it from circulation. We will have much more to say laterabout the causes and consequences of foreign exchange intervention.

Government agencies other than central banks may hold foreign reserves and interveneofficially in exchange markets. The U.S. Treasury, for example, operates an ExchangeStabilization Fund that at times has played an active role in market trading. Because theoperations of such agencies usually have no noticeable impact on the money supply, how-ever, we will simplify our discussion by speaking (when it is not too misleading) as if thecentral bank alone holds foreign reserves and intervenes.

When a central bank purchases or sells a foreign asset, the transaction appears in itscountry’s financial account just as if the same transaction had been carried out by a privatecitizen. A transaction in which the central bank of Japan (the Bank of Japan) acquires dollarassets might occur as follows: A U.S. auto dealer imports a Nissan sedan from Japan andpays the auto company with a check for $20,000. Nissan does not want to invest the moneyin dollar assets, but it so happens that the Bank of Japan is willing to give Nissan Japanesemoney in exchange for the $20,000 check. The Bank of Japan’s international reserves riseby $20,000 as a result of the deal. Because the Bank of Japan’s dollar reserves are part oftotal Japanese assets held in the United States, the latter rise by $20,000. This transactiontherefore results in a $20,000 credit in the U.S. financial account, the other side of the$20,000 debit in the U.S. current account due to the import of the car.10

Table 13-2 shows the size and direction of official reserve transactions involving theUnited States in 2009. U.S. official reserve assets—that is, international reserves held bythe Federal Reserve—rose by $52.3 billion. Foreign central banks purchased $450.0 billionto add to their reserves. The net increase in U.S. official reserves less the increase in foreign

1 0 To test your understanding, see if you can explain why the same sequence of actions causes a $20,000improvement in Japan’s current account and a $20,000 increase in its net financial flows.

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official reserve claims on the United States is the level of net central bank financial flows,which stood at in 2009.

You can think of this net central bank financial flow as measuring thedegree to which monetary authorities in the United States and abroad joined with otherlenders to cover the U.S. current account deficit. In the example above, the Bank of Japan,by acquiring a $20,000 U.S. bank deposit, indirectly finances an American import of a$20,000 Japanese car. The level of net central bank financial flows is called the officialsettlements balance or (in less formal usage) the balance of payments. This balance isthe sum of the current account and capital account balances, less the nonreserve portion ofthe financial account balance, and it indicates the payments gap that official reserve trans-actions need to cover. Thus the U.S. balance of payments in 2009 was .

The balance of payments played an important historical role as a measure of disequilib-rium in international payments, and for many countries it still plays this role. A negativebalance of payments (a deficit) may signal a crisis, for it means that a country is runningdown its international reserve assets or incurring debts to foreign monetary authorities. If acountry faces the risk of being suddenly cut off from foreign loans, it will want to maintaina “war chest” of international reserves as a precaution. Developing countries, in particular,are in this position (see Chapter 22).

Like any summary measure, however, the balance of payments must be interpreted withcaution. To return to our running example, the Bank of Japan’s decision to expand its U.S.bank deposit holdings by $20,000 swells the measured U.S. balance of payments deficit bythe same amount. Suppose the Bank of Japan instead places its $20,000 with BarclaysBank in London, which in turn deposits the money with Citibank in New York. The UnitedStates incurs an extra $20,000 in liabilities to private foreigners in this case, and the U.S.balance of payments deficit does not rise. But this “improvement” in the balance of pay-ments is of little economic importance: It makes no real difference to the United Stateswhether it borrows the Bank of Japan’s money directly or through a London bank.

Case Study

The Assets and Liabilities of the World’s Biggest DebtorWe saw earlier that the current account balance measures the flow of new net claims onforeign wealth that a country acquires by exporting more goods and services than it im-ports. This flow is not, however, the only important factor that causes a country’s netforeign wealth to change. In addition, changes in the market price of wealth previouslyacquired can alter a country’s net foreign wealth. When Japan’s stock market lost three-quarters of its value over the 1990s, for example, American and European owners ofJapanese shares saw the value of their claims on Japan plummet, and Japan’s netforeign wealth increased as a result. Exchange rate changes have a similar effect. Whenthe dollar depreciates against foreign currencies, for example, foreigners who hold dol-lar assets see their wealth fall when measured in their home currencies.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce,which oversees the vast job of data collection behind the U.S. national income and bal-ance of payments statistics, reports annual estimates of the net “international investmentposition” of the United States—the country’s foreign assets less its foreign liabilities.Because asset price and exchange rate changes alter the dollar values of foreign assetsand liabilities alike, the BEA must adjust the values of existing claims to reflect suchcapital gains and losses in order to estimate U.S. net foreign wealth. These estimates

- $397.7 billion

- $397.7 billion$52.3 - $450.0 billion = - $397.7 billion

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TABLE 13-3 International Investment Position of the United States at Year End, 2008 and 2009 (millions of dollars)

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Survey of Current Business, July 2010.


show that at the end of 2009, the United States had a negative net foreign wealth positionfar greater than that of any other country.

Until 1991, foreign direct investments such as foreign factories owned by U.S. corpora-tions were valued at their historical, that is, original, purchase prices. Now the BEA usestwo different methods to place current values on foreign direct investments: the current costmethod, which values direct investments at the cost of buying them today, and the marketvalue method, which is meant to measure the price at which the investments could be sold.These methods can lead to different valuations because the cost of replacing a particulardirect investment and the price it would command if sold on the market may be hard tomeasure. (The net foreign wealth data graphed in Figure 13-2 are current cost estimates.)

Table 13-3 reproduces the BEA’s account of how it made its valuation adjustmentsto find the U.S. net foreign position at the end of 2009. This “headline” estimate values

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direct investments at current cost. Starting with its estimate of 2008 net foreign wealth( at current cost), the BEA (column a) added the amount of the 2009U.S. net financial flow of —recall the figure reported in Table 13-2.Then the BEA adjusted the values of previously held assets and liabilities for variouschanges in their dollar prices (columns b, c, and d). As a result of these valuationchanges, U.S. net foreign wealth fell by an amount much smaller than the $216 billionin new net borrowing from foreigners—in fact, U.S. net foreign wealth actually rose, asshown in Figure 13-2! Based on the current cost method for valuing direct investments,the BEA’s 2009 estimate of U.S. net foreign wealth was .

This debt is larger than the total foreign debt owed by all the Central and EasternEuropean countries, which was about $1,100 billion in 2009. To put these figures in per-spective, however, it is important to realize that the U.S. net foreign debt amounted to justunder 20 percent of its GDP, while the foreign liability of Hungary, Poland, Romania, andthe other Central and Eastern European debtors was nearly 70 percent of their collectiveGDP! Thus, the U.S. external debt represents a much lower domestic income drain.

Changes in exchange rates and securities prices have the potential to change the U.S.net foreign debt sharply, however, because the gross foreign assets and liabilities of theUnited States have become so large in recent years. Figure 13-3 illustrates this dramatictrend. In 1976, U.S. foreign assets stood at only 25 percent of U.S. GDP and liabilitiesat 16 percent (making the United States a net foreign creditor in the amount of roughly9 percent of its GDP). In 2009, however, the country’s foreign assets amounted to 129percent of GDP and its liabilities to 148 percent. The tremendous growth in these

- $2,737.8 billion

- $216 billion- $3,493.9 billion

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

1.6

1.4

1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Assets, liabilities(ratio to GDP)

2006 2008

Gross foreign liabilities

Gross foreign assets

Figure 13-3

U.S. Gross Foreign Assets and Liabilities, 1976–2009

Since 1976, both the foreign assets and the liabilities of the United States have increased sharply. But liabilitieshave risen more quickly, leaving the United States with a substantial net foreign debt.

Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, June 2010.

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stocks of wealth reflects the rapid globalization of financial markets in the late 20thcentury, a phenomenon we will discuss further in Chapter 21.

Think about how wealth positions of this magnitude amplify the effects of exchangerate changes, however. Suppose that 70 percent of U.S. foreign assets are denominated inforeign currencies, but that all U.S. liabilities to foreigners are denominated in dollars(these are approximately the correct numbers). Because 2009 U.S. GDP was around $14.4trillion, a 10 percent depreciation of the dollar would leave U.S. liabilities unchanged butwould increase U.S. assets (measured in dollars) by percent ofGDP, or about $1.3 trillion. This number is approximately 3.5 times the U.S. currentaccount deficit of 2009! Indeed, due to sharp movements in exchange rates and stockprices, the U.S. economy lost about $800 billion in this way between 2007 and 2008 andgained a comparable amount between 2008 and 2009 (see Figure 13-2). The correspon-ding redistribution of wealth between foreigners and the United States would have beenmuch smaller back in 1976.

Does this possibility mean that policy makers should ignore their countries’ currentaccounts and instead try to manipulate currency values to prevent large buildups of netforeign debt? That would be a perilous strategy because, as we will see in the next chap-ter, expectations of future exchange rates are central to market participants’ behavior.Systematic government attempts to reduce foreign investors’ wealth through exchangerate changes would sharply reduce foreigners’ demand for domestic currency assets, thusdecreasing or eliminating any wealth benefit from depreciating the home currency.

0.1 * 0.7 * 1.29 = 9.0

SUMMARY

1. International macroeconomics is concerned with the full employment of scarce eco-nomic resources and price level stability throughout the world economy. Because theyreflect national expenditure patterns and their international repercussions, the nationalincome accounts and the balance of payments accounts are essential tools for studyingthe macroeconomics of open, interdependent economies.

2. A country’s gross national product (GNP) is equal to the income received by its factors ofproduction. The national income accounts divide national income according to the types ofspending that generate it: consumption, investment, government purchases, and the currentaccount balance. Gross domestic product (GDP), equal to GNP less net receipts of factorincome from abroad, measures the output produced within a country’s territorial borders.

3. In an economy closed to international trade, GNP must be consumed, invested, or pur-chased by the government. By using current output to build plant, equipment, andinventories, investment transforms present output into future output. For a closedeconomy, investment is the only way to save in the aggregate, so the sum of the savingcarried out by the private and public sectors, national saving, must equal investment.

4. In an open economy, GNP equals the sum of consumption, investment, governmentpurchases, and net exports of goods and services. Trade does not have to be balanced ifthe economy can borrow from and lend to the rest of the world. The differencebetween the economy’s exports and imports, the current account balance, equals thedifference between the economy’s output and its total use of goods and services.

5. The current account also equals the country’s net lending to foreigners. Unlike a closedeconomy, an open economy can save by domestic and foreign investments. Nationalsaving therefore equals domestic investment plus the current account balance.

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6. Balance of payments accounts provide a detailed picture of the composition and financingof the current account. All transactions between a country and the rest of the world arerecorded in the country’s balance of payments accounts. The accounts are based on theconvention that any transaction resulting in a payment to foreigners is entered as a debitwhile any transaction resulting in a receipt from foreigners is entered as a credit.

7. Transactions involving goods and services appear in the current account of the balance ofpayments, while international sales or purchases of assets appear in the financialaccount. The capital account records mainly nonmarket asset transfers and tends to besmall for the United States. The sum of the current and capital account balances mustequal the financial account balance (net financial flows). This feature of the accountsreflects the fact that discrepancies between export earnings and import expenditures mustbe matched by a promise to repay the difference, usually with interest, in the future.

8. International asset transactions carried out by central banks are included in the financialaccount. Any central bank transaction in private markets for foreign currency assets iscalled official foreign exchange intervention. One reason intervention is important is thatcentral banks use it as a way to change the amount of money in circulation. A country hasa deficit in its balance of payments when it is running down its official internationalreserves or borrowing from foreign central banks; it has a surplus in the opposite case.

KEY TERMS


asset, p. 336balance of payments

accounting, p. 324capital account, p. 337central bank, p. 342consumption, p. 328current account balance, p. 330financial account, p. 336government budget deficit, p. 334government purchases, p. 329

gross domestic product (GDP), p. 327

gross national product (GNP), p. 325

investment, p. 328macroeconomics, p. 323microeconomics, p. 323national income, p. 326national income accounting,

p. 324

national saving, p. 332official foreign exchange

intervention, p. 342official international reserves,

p. 342official settlements balance

(or balance of payments), p. 343

private saving, p. 333

PROBLEMS

1. We stated in this chapter that GNP accounts avoid double counting by including onlythe value of final goods and services sold on the market. Should the measure of im-ports used in the GNP accounts therefore be defined to include only imports of finalgoods and services from abroad? What about exports?

2. Equation (13-2) tells us that to reduce a current account deficit, a country must increaseits private saving, reduce domestic investment, or cut its government budget deficit.Nowadays, some people recommend restrictions on imports from China (and other coun-tries) to reduce the American current account deficit. How would higher U.S. barriers toimports affect its private saving, domestic investment, and government deficit? Do youagree that import restrictions would necessarily reduce a U.S. current account deficit?

3. Explain how each of the following transactions generates two entries—a credit and adebit—in the American balance of payments accounts, and describe how each entrywould be classified:a. An American buys a share of German stock, paying by writing a check on an

account with a Swiss bank.b. An American buys a share of German stock, paying the seller with a check on an

American bank.

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c. The Korean government carries out an official foreign exchange intervention in whichit uses dollars held in an American bank to buy Korean currency from its citizens.

d. A tourist from Detroit buys a meal at an expensive restaurant in Lyons, France,paying with a traveler’s check.

e. A California winemaker contributes a case of cabernet sauvignon for a Londonwine tasting.

f. A U.S.-owned factory in Britain uses local earnings to buy additional machinery.4. A New Yorker travels to New Jersey to buy a $100 telephone answering machine. The

New Jersey company that sells the machine then deposits the $100 check in itsaccount at a New York bank. How would these transactions show up in the balance ofpayments accounts of New York and New Jersey? What if the New Yorker pays cashfor the machine?

5. The nation of Pecunia had a current account deficit of $1 billion and a nonreservefinancial account surplus of $500 million in 2008.a. What was the balance of payments of Pecunia in that year? What happened to the

country’s net foreign assets?b. Assume that foreign central banks neither buy nor sell Pecunian assets. How did

the Pecunian central bank’s foreign reserves change in 2008? How would this offi-cial intervention show up in the balance of payments accounts of Pecunia?

c. How would your answer to (b) change if you learned that foreign central banks hadpurchased $600 million of Pecunian assets in 2008? How would these official pur-chases enter foreign balance of payments accounts?

d. Draw up the Pecunian balance of payments accounts for 2008 under the assumptionthat the event described in (c) occurred in that year.

6. Can you think of reasons why a government might be concerned about a large currentaccount deficit or surplus? Why might a government be concerned about its officialsettlements balance (that is, its balance of payments)?

7. Do data on the U.S. official settlements balance give an accurate picture of the extentto which foreign central banks buy and sell dollars in currency markets?

8. Is it possible for a country to have a current account deficit at the same time it has asurplus in its balance of payments? Explain your answer, using hypothetical figuresfor the current and nonreserve financial accounts. Be sure to discuss the possibleimplications for official international reserve flows.

9. Suppose that the U.S. net foreign debt is 25 percent of U.S. GDP and that foreign as-sets and liabilities alike pay an interest rate of 5 percent per year. What would be thedrain on U.S. GDP (as a percentage) from paying interest on the net foreign debt? Doyou think this is a large number? What if the net foreign debt were 100 percent ofGDP? At what point do you think a country’s government should become worriedabout the size of its foreign debt?

10. If you go to the BEA website (http://www.bea.gov) and look at the Survey of CurrentBusiness for July 2010, the table on “U.S. International Transactions,” you will findthat in 2009, U.S. income receipts on its foreign assets were $585.2 billion (line 13),while the country’s payments on liabilities to foreigners were $456.0 billion (line 30).Yet we saw in this chapter that the United States is a substantial net debtor to foreign-ers. How, then, is it possible that the United States received more foreign asset incomethan it paid out?

11. Return to the example in this chapter’s final Case Study of how a 10 percent dollardepreciation affects U.S. net foreign wealth (page 346). Show the size of the effect onforeigners’ net foreign wealth measured in dollars (as a percent of U.S. GDP).

12. We mentioned in the chapter that capital gains and losses on a country’s net foreignassets are not included in the national income measure of the current account. How

26


would economic statisticians have to modify the national income identity (13-1) if theywish to include such gains and losses as part of the definition of the current account? Inyour opinion, would this make sense? Why do you think this is not done in practice?

13. Using the data in the “Memoranda” to Table 13-3, calculate the U.S. 2009 net interna-tional investment position with direct investments valued at market prices.

FURTHER READINGS

European Commission, International Monetary Fund, Organisation for Economic Co-operation andDevelopment, United Nations, and World Bank. System of National Accounts 2008. New York:United Nations, 2009. Definitive guidelines for constructing national income and productaccounts.

William Griever, Gary Lee, and Francis Warnock. “The U.S. System for Measuring Cross-BorderInvestment in Securities: A Primer with a Discussion of Recent Developments.” Federal ReserveBulletin 87 (October 2001), pp. 633–650. Critical description of U.S. procedures for measuringforeign assets and liabilities.

International Monetary Fund. Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual,6th edition. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 2009. Authoritative treatment ofbalance of payments accounting.

International Monetary Fund. Final Report of the Working Party on the Statistical Discrepancy inWorld Current Account Balances. Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, September1987. Discusses the statistical discrepancy in the world current account balance, its implicationsfor policy analysis, and recommendations for more accurate measurement.

Philip R. Lane and Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti. “The External Wealth of Nations Mark II: Revisedand Extended Estimates of Foreign Assets and Liabilities, 1970–2004.” Journal of InternationalEconomics 73 (November 2007), pp. 223–250. Applies a common methodology to constructinternational position data for a large sample of countries.

Robert E. Lipsey. “Changing Patterns of International Investment in and by the United States,” inMartin S. Feldstein, ed. The United States in the World Economy. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1988, pp. 475–545. Historical perspective on financial flows to and from theUnited States.

Catherine L. Mann. “Perspectives on the U.S. Current Account Deficit and Sustainability.” Journalof Economic Perspectives 16 (Summer 2002), pp. 131–152. Examines the causes and conse-quences of recent U.S. current account deficits.

James E. Meade. The Balance of Payments, Chapters 1–3. London: Oxford University Press, 1952.A classic analytical discussion of balance of payments concepts.

Cédric Tille. “The Impact of Exchange Rate Movements on U.S. Foreign Debt.” Current Issues inEconomics and Finance (Federal Reserve Bank of New York) 9 (January 2003), pp. 1–7.Discusses the implications of asset price changes for U.S. foreign assets and liabilities.

MYECONLAB CAN HELP YOU GET A BETTER GRADEIf your exam were tomorrow, would you be ready? For each chapter,

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350

14c h a p t e r

Exchange Rates and the Foreign Exchange Market: An Asset Approach

In the first years of the millennium, Americans flocked to Paris to enjoy Frenchcuisine while shopping for designer clothing and other specialties. Whenmeasured in terms of dollars, prices in France were so much lower than they

had been a few years before that a shopper’s savings could offset the cost of anairplane ticket from New York or Chicago. Five years later, however, the prices ofFrench goods again looked high to Americans. What economic forces made thedollar prices of French goods swing so widely? One major factor was a sharp fallin the dollar price of France’s currency after 1998, followed by an equally sharprise starting in 2002.

The price of one currency in terms of another is called an exchange rate. At 4 P.M. London time on November 30, 2010, you would have needed 1.3018dollars to buy one unit of the European currency, the euro, so the dollar’sexchange rate against the euro was $1.3018 per euro. Because of their stronginfluence on the current account and other macroeconomic variables, exchangerates are among the most important prices in an open economy.

Because an exchange rate, the price of one country’s money in terms of an-other’s, is also an asset price, the principles governing the behavior of other assetprices also govern the behavior of exchange rates. As you will recall fromChapter 13, the defining characteristic of an asset is that it is a form of wealth, away of transferring purchasing power from the present into the future. The pricethat an asset commands today is therefore directly related to the purchasingpower over goods and services that buyers expect it to yield in the future.Similarly, today’s dollar/euro exchange rate is closely tied to people’s expecta-tions about the future level of that rate. Just as the price of Google stock rises im-mediately upon favorable news about Google’s future prospects, so do exchangerates respond immediately to any news concerning future currency values.

Our general goals in this chapter are to understand the role of exchange rates ininternational trade and to understand how exchange rates are determined. To be-gin, we first learn how exchange rates allow us to compare the prices of different

28

countries’ goods and services. Next we describe the international asset market inwhich currencies are traded and show how equilibrium exchange rates are deter-mined in that market. A final section underlines our asset market approach byshowing how today’s exchange rate responds to changes in the expected futurevalues of exchange rates.

LEARNING GOALS


• Relate exchange rate changes to changes in the relative prices of countries’exports.

• Describe the structure and functions of the foreign exchange market.• Use exchange rates to calculate and compare returns on assets denominated

in different currencies.• Apply the interest parity condition to find equilibrium exchange rates.• Find the effects of interest rates and expectation shifts on exchange rates.

Exchange Rates and International TransactionsExchange rates play a central role in international trade because they allow us to comparethe prices of goods and services produced in different countries. A consumer decidingwhich of two American cars to buy must compare their dollar prices, for example,

(for a Lincoln Continental) or (for a Ford Taurus). But how is the sameconsumer to compare either of these prices with the 2,500,000 Japanese yen it costs to buy a Nissan from Japan? To make this comparison, he or she must know therelative price of dollars and yen.

The relative prices of currencies are reported daily in newspapers’ financial sections.Table 14-1 shows the dollar exchange rates for currencies traded in London at 4 P.M. onNovember 30, 2010, as reported in the Financial Times. An exchange rate can be quoted intwo ways: as the price of the foreign currency in terms of dollars (for example, $0.01194per yen) or as the price of dollars in terms of the foreign currency (for example, perdollar). The first of these exchange rate quotations (dollars per foreign currency unit) issaid to be in direct (or “American”) terms, the second (foreign currency units per dollar) inindirect (or “European”) terms.

Households and firms use exchange rates to translate foreign prices into domestic cur-rency terms. Once the money prices of domestic goods and imports have been expressedin terms of the same currency, households and firms can compute the relative prices thataffect international trade flows.

Domestic and Foreign PricesIf we know the exchange rate between two countries’ currencies, we can compute theprice of one country’s exports in terms of the other country’s money. For example, howmany dollars would it cost to buy an Edinburgh Woolen Mill sweater costing 50 Britishpounds ? The answer is found by multiplying the price of the sweater in pounds, 50,by the price of a pound in terms of dollars—the dollar’s exchange rate against the pound.At an exchange rate of per pound (expressed in American terms), the dollar price ofthe sweater is

(1.50$/£) * (£50) = $75.

$1.50

(£50)

¥83.77

(¥2,500,000)$22,000$44,000

CHAPTER 14 Exchange Rates and the Foreign Exchange Market: An Asset Approach 351

29


A change in the dollar/pound exchange rate would alter the sweater’s dollar price. Atan exchange rate of per pound, the sweater would cost only

assuming its price in terms of pounds remained the same. At an exchange rate of perpound, the sweater’s dollar price would be higher, equal to

Changes in exchange rates are described as depreciations or appreciations. A depreciationof the pound against the dollar is a fall in the dollar price of pounds, for example, a change inthe exchange rate from per pound to per pound. The preceding example showsthat all else equal, a depreciation of a country’s currency makes its goods cheaper for for-eigners. A rise in the pound’s price in terms of dollars—for example, from per poundto per pound—is an appreciation of the pound against the dollar. All else equal, anappreciation of a country’s currency makes its goods more expensive for foreigners.

The exchange rate changes discussed in the example simultaneously alter the pricesBritons pay for American goods. At an exchange rate of per pound, the pound priceof a pair of American designer jeans costing is A changein the exchange rate from per pound to per pound, while a depreciation ofthe pound against the dollar, is also a rise in the pound price of dollars, an appreciation ofthe dollar against the pound. This appreciation of the dollar makes the American jeansmore expensive for Britons by raising their pound price from to

($45)/(1.25 $/£) = £36.

£30

$1.25$1.50($45)/(1.50 $/£) = £30.$45

$1.50

$1.75$1.50

$1.25$1.50

(1.75 $/£) * (£50) = $87.50.

$1.75

(1.25 $/£) * (£50) = $62.50,

$1.25

TABLE 14-1 Exchange Rate Quotations

Source: Data from Financial Times, December 1, 2010, p. 24.

30

The change in the exchange rate from per pound to per pound—an appre-ciation of the pound against the dollar but a depreciation of the dollar against the pound—lowers the pound price of the jeans from to

As you can see, descriptions of exchange rate changes as depreciations or appreciationscan be bewildering, because when one currency depreciates against another, the secondcurrency must simultaneously appreciate against the first. To avoid confusion in dis-cussing exchange rates, we must always keep track of which of the two currencies we areexamining has depreciated or appreciated against the other.

If we remember that a depreciation of the dollar against the pound is at the same timean appreciation of the pound against the dollar, we reach the following conclusion: When acountry’s currency depreciates, foreigners find that its exports are cheaper and domesticresidents find that imports from abroad are more expensive. An appreciation has oppositeeffects: Foreigners pay more for the country’s products and domestic consumers pay lessfor foreign products.

Exchange Rates and Relative PricesImport and export demands, like the demands for all goods and services, are influenced byrelative prices, such as the price of sweaters in terms of designer jeans. We have just seenhow exchange rates allow individuals to compare domestic and foreign money prices byexpressing them in a common currency unit. Carrying this analysis one step further, wecan see that exchange rates also allow individuals to compute the relative prices of goodsand services whose money prices are quoted in different currencies.

An American trying to decide how much to spend on American jeans and how much tospend on British sweaters must translate their prices into a common currency to computethe price of sweaters in terms of jeans. As we have seen, an exchange rate of perpound means that an American pays for a sweater priced at in Britain. Because theprice of a pair of American jeans is , the price of a sweater in terms of a pair of jeans is pairs of jeans per sweater. Naturally, aBriton faces the same relative price of pairs of jeans per sweater.

Table 14-2 shows the relative prices implied by exchange rates of per pound,per pound, and per pound, on the assumption that the dollar price of jeans and

the pound price of sweaters are unaffected by the exchange rate changes. To test your un-derstanding, try to calculate these relative prices for yourself and confirm that the outcomeof the calculation is the same for a Briton and for an American.

The table shows that if the goods’ money prices do not change, an appreciation of thedollar against the pound makes sweaters cheaper in terms of jeans (each pair of jeans buysmore sweaters) while a depreciation of the dollar against the pound makes sweaters more

$1.75$1.50$1.25

(£50 per sweater)/(£30 per pair of jeans) = 1.67($75 per sweater)/($45 per pair of jeans) = 1.67

$45£50$75

$1.50

(£45)/(1.75 $/£) = £25.71.

£30

$1.75$1.50


TABLE 14-2 $/£ Exchange Rates and the Relative Price of American Designer Jeans and British Sweaters

Exchange rate ($/£) 1.25 1.50 1.75

Relative price (pairs of jeans/sweater) 1.39 1.67 1.94

Note: The above calculations assume unchanged money prices of per pair of jeans and per sweater.£50$45

31


expensive in terms of jeans (each pair of jeans buys fewer sweaters). The computationsillustrate a general principle: All else equal, an appreciation of a country’s currency raisesthe relative price of its exports and lowers the relative price of its imports. Conversely, adepreciation lowers the relative price of a country’s exports and raises the relative price ofits imports.

The Foreign Exchange MarketJust as other prices in the economy are determined by the interaction of buyers and sellers,exchange rates are determined by the interaction of the households, firms, and financial in-stitutions that buy and sell foreign currencies to make international payments. The marketin which international currency trades take place is called the foreign exchange market.

The ActorsThe major participants in the foreign exchange market are commercial banks, corporationsthat engage in international trade, nonbank financial institutions such as asset-managementfirms and insurance companies, and central banks. Individuals may also participate in theforeign exchange market—for example, the tourist who buys foreign currency at a hotel’sfront desk—but such cash transactions are an insignificant fraction of total foreign exchangetrading.

We now describe the major actors in the market and their roles.

1. Commercial banks. Commercial banks are at the center of the foreign exchangemarket because almost every sizable international transaction involves the debitingand crediting of accounts at commercial banks in various financial centers. Thus, thevast majority of foreign exchange transactions involve the exchange of bank depositsdenominated in different currencies.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose ExxonMobil Corporation wishes to payto a German supplier. First, ExxonMobil gets an exchange rate quotation

from its own commercial bank, the Third National Bank. Then it instructs ThirdNational to debit ExxonMobil’s dollar account and pay into the supplier’saccount at a German bank. If the exchange rate quoted to ExxonMobil by ThirdNational is per euro, is debited fromExxonMobil’s account. The final result of the transaction is the exchange of a deposit at Third National Bank (now owned by the German bank that supplied theeuros) for the deposit used by Third National to pay ExxonMobil’s Germansupplier.

As the example shows, banks routinely enter the foreign exchange market to meetthe needs of their customers—primarily corporations. In addition, a bank will alsoquote to other banks exchange rates at which it is willing to buy currencies from themand sell currencies to them. Foreign currency trading among banks—called interbanktrading—accounts for much of the activity in the foreign exchange market. In fact, theexchange rates listed in Table 14-1 are interbank rates, the rates banks charge eachother. No amount less than $1 million is traded at those rates. The rates available tocorporate customers, called “retail” rates, are usually less favorable than the “whole-sale” interbank rates. The difference between the retail and the wholesale rates is thebank’s compensation for doing the business.

Because their international operations are so extensive, large commercial banks arewell suited to bring buyers and sellers of currencies together. A multinational corpora-tion wishing to convert $100,000 into Swedish kronor might find it difficult and costly

€160,000

$192,000$192,000 (= $1.2 per euro * €160,000)$1.2

€160,000

€160,000

32


to locate other corporations wishing to sell the right amount of kronor. By servingmany customers simultaneously through a single large purchase of kronor, a bank caneconomize on these search costs.

2. Corporations. Corporations with operations in several countries frequently makeor receive payments in currencies other than that of the country in which they areheadquartered. To pay workers at a plant in Mexico, for example, IBM may needMexican pesos. If IBM has only dollars earned by selling computers in the UnitedStates, it can acquire the pesos it needs by buying them with its dollars in the foreignexchange market.

3. Nonbank financial institutions. Over the years, deregulation of financial marketsin the United States, Japan, and other countries has encouraged nonbank financial insti-tutions such as mutual funds to offer their customers a broader range of services, manyof them indistinguishable from those offered by banks. Among these have been servicesinvolving foreign exchange transactions. Institutional investors such as pension fundsoften trade foreign currencies. So do insurance companies. Hedge funds, which cater tovery wealthy individuals and are not bound by the government regulations that limitmutual funds’ trading strategies, trade actively in the foreign exchange market.

4. Central banks. In the previous chapter we learned that central banks sometimesintervene in foreign exchange markets. While the volume of central bank transactions istypically not large, the impact of these transactions may be great. The reason for this im-pact is that participants in the foreign exchange market watch central bank actions closelyfor clues about future macroeconomic policies that may affect exchange rates. Governmentagencies other than central banks may also trade in the foreign exchange market, but cen-tral banks are the most regular official participants.

Characteristics of the MarketForeign exchange trading takes place in many financial centers, with the largest volumesof trade occurring in such major cities as London (the largest market), New York, Tokyo,Frankfurt, and Singapore. The worldwide volume of foreign exchange trading is enor-mous, and it has ballooned in recent years. In April 1989, the average total value of globalforeign exchange trading was close to billion per day. A total of billion wastraded daily in London, billion in the United States, and billion in Tokyo.Twenty-one years later, in April 2010, the daily global value of foreign exchange tradinghad jumped to around trillion. A total of trillion was traded daily in Britain,

billion in the United States, and billion in Japan.1

Telephone, fax, and Internet links among the major foreign exchange trading centersmake each a part of a single world market on which the sun never sets. Economic newsreleased at any time of the day is immediately transmitted around the world and may setoff a flurry of activity by market participants. Even after trading in New York has finished,New York–based banks and corporations with affiliates in other time zones can remainactive in the market. Foreign exchange traders may deal from their homes when a late-night communication alerts them to important developments in a financial center onanother continent.

$312$904$1.85$4.0

$111$115$184$600

1April 1989 figures come from surveys carried out simultaneously by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Canada, and monetary authorities from France, Italy, theNetherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia. The April 2010 survey was carried out by 53 central banks.Revised figures are reported in “Triennial Central Bank Survey of Foreign Exchange and Derivatives MarketActivity in April 2010: Preliminary Global Results,” Bank for International Settlements, Basel, Switzerland,September 2010. Daily U.S. foreign currency trading in 1980 averaged only around $18 billion.

33


The integration of financial centers implies that there can be no significant differencebetween the dollar/euro exchange rate quoted in New York at 9 A.M. and the dollar/euroexchange rate quoted in London at the same time (which corresponds to 2 P.M. Londontime). If the euro were selling for in New York and in London, profits could bemade through arbitrage, the process of buying a currency cheap and selling it dear. At theprices listed above, a trader could, for instance, purchase million in New York for million and immediately sell the euros in London for million, making a pure profit of

. If all traders tried to cash in on the opportunity, however, their demand foreuros in New York would drive up the dollar price of euros there, and their supply of eurosin London would drive down the dollar price of euros there. Very quickly, the differencebetween the New York and London exchange rates would disappear. Since foreignexchange traders carefully watch their computer screens for arbitrage opportunities, thefew that arise are small and very short-lived.

While a foreign exchange transaction can match any two currencies, most transactions(roughly 85 percent in April 2010) are exchanges of foreign currencies for U.S. dollars.This is true even when a bank’s goal is to sell one nondollar currency and buy another!A bank wishing to sell Swiss francs and buy Israeli shekels, for example, will usually sellits francs for dollars and then use the dollars to buy shekels. While this procedure mayappear roundabout, it is actually cheaper for the bank than the alternative of trying to finda holder of shekels who wishes to buy Swiss francs. The advantage of trading through thedollar is a result of the United States’ importance in the world economy. Because thevolume of international transactions involving dollars is so great, it is not hard to findparties willing to trade dollars against Swiss francs or shekels. In contrast, relatively fewtransactions require direct exchanges of Swiss francs for shekels.2

Because of its pivotal role in so many foreign exchange deals, the U.S. dollar is some-times called a vehicle currency. A vehicle currency is one that is widely used to denomi-nate international contracts made by parties who do not reside in the country that issuesthe vehicle currency. It has been suggested that the euro, which was introduced at the startof 1999, will evolve into a vehicle currency on a par with the dollar. By April 2010, about39 percent of foreign exchange trades were against euros—less than half the share of thedollar, albeit above the figure of 37 percent clocked three years earlier. Japan’s yen is thethird most important currency, with a market share of 19 percent (out of 200). The poundsterling, once second only to the dollar as a key international currency, has declinedgreatly in importance.3

Spot Rates and Forward RatesThe foreign exchange transactions we have been discussing take place on the spot: Twoparties agree to an exchange of bank deposits and execute the deal immediately. Exchangerates governing such “on-the-spot” trading are called spot exchange rates, and the deal iscalled a spot transaction.

$100,000$1.2

$1.1€1

$1.2$1.1

2The Swiss franc/shekel exchange rate can be calculated from the dollar/franc and dollar/shekel exchange ratesas the dollar/shekel rate divided by the dollar/franc rate. If the dollar/franc rate is $0.80 per franc and thedollar/shekel rate is $0.20 per shekel, then the Swiss franc/shekel rate is swiss franc/shekel. Exchange rates between nondollar currencies are called “cross rates” by foreign exchange traders.3For a more detailed discussion of vehicle currencies, see Richard Portes and Hélène Rey, “The Emergence ofthe Euro as an International Currency,” Economic Policy 26 (April 1998), pp. 307–343. Data on currency sharescome from Bank for International Settlements, op. cit., table 3. For a recent assessment of the future roles of thedollar and the euro, see the essays in Jean Pisani-Ferry and Adam S. Posen, eds., The Euro at Ten: The NextGlobal Currency? (Washington, D.C.: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2009).

(0.20 $/shekel)/(0.80 $/franc) = 0.25

34


Foreign exchange deals sometimes specify a future transaction date—one that may be30 days, 90 days, 180 days, or even several years away. The exchange rates quoted insuch transactions are called forward exchange rates. In a 30-day forward transaction,for example, two parties may commit themselves on April 1 to a spot exchange of

for on May 1. The 30-day forward exchange rate is therefore per pound, and it is generally different from the spot rate and from the forward ratesapplied to different future dates. When you agree to sell pounds for dollars on a futuredate at a forward rate agreed on today, you have “sold pounds forward” and “bought dol-lars forward.” The future date on which the currencies are actually exchanged is calledthe value date.4 Table 14-1 shows forward exchange rates for some major currencies.

Forward and spot exchange rates, while not necessarily equal, do move closely together,as illustrated for monthly data on dollar/pound rates in Figure 14-1. The appendix to thischapter, which discusses how forward exchange rates are determined, explains this closerelationship between movements in spot and forward rates.

An example shows why parties may wish to engage in forward exchange transactions.Suppose Radio Shack knows that in 30 days it must pay yen to a Japanese supplier for ashipment of radios arriving then. Radio Shack can sell each radio for and must payits supplier per radio; its profit depends on the dollar/yen exchange rate. At the cur-rent spot exchange rate of per yen, Radio Shack would pay

and would therefore make $5.50 on each radioimported. But Radio Shack will not have the funds to pay the supplier until the radios ar-rive and are sold. If over the next 30 days the dollar unexpectedly depreciates to per yen, Radio Shack will have to pay per radio and so will take a loss on each.

To avoid this risk, Radio Shack can make a 30-day forward exchange deal with Bank ofAmerica. If Bank of America agrees to sell yen to Radio Shack in 30 days at a rate of Radio Shack is assured of paying exactly per radio to the supplier. By buying yen and selling dollars forward, Radio Shack is guaranteed

= $96.30($0.0107 per yen) * (¥9,000 per radio)$0.0107,

$3.50(¥9,000 per radio) = $103.50($0.0115 per yen) *

$0.0115

(¥9,000 per radio) = $94.50 per radio($0.0105 per yen) *$0.0105

¥9,000$100

$1.55$155,000£100,000

Spot rate

Forward rate

Exchange rates ($/£)

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011

Figure 14-1

Dollar/Pound Spot and Forward Exchange Rates, 1983–2011

Spot and forward exchange rates tend to move in a highly correlated fashion.

Source: Datastream. Rates shown are 90-day forward exchange rates and spot exchange rates, at end of month.

4In days past, it would take up to two days to settle even spot foreign exchange transactions. In other words, thevalue date for a spot transaction was actually two days after the deal was struck. Nowadays, most spot trades ofmajor currencies settle on the same day.

35


a profit of per radio and is insured against the possibility that a sudden exchange ratechange will turn a profitable importing deal into a loss. In the jargon of the foreign exchangemarket, we would say that Radio Shack has hedged its foreign currency risk.

From now on, when we mention an exchange rate but don’t specify whether it is a spotrate or a forward rate, we will always be referring to the spot rate.

Foreign Exchange SwapsA foreign exchange swap is a spot sale of a currency combined with a forward repurchase ofthat currency. For example, suppose the Toyota auto company has just received millionfrom American sales and knows it will have to pay those dollars to a California supplier inthree months. Toyota’s asset-management department would meanwhile like to invest the million in euro bonds. A three-month swap of dollars into euros may result in lower brokers’fees than the two separate transactions of selling dollars for spot euros and selling the eurosfor dollars on the forward market. Swaps make up a significant proportion of all foreignexchange trading.

Futures and OptionsSeveral other financial instruments traded in the foreign exchange market, like forwardcontracts, involve future exchanges of currencies. The timing and terms of the exchangescan differ, however, from those specified in forward contracts, giving traders additionalflexibility in avoiding foreign exchange risk. Only 25 years ago, some of these instrumentswere not traded on organized exchanges.

When you buy a futures contract, you buy a promise that a specified amount offoreign currency will be delivered on a specified date in the future. A forward contractbetween you and some other private party is an alternative way to ensure that you receivethe same amount of foreign currency on the date in question. But while you have nochoice about fulfilling your end of a forward deal, you can sell your futures contract onan organized futures exchange, realizing a profit or loss right away. Such a sale mightappear advantageous, for example, if your views about the future spot exchange ratewere to change.

A foreign exchange option gives its owner the right to buy or sell a specified amount offoreign currency at a specified price at any time up to a specified expiration date. The otherparty to the deal, the option’s seller, is required to sell or buy the foreign currency at thediscretion of the option’s owner, who is under no obligation to exercise his right.

Imagine that you are uncertain about when in the next month a foreign currency pay-ment will arrive. To avoid the risk of a loss, you may wish to buy a put option giving youthe right to sell the foreign currency at a known exchange rate at any time during themonth. If instead you expect to make a payment abroad sometime in the month, a calloption, which gives you the right to buy foreign currency to make the payment at a knownprice, might be attractive. Options can be written on many underlying assets (includingforeign exchange futures), and, like futures, they are freely bought and sold. Forwards,swaps, futures, and options are all examples of financial derivatives, which we encoun-tered in Chapter 13.

The Demand for Foreign Currency AssetsWe have now seen how banks, corporations, and other institutions trade foreign currency bankdeposits in a worldwide foreign exchange market that operates 24 hours a day. To understandhow exchange rates are determined by the foreign exchange market, we first must ask how themajor actors’ demands for different types of foreign currency deposits are determined.

$1

$1

$3.70

36


The demand for a foreign currency bank deposit is influenced by the same considera-tions that influence the demand for any other asset. Chief among these considerations isour view of what the deposit will be worth in the future. A foreign currency deposit’sfuture value depends in turn on two factors: the interest rate it offers and the expectedchange in the currency’s exchange rate against other currencies.

Assets and Asset ReturnsAs you will recall, people can hold wealth in many forms—stocks, bonds, cash, real estate,rare wines, diamonds, and so on. The object of acquiring wealth—of saving—is to transferpurchasing power into the future. We may do this to provide for our retirement years, forour heirs, or simply because we earn more than we need to spend in a particular year andprefer to save the balance for a rainy day.

Defining Asset Returns Because the object of saving is to provide for future consumption,we judge the desirability of an asset largely on the basis of its rate of return, that is, thepercentage increase in value it offers over some time period. For example, suppose that at thebeginning of 2012 you pay for a share of stock issued by Financial Soothsayers, Inc. Ifthe stock pays you a dividend of $1 at the beginning of 2013, and if the stock’s price risesfrom to per share over the year, then you have earned a rate of return of 10 percenton the stock over 2012—that is, your initial investment has grown in value to , thesum of the dividend and the you could get by selling your share. Had FinancialSoothsayers stock still paid out its dividend but dropped in price to per share, your

investment would be worth only by year’s end, giving a rate of return of negative10 percent.

You often cannot know with certainty the return that an asset will actually pay after youbuy it. Both the dividend paid by a share of stock and the share’s resale price, for example,may be hard to predict. Your decision therefore must be based on an expected rate ofreturn. To calculate an expected rate of return over some time period, you make your bestforecast of the asset’s total value at the period’s end. The percentage difference betweenthat expected future value and the price you pay for the asset today equals the asset’sexpected rate of return over the time period.

When we measure an asset’s rate of return, we compare how an investment in the assetchanges in total value between two dates. In the previous example, we compared how thevalue of an investment in Financial Soothsayers stock changed between 2012 and2013 to conclude that the rate of return on the stock was 10 percent per year. Wecall this a dollar rate of return because the two values we compare are expressed in termsof dollars. It is also possible, however, to compute different rates of return by expressingthe two values in terms of a foreign currency or a commodity such as gold.

The Real Rate of Return The expected rate of return that savers consider in decidingwhich assets to hold is the expected real rate of return, that is, the rate of returncomputed by measuring asset values in terms of some broad representative basket ofproducts that savers regularly purchase. It is the expected real return that matters becausethe ultimate goal of saving is future consumption, and only the real return measures thegoods and services a saver can buy in the future in return for giving up some consumption(that is, saving) today.

To continue our example, suppose that the dollar value of an investment in FinancialSoothsayers stock increases by 10 percent between 2012 and 2013 but that the dollarprices of all goods and services also increase by 10 percent. Then in terms of output—thatis, in real terms—the investment would be worth no more in 2012 than in 2013. With areal rate of return of zero, Financial Soothsayers stock would not be a very desirable asset.

($110)($100)

$90$100$89$1

$109$1$110$100

$109$100

$100

37


In a standard forward exchange contract, two partiesagree to exchange two different currencies at anagreed rate on a future date. The currencies of manydeveloping countries are, however, not fullyconvertible, meaning that they cannot be freelytraded on international foreign exchange markets.An important example of an inconvertible currencyis China’s renminbi, which can be traded withinChina’s borders (by residents) but not freely outsideof them (because China’s government does notallow nonresidents unrestricted ownership of ren-minbi deposits in China). Thus, for currencies suchas the renminbi, the customary way of trading for-ward exchange is not possible.

Developing countries with inconvertible currenciessuch as China’s have entered the ranks of the world’slargest participants in international trade and invest-ment. Usually, traders use the forward exchange mar-ket to hedge their currency risks, but in cases such asChina’s, as we have seen, a standard forward marketcannot exist. Is there no way for foreigners to hedgethe currency risk they may take on when they tradewith inconvertible-currency countries?

Since the early 1990s, markets in nondeliverableforward exchange have sprung up in centers such asHong Kong and Singapore to facilitate hedging in in-convertible Asian currencies. Among the currenciestraded in offshore nondeliverable forward marketsare the Chinese renminbi, the Taiwan dollar, and theIndian rupee. By using nondeliverable forward con-tracts, traders can hedge currency risks without everactually having to trade inconvertible currencies.

Let’s look at a hypothetical example to see howthis hedging can be accomplished. General Motorshas just sold some car components to China. Its con-tract with the Chinese importer states that in threemonths, GM will receive the dollar equivalent of 10million yuan in payment for its shipment. (The yuan

is the unit in which amounts of renminbi are meas-ured, just as British sterling is measured in pounds.)The People’s Bank of China (PBC), the central bank,tightly controls its currency’s exchange rate by trad-ing dollars that it holds for renminbi with domesticresidents.* Today, the PBC will buy or sell a U.S.dollar for 6.8 yuan. But assume that the PBC hasbeen gradually allowing its currency to appreciateagainst the dollar, and that the rate it will quote inthree months is uncertain: It could be anywherebetween, say, 6.7 and 6.5 yuan per dollar. GM wouldlike to lock in a forward exchange rate of 6.6 yuanper dollar, which the company’s chief financial offi-cer might typically do simply by selling the expected10 million yuan receipts forward for dollars at thatrate. Unfortunately, the renminbi’s inconvertibilitymeans that GM will actually receive, not renminbithat it can sell forward, but the dollar equivalent of 10million yuan, dollars that the importer can buythrough China’s banking system.

Nondeliverable forwards result in a “virtual” for-ward market, however. They do this by allowingnon-Chinese traders to make bets on the renminbi’svalue that are payable in dollars. To lock in a non-deliverable forward exchange rate of 6.6 yuan perdollar, GM can sign a contract requiring it to pay thedifference between the number of dollars it actuallyreceives in three months and the amount it wouldreceive if the exchange rate were exactly 6.6 yuan perdollar, equivalent to 1/6.6 dollars per yuan = $0.1515per yuan (after rounding). Thus, if the exchange rateturns out to be 6.5 yuan per dollar (which otherwisewould be good luck for GM), GM will have to payout on its contract (1/6.5 - 1/6.6 dollars per yuan) *(10,000,000 yuan) = ($0.1538 - $0.1515 per yuan) *(10,000,000 yuan) = $23,310.

On the other hand, by giving up the possibility ofgood luck, GM also avoids the risk of bad luck. If the

Nondeliverable Forward Exchange Trading in Asia

*China’s currency regime is an example of a fixed exchange rate system, which we will study in greater detail in Chapter 18.

Although savers care about expected real rates of return, rates of return expressed in termsof a currency can still be used to compare real returns on different assets. Even if all dollarprices rise by 10 percent between 2012 and 2013, a rare bottle of wine whose dollar price risesby 25 percent is still a better investment than a bond whose dollar value rises by 20 percent.

38


exchange rate turns out instead to be 6.7 yuan perdollar (which otherwise would be unfavorable forGM), GM will pay the negative amount ($0.1493 �$0.1515 per yuan) � (10,000,000 yuan) � �$22,614,that is, it will receive $22,614 from the other contract-ing party. The nondeliverable forward contract allowsGM to immunize itself from exchange risk, eventhough the parties to the contract need never actuallyexchange Chinese currency.

The chart above shows daily data on nondeliver-able forward rates of yuan for dollars with valuedates one month, one year, and two years away. (Farlonger maturities are also quoted.) Changes in theserates are more variable at the longer maturitiesbecause the rates reflect expectations about China’sfuture exchange rate policy and because the far fu-ture is relatively more uncertain than the near future.

How have China’s exchange rate policies evolved?From July 2005 until July 2008, China followed a

widely understood policy of gradually allowing itscurrency to appreciate against the U.S. dollar. Becauseof expectations during this period that the yuan/dollarrate would fall over time, the forward rates at whichpeople were willing to trade to cover transactions twoyears away are below the one-year-ahead forwardrates, which in turn are below the one-month-aheadforward rates.

China changed its policy in the summer of 2008,pegging the yuan rigidly to the dollar without anyannounced end date for that policy. That action al-tered the relationship among the three forward rates,as you can see in the chart. Two years later, in June2010, China announced its return to a supposedlymore flexible exchange rate for the yuan.

China’s exchange rate system and policies havebeen a focus of international controversy in recentyears, and we will say more about them in laterchapters.

5.5

6

6.5

7

7.5

8

8.5Exchange rate (yuan per U.S. Dollar)

One month forward

Two years forward

June 2006

September 2006

December 2

006

March 2007

June 2007

September 2007

December 2

007

March 2008

June 2008

September 2008

December 2

008

March 2009

June 2009

September 2009

December 2

009

March 2010

June 2010

One year forward

Nondeliverable Forward Exchange Rates, China Yuan per Dollar

Source: Datastream.

The real rate of return offered by the wine is 15 percent whilethat offered by the bond is only 10 percent Notice that the dif-ference between the dollar returns of the two assets must equal thedifference between their real returns . The reason for this equality is(15 percent - 10 percent)

(25 percent - 20 percent)(= 20 percent - 10 percent).

(= 25 percent - 10 percent)

39


that, given the two assets’ dollar returns, a change in the rate at which the dollar prices ofgoods are rising changes both assets’ real returns by the same amount.

The distinction between real rates of return and dollar rates of return illustrates animportant concept in studying how savers evaluate different assets: The returns on twoassets cannot be compared unless they are measured in the same units. For example, itmakes no sense to compare directly the real return on the bottle of wine (15 percent in ourexample) with the dollar return on the bond (20 percent) or to compare the dollar return onold paintings with the euro return on gold. Only after the returns are expressed in terms ofa common unit of measure—for example, all in terms of dollars—can we tell which assetoffers the highest expected real rate of return.

Risk and LiquidityAll else equal, individuals prefer to hold those assets offering the highest expected realrate of return. Our later discussions of particular assets will show, however, that “all else”often is not equal. Some assets may be valued by savers for attributes other than theexpected real rate of return they offer. Savers care about two main characteristics of anasset other than its return: its risk, the variability it contributes to savers’ wealth, and itsliquidity, the ease with which the asset can be sold or exchanged for goods.

1. Risk. An asset’s real return is usually unpredictable and may turn out to be quite dif-ferent from what savers expected when they purchased the asset. In our last example,savers found the expected real rate of return on an investment in bonds (10 percent) bysubtracting from the expected rate of increase in the investment’s dollar value (20 percent)the expected rate of increase in dollar prices (10 percent). But if expectations are wrongand the bonds’ dollar value stays constant instead of rising by 20 percent, the saver endsup with a real return of negative 10 percent Savers dislikeuncertainty and are reluctant to hold assets that make their wealth highly variable. An as-set with a high expected rate of return may thus appear undesirable to savers if its realizedrate of return fluctuates widely.

2. Liquidity. Assets also differ according to the cost and speed at which savers candispose of them. A house, for example, is not very liquid because its sale usuallyrequires time and the services of brokers and inspectors. To sell a house quickly, onemight have to sell at a relatively low price. In contrast, cash is the most liquid of allassets: It is always acceptable at face value as payment for goods or other assets.Savers prefer to hold some liquid assets as a precaution against unexpected pressingexpenses that might force them to sell less liquid assets at a loss. They will thereforeconsider an asset’s liquidity as well as its expected return and risk in deciding howmuch of it to hold.

Interest RatesAs in other asset markets, participants in the foreign exchange market base their demandsfor deposits of different currencies on a comparison of these assets’ expected rates ofreturn. To compare returns on different deposits, market participants need two pieces ofinformation. First, they need to know how the money values of the deposits will change.Second, they need to know how exchange rates will change so that they can translate ratesof return measured in different currencies into comparable terms.

The first piece of information needed to compute the rate of return on a deposit of aparticular currency is the currency’s interest rate, the amount of that currency an indi-vidual can earn by lending a unit of the currency for a year. At a dollar interest rate of0.10 (quoted as 10 percent per year), the lender of receives at the end of the$1.10$1

(= 0 percent - 10 percent).

40


1978 1980 1982 19861984 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2004 2008 20112002 2006

Interest rates (percent per year)

Dollar rate

Yen rate

0

3

6

9

12

15

18

21

Figure 14-2

Interest Rates on Dollar and Yen Deposits, 1978–2011

Since dollar and yen interest rates are not measured in comparable terms, they can move quite differently over time.

Source: Datastream. Three-month interest rates are shown.

5Chapter 6 defined real interest rates, which are simply real rates of return on loans, that is, interest ratesexpressed in terms of a consumption basket. Interest rates expressed in terms of currencies are called nominalinterest rates. The connection between real and nominal interest rates is discussed in detail in Chapter 16.

year, of which is principal and 10 cents of which is interest. Looked at from the otherside of the transaction, the interest rate on dollars is also the amount that must be paid toborrow for a year. When you buy a U.S. Treasury bill, you earn the interest rate ondollars because you are lending dollars to the U.S. government.

Interest rates play an important role in the foreign exchange market because the largedeposits traded there pay interest, each at a rate reflecting its currency of denomination.For example, when the interest rate on dollars is 10 percent per year, a depositis worth after a year; when the interest rate on euros is 5 percent per year, a

deposit is worth after a year. Deposits pay interest because they arereally loans from the depositor to the bank. When a corporation or a financial institutiondeposits a currency in a bank, it is lending that currency to the bank rather than using it forsome current expenditure. In other words, the depositor is acquiring an asset denominatedin the currency it deposits.

The dollar interest rate is simply the dollar rate of return on dollar deposits. You “buy”the deposit by lending a bank , and when you are paid back with 10 percentinterest at the end of the year, your asset is worth . This gives a rate of return of

or 10 percent per year. Similarly, a foreign cur-rency’s interest rate measures the foreign currency return on deposits of that currency.Figure 14-2 shows the monthly behavior of interest rates on the dollar and the Japaneseyen from 1978 to 2010. These interest rates are not measured in comparable terms, sothere is no reason for them to be close to each other or to move in similar ways over time.5

(110,000 - 100,000)/100,000 = 0.10,$110,000

$100,000

€105,000€100,000$110,000

$100,000

$1

$1

41


Exchange Rates and Asset ReturnsThe interest rates offered by a dollar and a euro deposit tell us how their dollar and eurovalues will change over a year. The other piece of information we need in order to com-pare the rates of return offered by dollar and euro deposits is the expected change in thedollar/euro exchange rate over the year. To see which deposit, euro or dollar, offers ahigher expected rate of return, you must ask the question: If I use dollars to buy a eurodeposit, how many dollars will I get back after a year? When you answer this question,you are calculating the dollar rate of return on a euro deposit because you are comparingits dollar price today with its dollar value a year from today.

To see how to approach this type of calculation, let’s look at the following situation:Suppose that today’s exchange rate (quoted in American terms) is per euro, but thatyou expect the rate to be per euro in a year (perhaps because you expect unfavor-able developments in the U.S. economy). Suppose also that the dollar interest rate is10 percent per year while the euro interest rate is 5 percent per year. This means a depositof pays after a year while a deposit of pays after a year. Which ofthese deposits offers the higher return?

The answer can be found in five steps.Step 1. Use today’s dollar/euro exchange rate to figure out the dollar price of a euro

deposit of, say, . If the exchange rate today is per euro, the dollar price of a deposit is just .

Step 2. Use the euro interest rate to find the amount of euros you will have a yearfrom now if you purchase a deposit today. You know that the interest rate on euro de-posits is 5 percent per year. So at the end of a year, your deposit will be worth .

Step 3. Use the exchange rate you expect to prevail a year from today to calculate theexpected dollar value of the euro amount determined in Step 2. Since you expect the dollarto depreciate against the euro over the coming year so that the exchange rate 12 monthsfrom today is per euro, you expect the dollar value of your euro deposit after a yearto be

Step 4. Now that you know the dollar price of a deposit today and can fore-cast its value in a year , you can calculate the expected dollar rate of return on a eurodeposit as or 11 percent per year.

Step 5. Since the dollar rate of return on dollar deposits (the dollar interest rate) isonly 10 percent per year, you expect to do better by holding your wealth in the form ofeuro deposits. Despite the fact that the dollar interest rate exceeds the euro interest rate by5 percent per year, the euro’s expected appreciation against the dollar gives euro holders aprospective capital gain that is large enough to make euro deposits the higher-yield asset.

A Simple RuleA simple rule shortens this calculation. First, define the rate of depreciation of the dollaragainst the euro as the percentage increase in the dollar/euro exchange rate over a year. Inthe last example, the dollar’s expected depreciation rate is or roughly 6 percent per year. Once you have calculated the rate of depreciation of thedollar against the euro, our rule is this: The dollar rate of return on euro deposits isapproximately the euro interest rate plus the rate of depreciation of the dollar againstthe euro. In other words, to translate the euro return on euro deposits into dollar terms,you need to add the rate at which the euro’s dollar price rises over a year to the eurointerest rate.

In our example, the sum of the euro interest rate (5 percent) and the expected deprecia-tion rate of the dollar (roughly 6 percent) is about 11 percent, which is what we found tobe the expected dollar return on euro deposits in our first calculation.

(1.165 - 1.10)/1.10 = 0.059,

(1.223 - 1.10)/1.10 = 0.11,($1.223)

($1.10)€1$1.165 per euro * €1.05 = $1.223.

$1.165

€1.05€1€1

$1.10€1$1.10€1

€1.05€1$1.10$1.00

$1.165$1.10

42


We summarize our discussion by introducing some notation:

(The superscript attached to this last exchange rate indicates that it is a forecast of thefuture exchange rate based on what people know today.)

Using these symbols, we write the expected rate of return on a euro deposit, measuredin terms of dollars, as the sum of (1) the euro interest rate and (2) the expected rate ofdollar depreciation against the euro:

This expected return is what must be compared with the interest rate on one-year dollardeposits, in deciding whether dollar or euro deposits offer the higher expected rate ofreturn.6 The expected rate of return difference between dollar and euro deposits is there-fore equal to less the above expression,

(14-1)

When the difference above is positive, dollar deposits yield the higher expected rate ofreturn; when it is negative, euro deposits yield the higher expected rate of return.

Table 14-3 carries out some illustrative comparisons. In case 1, the interest differencein favor of dollar deposits is 4 percent per year and nochange in the exchange rate is expected This means that theexpected annual real rate of return on dollar deposits is 4 percent higher than that on eurodeposits, so that, other things equal, you would prefer to hold your wealth as dollar ratherthan euro deposits.

[(E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€ = 0.00].(R$ - R€ = 0.10 - 0.06 = 0.04),

R$ - [R€ + (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€] = R$ - R€ - (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€.

R$

R$,

R€ + (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€.

e

expected to prevail a year from today.

E $/€e

= dollar/euro exchange rate (number of dollars per euro)

E$/€ = today’s dollar/euro exchange rate (number of dollars per euro),

R€ = today’s interest rate on one-year euro deposits,

TABLE 14-3 Comparing Dollar Rates of Return on Dollar and Euro Deposits

DollarInterest

Rate

EuroInterest

Rate

Expected Rate ofDollar Depreciation

Against Euro

Rate of Return Difference Between

Dollar and Euro Deposits

Case R$ R€

E$/€e

- E$/€

E$/€R$ � R€ �

(E$/€e � E$/€)

E$/€

1 0.10 0.06 0.00 0.042 0.10 0.06 0.04 0.003 0.10 0.06 0.08 – 0.044 0.10 0.12 – 0.04 0.02

6If you compute the expected dollar return on euro deposits using the exact five-step method we described beforeintroducing the simple rule, you’ll find that it actually equals

This exact formula can be rewritten, however, as

The expression above is very close to the formula derived from the simple rule when, as is usually the case, theproduct is a small number.R€ * (E $/€

e- E$/€)/E$/€

R€ + (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€ + R€ * (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€.

(1 + R€) (E $/€e / E$/€) - 1.

43


In case 2 the interest difference is the same (4 percent), but it is just offset by anexpected depreciation rate of the dollar of 4 percent. The two assets therefore have thesame expected rate of return.

Case 3 is similar to the one discussed earlier: A 4 percent interest difference in favor ofdollar deposits is more than offset by an 8 percent expected depreciation of the dollar, soeuro deposits are preferred by market participants.

In case 4, there is a 2 percent interest difference in favor of euro deposits, but the dollaris expected to appreciate against the euro by 4 percent over the year. The expected rate ofreturn on dollar deposits is therefore 2 percent per year higher than that on euro deposits.

So far we have been translating all returns into dollar terms. But the rate of return dif-ferentials we calculated would have been the same had we chosen to express returns interms of euros or in terms of some third currency. Suppose, for example, we wanted tomeasure the return on dollar deposits in terms of euros. Following our simple rule, wewould add to the dollar interest rate the expected rate of depreciation of the euroagainst the dollar. But the expected rate of depreciation of the euro against the dollar isapproximately the expected rate of appreciation of the dollar against the euro, that is, theexpected rate of depreciation of the dollar against the euro with a minus sign in front of it.This means that in terms of euros, the return on a dollar deposit is

The difference between the expression above and is identical to expression (14-1).Thus, it makes no difference to our comparison whether we measure returns in terms ofdollars or euros, as long as we measure them both in terms of the same currency.

Return, Risk, and Liquidity in the Foreign Exchange MarketWe observed earlier that a saver deciding which assets to hold may care about the assets’riskiness and liquidity in addition to their expected real rates of return. Similarly, thedemand for foreign currency assets depends not only on returns but also on risk andliquidity. Even if the expected dollar return on euro deposits is higher than that on dollardeposits, for example, people may be reluctant to hold euro deposits if the payoff to hold-ing them varies erratically.

There is no consensus among economists about the importance of risk in the foreignexchange market. Even the definition of “foreign exchange risk” is a topic of debate. Fornow we will avoid these complex questions by assuming that the real returns on all de-posits have equal riskiness, regardless of the currency of denomination. In other words, weare assuming that risk differences do not influence the demand for foreign currency assets.We discuss the role of foreign exchange risk in greater detail, however, in Chapter 18.7

Some market participants may be influenced by liquidity factors in deciding which cur-rencies to hold. Most of these participants are firms and individuals conducting interna-tional trade. An American importer of French fashion products or wines, for example, mayfind it convenient to hold euros for routine payments even if the expected rate of return oneuros is lower than that on dollars. Because payments connected with international trade

R€

R$ - (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€.

R$

7In discussing spot and forward foreign exchange transactions, some textbooks make a distinction between foreignexchange “speculators”—market participants who allegedly care only about expected returns—and “hedgers”—market participants whose concern is to avoid risk. We depart from this textbook tradition because it can mislead theunwary: While the speculative and hedging motives are both potentially important in exchange rate determination,the same person can be both a speculator and a hedger if she cares about both return and risk. Our tentative assump-tion that risk is unimportant in determining the demand for foreign currency assets means, in terms of the traditionallanguage, that the speculative motive for holding foreign currencies is far more important than the hedging motive.

44


make up a very small fraction of total foreign exchange transactions, we ignore the liquid-ity motive for holding foreign currencies.

We are therefore assuming for now that participants in the foreign exchange marketbase their demands for foreign currency assets exclusively on a comparison of those as-sets’ expected rates of return. The main reason for making this assumption is that it sim-plifies our analysis of how exchange rates are determined in the foreign exchange market.In addition, the risk and liquidity motives for holding foreign currencies appear to be ofsecondary importance for many of the international macroeconomic issues discussed inthe next few chapters.

Equilibrium in the Foreign Exchange MarketWe now use what we have learned about the demand for foreign currency assets todescribe how exchange rates are determined. We will show that the exchange rate atwhich the market settles is the one that makes market participants content to hold exist-ing supplies of deposits of all currencies. When market participants willingly hold theexisting supplies of deposits of all currencies, we say that the foreign exchange marketis in equilibrium.

The description of exchange rate determination given in this section is only a first step:A full explanation of the exchange rate’s current level can be given only after we examinehow participants in the foreign exchange market form their expectations about theexchange rates they expect to prevail in the future. The next two chapters look at the fac-tors that influence expectations of future exchange rates. For now, however, we will takeexpected future exchange rates as given.

Interest Parity: The Basic Equilibrium ConditionThe foreign exchange market is in equilibrium when deposits of all currencies offer thesame expected rate of return. The condition that the expected returns on deposits of anytwo currencies are equal when measured in the same currency is called the interest paritycondition. It implies that potential holders of foreign currency deposits view them all asequally desirable assets, provided their expected rates of return are the same.

Let’s see why the foreign exchange market is in equilibrium only when the interest par-ity condition holds. Suppose the dollar interest rate is 10 percent and the euro interest rateis 6 percent, but that the dollar is expected to depreciate against the euro at an 8 percentrate over a year. (This is case 3 in Table 14-3.) In the circumstances described, theexpected rate of return on euro deposits would be 4 percent per year higher than that ondollar deposits. We assumed at the end of the last section that individuals always prefer tohold deposits of currencies offering the highest expected return. This implies that if theexpected return on euro deposits is 4 percent greater than that on dollar deposits, no onewill be willing to continue holding dollar deposits, and holders of dollar deposits will betrying to sell them for euro deposits. There will therefore be an excess supply of dollardeposits and an excess demand for euro deposits in the foreign exchange market.

As a contrasting example, suppose that dollar deposits again offer a 10 percent inter-est rate but euro deposits offer a 12 percent rate and the dollar is expected to appreciateagainst the euro by 4 percent over the coming year. (This is case 4 in Table 14-3.) Nowthe return on dollar deposits is 2 percent higher. In this case no one would demand eurodeposits, so they would be in excess supply and dollar deposits would be in excessdemand.

When, however, the dollar interest rate is 10 percent, the euro interest rate is 6 percent,and the dollar’s expected depreciation rate against the euro is 4 percent, dollar and euro

45


deposits offer the same rate of return and participants in the foreign exchange market areequally willing to hold either. (This is case 2 in Table 14-3.)

Only when all expected rates of return are equal—that is, when the interest parity con-dition holds—is there no excess supply of some type of deposit and no excess demand foranother. The foreign exchange market is in equilibrium when no type of deposit is inexcess demand or excess supply. We can therefore say that the foreign exchange market isin equilibrium when, and only when, the interest parity condition holds.

To represent interest parity between dollar and euro deposits symbolically, we useexpression (14-1), which shows the difference between the two assets’ expected rates ofreturn measured in dollars. The expected rates of return are equal when

(14-2)

You probably suspect that when dollar deposits offer a higher return than euro deposits,the dollar will appreciate against the euro as investors all try to shift their funds into dol-lars. Conversely, the dollar should depreciate against the euro when it is euro deposits thatinitially offer the higher return. This intuition is exactly correct. To understand the mecha-nism at work, however, we must take a careful look at how exchange rate changes likethese help to maintain equilibrium in the foreign exchange market.

How Changes in the Current Exchange Rate Affect Expected ReturnsAs a first step in understanding how the foreign exchange market finds its equilibrium, weexamine how changes in today’s exchange rate affect the expected return on a foreign cur-rency deposit when interest rates and expectations about the future exchange rate do notchange. Our analysis will show that, other things equal, depreciation of a country’s cur-rency today lowers the expected domestic currency return on foreign currency deposits.Conversely, appreciation of the domestic currency today, all else equal, raises the domes-tic currency return expected of foreign currency deposits.

It is easiest to see why these relationships hold by looking at an example: How doesa change in today’s dollar/euro exchange rate, all else held constant, change theexpected return, measured in terms of dollars, on euro deposits? Suppose that today’sdollar/euro rate is per euro and that the exchange rate you expect for this daynext year is per euro. Then the expected rate of dollar depreciation against theeuro is or 5 percent per year. This means that when youbuy a euro deposit, you not only earn the interest but also get a 5 percent “bonus”in terms of dollars. Now suppose that today’s exchange rate suddenly jumps up to

per euro (a depreciation of the dollar and an appreciation of the euro) but thatthe expected future rate is still per euro. What happens to the “bonus” you ex-pected to get from the euro’s increase in value in terms of dollars? The expected rate ofdollar depreciation is now only or 1.9 percent instead of5 percent. Since has not changed, the dollar return on euro deposits, which is thesum of and the expected rate of dollar depreciation, has fallen by 3.1 percentagepoints per year (5 percent – 1.9 percent).

In Table 14-4 we work out the dollar return on euro deposits for various levels of today’sdollar/euro exchange rate always assuming that the expected future exchange rateremains fixed at per euro and the euro interest rate is 5 percent per year. As you cansee, a rise in today’s dollar/euro exchange rate (a depreciation of the dollar against the euro)always lowers the expected dollar return on euro deposits (as in our example), while a fallin today’s dollar/euro exchange rate (an appreciation of the dollar against the euro) alwaysraises this return.

$1.05E$/€,

R€

R€

(1.05 - 1.03)/1.03 = 0.019,

$1.05$1.03

R€

(1.05 - 1.00)/1.00 = 0.05,$1.05

$1.00

R$ = R€ + (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€.

46


It may run counter to your intuition that a depreciation of the dollar against the euromakes euro deposits less attractive relative to dollar deposits (by lowering the expecteddollar return on euro deposits) while an appreciation of the dollar makes euro depositsmore attractive. This result will seem less surprising if you remember we have assumedthat the expected future dollar/euro rate and interest rates do not change. A dollar depreci-ation today, for example, means the dollar now needs to depreciate by a smaller amount toreach any given expected future level. If the expected future dollar/euro exchange ratedoes not change when the dollar depreciates today, the dollar’s expected future deprecia-tion against the euro therefore falls, or, alternatively, the dollar’s expected future apprecia-tion rises. Since interest rates also are unchanged, today’s dollar depreciation thus makeseuro deposits less attractive compared with dollar deposits.

Put another way, a current dollar depreciation that affects neither exchange rate expec-tations nor interest rates leaves the expected future dollar payoff of a euro deposit the samebut raises the deposit’s current dollar cost. This change naturally makes euro deposits lessattractive relative to dollar deposits.

It may also run counter to your intuition that today’s exchange rate can change whilethe exchange rate expected for the future does not. We will indeed study cases later in thisbook when both of these rates do change at once. We nonetheless hold the expected futureexchange rate constant in the present discussion because that is the clearest way to illus-trate the effect of today’s exchange rate on expected returns. If it helps, you can imaginewe are looking at the impact of a temporary change so brief that it has no effect on theexchange rate expected for next year.

Figure 14-3 shows the calculations in Table 14-4 in a graphic form that will be helpfulin our analysis of exchange rate determination. The vertical axis in the figure measurestoday’s dollar/euro exchange rate and the horizontal axis measures the expected dollarreturn on euro deposits. For fixed values of the expected future dollar/euro exchange rateand the euro interest rate, the relation between today’s dollar/euro exchange rate and theexpected dollar return on euro deposits defines a downward-sloping schedule.

The Equilibrium Exchange RateNow that we understand why the interest parity condition must hold for the foreignexchange market to be in equilibrium and how today’s exchange rate affects the expectedreturn on foreign currency deposits, we can see how equilibrium exchange rates are deter-mined. Our main conclusion will be that exchange rates always adjust to maintain interestparity. We continue to assume that the dollar interest rate the euro interest rate andthe expected future dollar/euro exchange rate are all given.E $/€

eR€,R$,

TABLE 14-4 Today’s Dollar/Euro Exchange Rate and the Expected Dollar Return on Euro Deposits When = $1.05 per EuroE$/€

e

Today’s Dollar/EuroExchange Rate

Interest Rate onEuro Deposits

Expected DollarDepreciation Rate

Against Euro

Expected DollarReturn on Euro

Deposits

E$/€ R€

1.05 � E$/€

E$/€R€ �

1.05 � E$/€

E$/€

1.07 0.05 - 0.019 0.0311.05 0.05 0.00 0.051.03 0.05 0.019 0.0691.02 0.05 0.029 0.0791.00 0.05 0.05 0.10

47


Figure 14-4 illustrates how the equilibrium dollar/euro exchange rate is determinedunder these assumptions. The vertical schedule in the graph indicates the given level of the return on dollar deposits measured in terms of dollars. The downward-sloping sched-ule shows how the expected return on euro deposits, measured in terms of dollars, dependson the current dollar/euro exchange rate. This second schedule is derived in the same wayas the one shown in Figure 14-3.

The equilibrium dollar/euro rate is the one indicated by the intersection of the twoschedules at point 1, At this exchange rate, the returns on dollar and euro depositsare equal, so that the interest parity condition (14-2),

is satisfied.Let’s see why the exchange rate will tend to settle at point 1 in Figure 14-4 if it is ini-

tially at a point such as 2 or 3. Suppose first that we are at point 2, with the exchange rateequal to The downward-sloping schedule measuring the expected dollar return oneuro deposits tells us that at the exchange rate the rate of return on euro deposits isless than the rate of return on dollar deposits, . In this situation anyone holding eurodeposits wishes to sell them for the more lucrative dollar deposits: The foreign exchangemarket is out of equilibrium because participants such as banks and multinational corpora-tions are unwilling to hold euro deposits.

How does the exchange rate adjust? The unhappy owners of euro deposits attempt tosell them for dollar deposits, but because the return on dollar deposits is higher than that

R$

E $/€2 ,

E $/€2 .

R$ = R€ + (E $/€e

- E $/€1 )/E $/€

1 ,

E $/€1 .

R$,

Today’s dollar/euroexchange rate, E$/€

0.031 0.0790.0690.050 0.100

1.00

1.02

1.03

1.07

1.05

Expected dollar return on

euro deposits, R€ +

E$/€ – E$/€

E$/€

e

Figure 14-3

The Relation Between the CurrentDollar/Euro Exchange Rate and theExpected Dollar Return on EuroDeposits

Given and , anappreciation of the dollar against the euroraises the expected return on euro de-posits, measured in terms of dollars.

R€ = 0.05E $/€e

= 1.05

48


on euro deposits at the exchange rate , no holder of a dollar deposit is willing to sell itfor a euro deposit at that rate. As euro holders try to entice dollar holders to trade by offer-ing them a better price for dollars, the dollar/euro exchange rate falls toward that is,euros become cheaper in terms of dollars. Once the exchange rate reaches euro anddollar deposits offer equal returns, and holders of euro deposits no longer have an incen-tive to try to sell them for dollars. The foreign exchange market is therefore in equilibrium.In falling from to , the exchange rate equalizes the expected returns on the twotypes of deposit by increasing the rate at which the dollar is expected to depreciate in thefuture, thereby making euro deposits more attractive.

The same process works in reverse if we are initially at point 3 with an exchange rate of. At point 3, the return on euro deposits exceeds that on dollar deposits, so there is

now an excess supply of the latter. As unwilling holders of dollar deposits bid for the moreattractive euro deposits, the price of euros in terms of dollars tends to rise; that is, the dol-lar tends to depreciate against the euro. When the exchange rate has moved to ratesof return are equalized across currencies and the market is in equilibrium. The deprecia-tion of the dollar from to makes euro deposits less attractive relative to dollardeposits by reducing the rate at which the dollar is expected to depreciate in the future.8

Interest Rates, Expectations, and EquilibriumHaving seen how exchange rates are determined by interest parity, we now take a look athow current exchange rates are affected by changes in interest rates and in expectationsabout the future, the two factors we held constant in our previous discussions. We will see

E $/€1E $/€

3

E $/€1 ,

E $/€3

E $/€1E $/€

2

E $/€1 ,E $/€

1 ;

E $/€2

Return on dollar deposits

2

1

3

Exchange rate,E$/€

Expected returnon euro deposits

Rates of return(in dollar terms)

R$

E$/€2

E$/€1

E$/€3

Figure 14-4

Determination of the EquilibriumDollar/Euro Exchange Rate

Equilibrium in the foreign exchange market isat point 1, where the expected dollar returnson dollar and euro deposits are equal.

8We could have developed our diagram from the perspective of Europe, with the euro/dollar exchange ratethe vertical axis, a schedule vertical at indicate the euro return on euro deposits, and a down-

ward-sloping schedule showing how the euro return on dollar deposits varies with An exercise at the end ofthe chapter asks you to show that this alternative way of looking at equilibrium in the foreign exchange marketgives the same answers as the method used here in the text.

E€/$.R€E$/€ (=1/E$/€)

49


Dollar return

2

1 1'


Expected euro return


E$/€

E$/€

1

2

R$1 R$

2

Figure 14-5

Effect of a Rise in the Dollar Interest Rate

A rise in the interest rate offered by dollardeposits from to causes the dollar toappreciate from (point 1) to (point 2).E $/€

2E $/€1

R$2R$

1

that the exchange rate (which is the relative price of two assets) responds to factors thatalter the expected rates of return on those two assets.

The Effect of Changing Interest Rates on the Current Exchange RateWe often read in the newspaper that the dollar is strong because U.S. interest rates are highor that it is falling because U.S. interest rates are falling. Can these statements beexplained using our analysis of the foreign exchange market?

To answer this question we again turn to a diagram. Figure 14-5 shows a rise in theinterest rate on dollars, from to as a rightward shift of the vertical dollar depositsreturn schedule. At the initial exchange rate the expected return on dollar deposits isnow higher than that on euro deposits by an amount equal to the distance between points 1and As we have seen, this difference causes the dollar to appreciate to (point 2).Because there has been no change in the euro interest rate or in the expected futureexchange rate, the dollar’s appreciation today raises the expected dollar return on eurodeposits by increasing the rate at which the dollar is expected to depreciate in the future.

Figure 14-6 shows the effect of a rise in the euro interest rate . This change causesthe downward-sloping schedule (which measures the expected dollar return on eurodeposits) to shift rightward. (To see why, ask yourself how a rise in the euro interest ratealters the dollar return on euro deposits, given the current exchange rate and the expectedfuture rate.)

At the initial exchange rate the expected depreciation rate of the dollar is thesame as before the rise in so the expected return on euro deposits now exceeds that ondollar deposits. The dollar/euro exchange rate rises (from to ) to eliminate theexcess supply of dollar assets at point 1. As before, the dollar’s depreciation against theeuro eliminates the excess supply of dollar assets by lowering the expected dollar rate ofreturn on euro deposits. A rise in European interest rates therefore leads to a depreciation

E $/€2E $/€

1R€,

E $/€1 ,

R€

E $/€21œ.

E $/€1 ,

R$2,R$

1

50


of the dollar against the euro or, looked at from the European perspective, an appreciationof the euro against the dollar.

Our discussion shows that, all else equal, an increase in the interest paid on deposits ofa currency causes that currency to appreciate against foreign currencies.

Before we conclude that the newspaper account of the effect of interest rates onexchange rates is correct, we must remember that our assumption of a constant expectedfuture exchange rate often is unrealistic. In many cases, a change in interest rates willbe accompanied by a change in the expected future exchange rate. This change in theexpected future exchange rate will depend, in turn, on the economic causes of the interestrate change. We compare different possible relationships between interest rates andexpected future exchange rates in Chapter 16. Keep in mind for now that in the real world,we cannot predict how a given interest rate change will alter exchange rates unless weknow why the interest rate is changing.

The Effect of Changing Expectations on the Current Exchange RateFigure 14-6 may also be used to study the effect on today’s exchange rate of a rise in theexpected future dollar/euro exchange rate,

Given today’s exchange rate, a rise in the expected future price of euros in terms ofdollars raises the dollar’s expected depreciation rate. For example, if today’s exchange rateis per euro and the rate expected to prevail in a year is per euro, the expecteddepreciation rate of the dollar against the euro is if the expectedfuture exchange rate now rises to per euro, the expected depreciation rate also rises, to

Because a rise in the expected depreciation rate of the dollar raises the expected dollarreturn on euro deposits, the downward-sloping schedule shifts to the right, as in Figure 14-6.At the initial exchange rate , there is now an excess supply of dollar deposits: EuroE $/€

1

(1.06 - 1.00)/1.00 = 0.06.$1.06

(1.05 - 1.00)/1.00 = 0.05;$1.05$1.00

E$/€e .

2

1



R$

Rise in eurointerest rate

E$/€

E$/€

1

2

Dollar return


Figure 14-6

Effect of a Rise in the Euro Interest Rate

A rise in the interest rate paid by eurodeposits causes the dollar to depreciatefrom (point 1) to (point 2). (Thisfigure also describes the effect of a rise inthe expected future exchange rate.)$/€

E $/€2E $/€

1

51


deposits offer a higher expected rate of return (measured in dollar terms) than do dollar de-posits. The dollar therefore depreciates against the euro until equilibrium is reached at point 2.

We conclude that, all else equal, a rise in the expected future exchange rate causes arise in the current exchange rate. Similarly, a fall in the expected future exchange ratecauses a fall in the current exchange rate.

Case Study

What Explains the Carry Trade?Over much of the 2000s, Japanese yen interest rates were close to zero (as Figure 14-2shows) while Australia’s interest rates were comfortably positive, climbing to over

7 percent per year by the spring of 2008.While it might therefore have appeared at-tractive to borrow yen and invest the proceedsin Australian dollar bonds, the interest paritycondition implies that such a strategy shouldnot be systematically profitable: On average,shouldn’t the interest advantage of Australiandollars be wiped out by relative appreciationof the yen?

Nonetheless, market actors ranging fromJapanese housewives to sophisticated hedge

funds did in fact pursue this strategy, investing billions in Australian dollars and drivingthat currency’s value up, rather than down, against the yen. More generally,international investors frequently borrow low-interest currencies (called “funding” cur-rencies) and buy high-interest currencies (called “investment” currencies), with resultsthat can be profitable over long periods. This activity is called the carry trade, andwhile it is generally impossible to document the extent of carry trade positions accu-rately, they can become very large when sizable international interest differentials openup. Is the prevalence of the carry trade evidence that interest parity is wrong?

The honest answer is that while interest parity does not hold exactly in practice—inpart because of the risk and liquidity factors mentioned above—economists are stillworking hard to understand if the carry trade requires additional explanation. Theirwork is likely to throw further light on the functioning of foreign exchange markets inparticular and financial markets in general.

One important hazard of the carry trade is that investment currencies (the high-inter-est currencies that carry traders target) may experience abrupt crashes. Figure 14-7illustrates this feature of foreign exchange markets, comparing the cumulative return toinvesting in yen bonds and in Australian dollar bonds over different investmenthorizons, with the initial investment being made at the start of 2003. As you can see,the yen investment yields next to nothing, whereas Australian dollars pay off hand-somely, not only because of a high interest rate but because the yen tended to fallagainst the Australian dollar through the summer of 2008. But in 2008 the Australiandollar crashed against the yen, falling in price from yen to only yen betweenJuly and December. As Figure 14-7 shows, this crash did not wipe out the gains to thecarry trade strategy entirely—if the strategy had been initiated early enough! Of course,anyone who got into the business late, for example, in 2007, did very poorly indeed.Conversely, anyone savvy enough to unwind the strategy in June 2008 would have

¥61¥104

¥100

52


50

75

100

125

150

175

200

225

2003 2004 2005 20072006 2008 2009 2010

Investment return

Australian dollar

Japanese yen

Figure 14-7

Cumulative Total Investment Return in Australian Dollar Compared to Japanese Yen, 2003–2010

The Australian dollar-yen carry trade has been profitable on average but is subject to sudden large reversals,as in 2008.

Source: Exchange rates and three-month treasury yields from Global Financial Data.

9If crashes are independent events over time, the probability that a crash does not occur over five years is (0.9)5.Therefore, the probability that a crash does occur in the five-year period is 1� (0.9)5

10See Markus K. Brunnermeier, Stefan Nagel, and Lasse H. Pedersen, “Carry Trades and Currency Crashes,”NBER Macroeconomics Annual 23 (2008), pp. 313–347. These findings are consistent with the apparently greaterempirical success of the interest parity condition over relatively long periods, as documented by Menzie Chinn,“The (Partial) Rehabilitation of Interest Rate Parity in the Floating Rate Era: Longer Horizons, AlternativeExpectations, and Emerging Markets,” Journal of International Money and Finance 25 (February 2006), pp. 7–21.

doubled his or her money in five and a half years. The carry trade is obviously a veryrisky business.

We can gain some insight into this pattern by imagining that investors expect a grad-ual 1 percent annual appreciation of the Australian dollar to occur with high probability(say, 90 percent) and a big 40 percent depreciation to occur with a 10 percent probabil-ity. Then the expected appreciation rate of the Australian dollar is:

The negative expected appreciation rate means that the yen is actually expected toappreciate on average against the Australian dollar. Moreover, the probability of a crashoccurring in the first five years of the investment is only percent, less than fifty-fifty.9 The resulting pattern of cumulative returns could easily lookmuch like the one shown in Figure 14-7. Calculations like these are suggestive, andalthough they are unlikely to explain the full magnitude of carry trade returns, researchershave found that investment currencies are particularly subject to abrupt crashes, and fund-ing currencies to abrupt appreciations.10

1 - (0.9)5= 1- 0.59 = 41

Expected appreciation = (0.9) * 1 - (0.1) * 40 = -3.1 percent per year.

53


SUMMARY

1. An exchange rate is the price of one country’s currency in terms of another country’scurrency. Exchange rates play a role in spending decisions because they enable us totranslate different countries’ prices into comparable terms. All else equal, a deprecia-tion of a country’s currency against foreign currencies (a rise in the home currencyprices of foreign currencies) makes its exports cheaper and its imports more expensive.An appreciation of its currency (a fall in the home currency prices of foreign curren-cies) makes its exports more expensive and its imports cheaper.

2. Exchange rates are determined in the foreign exchange market. The major participantsin that market are commercial banks, international corporations, nonbank financial in-stitutions, and national central banks. Commercial banks play a pivotal role in the mar-ket because they facilitate the exchange of interest-bearing bank deposits, which makeup the bulk of foreign exchange trading. Even though foreign exchange trading takesplace in many financial centers around the world, modern communication technologylinks those centers together into a single market that is open 24 hours a day. An impor-tant category of foreign exchange trading is forward trading, in which parties agree toexchange currencies on some future date at a prenegotiated exchange rate. In contrast,spot trades are settled immediately.

3. Because the exchange rate is the relative price of two assets, it is most appropriatelythought of as being an asset price itself. The basic principle of asset pricing is that anasset’s current value depends on its expected future purchasing power. In evaluating anasset, savers look at the expected rate of return it offers, that is, the rate at which thevalue of an investment in the asset is expected to rise over time. It is possible to meas-ure an asset’s expected rate of return in different ways, each depending on the units inwhich the asset’s value is measured. Savers care about an asset’s expected real rate of

Complementary explanations based on risk and liquidity considerations have alsobeen advanced. Often, abrupt currency movements occur during financial crises, whichare situations in which other wealth is being lost and liquid cash is particularly valu-able. In such circumstances, large losses on carry trade positions are extra painful andmay force traders to sell other assets they own at a loss.11 We will say much more aboutcrises in later chapters, but we note for now that the Australian dollar collapse of late2008 occurred in the midst of a severe global financial crisis.

When big carry trade positions emerge, the government officials responsible for in-ternational economic policies often lose sleep. In their early phase, carry trade dynam-ics will drive investment currencies higher as investors pile in and build up ever-largerexposures to a sudden depreciation of the investment currency. This makes the crashbigger when it occurs, as wrong-footed investors all scramble to repay their fundingloans. The result is greater exchange rate volatility in general, as well as the possibilityof big trader losses with negative repercussions in stock markets, bond markets, andmarkets for interbank loans.

11See Brunnermeier et al., ibid., as well as A. Craig Burnside, Martin Eichenbaum, Isaac Kleshchelski, andSergio T. Rebelo, “Do Peso Problems Explain the Returns to the Carry Trade?” Working Paper 14054, NationalBureau of Economic Research, June 2008.

54


return, the rate at which its value expressed in terms of a representative output basketis expected to rise.

4. When relative asset returns are relevant, as in the foreign exchange market, it isappropriate to compare expected changes in assets’ currency values, provided thosevalues are expressed in the same currency. If risk and liquidity factors do not stronglyinfluence the demands for foreign currency assets, participants in the foreignexchange market always prefer to hold those assets yielding the highest expected rateof return.

5. The returns on deposits traded in the foreign exchange market depend on interest ratesand expected exchange rate changes. To compare the expected rates of return offeredby dollar and euro deposits, for example, the return on euro deposits must be expressedin dollar terms by adding to the euro interest rate the expected rate of depreciation ofthe dollar against the euro (or rate of appreciation of the euro against the dollar) overthe deposit’s holding period.

6. Equilibrium in the foreign exchange market requires interest parity; that is, deposits ofall currencies must offer the same expected rate of return when returns are measured incomparable terms.

7. For given interest rates and a given expectation of the future exchange rate, the interestparity condition tells us the current equilibrium exchange rate. When the expecteddollar return on euro deposits exceeds that on dollar deposits, for example, the dollarimmediately depreciates against the euro. Other things equal, a dollar depreciationtoday reduces the expected dollar return on euro deposits by reducing the depreciationrate of the dollar against the euro expected for the future. Similarly, when the expectedreturn on euro deposits is below that on dollar deposits, the dollar must immediatelyappreciate against the euro. Other things equal, a current appreciation of the dollarmakes euro deposits more attractive by increasing the dollar’s expected future depreci-ation against the European currency.

8. All else equal, a rise in dollar interest rates causes the dollar to appreciate against theeuro while a rise in euro interest rates causes the dollar to depreciate against the euro.Today’s exchange rate is also altered by changes in its expected future level. If thereis a rise in the expected future level of the dollar/euro rate, for example, then atunchanged interest rates, today’s dollar/euro exchange rate will also rise.

KEY TERMS

appreciation, p. 352arbitrage, p. 356depreciation, p. 352exchange rate, p. 350foreign exchange market, p. 354forward exchange rate, p. 357

interbank trading, p. 354interest parity

condition, p. 367interest rate, p. 362liquidity, p. 362rate of appreciation, p. 366

rate of depreciation, p. 364rate of return, p. 359real rate of return, p. 359risk, p. 362spot exchange rate, p. 356vehicle currency, p. 356

PROBLEMS

1. In Munich a bratwurst costs 5 euros; a hot dog costs at Boston’s Fenway Park. Atan exchange rate of , what is the price of a bratwurst in terms of a hotdog? All else equal, how does this relative price change if the dollar depreciates to

per euro? Compared with the initial situation, has a hot dog become more orless expensive relative to a bratwurst?$1.25

$1.05/per euro$4

55


2. A U.S. dollar costs 7.5 Norwegian kroner, but the same dollar can be purchased for1.25 Swiss francs. What is the Norwegian krone/Swiss franc exchange rate?

3. Petroleum is sold in a world market and tends to be priced in U.S. dollars. TheNippon Steel Chemical Group of Japan must import petroleum to use in manufactur-ing plastics and other products. How are its profits affected when the yen depreciatesagainst the dollar?

4. Calculate the dollar rates of return on the following assets:a. A painting whose price rises from to in a year.b. A bottle of a rare Burgundy, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 1978, whose price

rises from to between 2013 and 2014.c. A £10,000 deposit in a London bank in a year when the interest rate on pounds is

10 percent and the exchange rate moves from per pound to perpound.

5. What would be the real rates of return on the assets in the preceding question if theprice changes described were accompanied by a simultaneous 10 percent increase inall dollar prices?

6. Suppose the dollar interest rate and the pound sterling interest rate are the same,5 percent per year. What is the relation between the current equilibrium exchangerate and its expected future level? Suppose the expected future exchange rate,

per pound, remains constant as Britain’s interest rate rises to 10 percent peryear. If the U.S. interest rate also remains constant, what is the new equilibrium exchange rate?

7. Traders in asset markets suddenly learn that the interest rate on dollars will decline inthe near future. Use the diagrammatic analysis of this chapter to determine the effecton the current dollar/euro exchange rate, assuming current interest rates on dollar andeuro deposits do not change.

8. We noted that we could have developed our diagrammatic analysis of foreign ex-change market equilibrium from the perspective of Europe, with the euro/dollarexchange rate on the vertical axis, a schedule vertical at to indicatethe euro return on euro deposits, and a downward-sloping schedule showing how theeuro return on dollar deposits varies with . Derive this alternative picture of equi-librium and use it to examine the effect of changes in interest rates and the expectedfuture exchange rate. Do your answers agree with those we found earlier?

9. The following report appeared in the New York Times on August 7, 1989 (“Dollar’sStrength a Surprise,” p. D1):

But now the sentiment is that the economy is heading for a “soft landing,” withthe economy slowing significantly and inflation subsiding, but without a recession.

This outlook is good for the dollar for two reasons. A soft landing is not as dis-ruptive as a recession, so the foreign investments that support the dollar are morelikely to continue.

Also, a soft landing would not force the Federal Reserve to push interest ratessharply lower to stimulate growth. Falling interest rates can put downward pressureon the dollar because they make investments in dollar-denominated securities lessattractive to foreigners, prompting the selling of dollars. In addition, the optimismsparked by the expectation of a soft landing can even offset some of the pressure onthe dollar from lower interest rates.

a. Show how you would interpret the third paragraph of this report using this chapter’smodel of exchange rate determination.

b. What additional factors in exchange rate determination might help you explain thesecond paragraph?

E€/$

R€E€/$(= 1/E$/€)

$/£$1.52

$/£$/£

$1.38$1.50$/£

$275$255

$250,000$200,000

56


10. Suppose the dollar exchange rates of the euro and the yen are equally variable. Theeuro, however, tends to depreciate unexpectedly against the dollar when the return onthe rest of your wealth is unexpectedly high, while the yen tends to appreciate unex-pectedly in the same circumstances. As a U.S. resident, which currency, the euro orthe yen, would you consider riskier?

11. Does any of the discussion in this chapter lead you to believe that dollar deposits mayhave liquidity characteristics different from those of other currency deposits? If so,how would the differences affect the interest differential between, say, dollar andMexican peso deposits? Do you have any guesses about how the liquidity of eurodeposits may be changing over time?

12. In October 1979, the U.S. central bank (the Federal Reserve System) announced itwould play a less active role in limiting fluctuations in dollar interest rates. After thisnew policy was put into effect, the dollar’s exchange rates against foreign currenciesbecame more volatile. Does our analysis of the foreign exchange market suggest anyconnection between these two events?

13. Imagine that everyone in the world pays a tax of percent on interest earnings and onany capital gains due to exchange rate changes. How would such a tax alter the analy-sis of the interest parity condition? How does your answer change if the tax applies tointerest earnings but not to capital gains, which are untaxed?

14. Suppose the one-year forward exchange rate is per euro and the spotexchange rate is per euro. What is the forward premium on euros (the forwarddiscount on dollars)? What is the difference between the interest rate on one-yeardollar deposits and that on one-year euro deposits (assuming no repayment risk)?

15. Europe’s single currency, the euro, was introduced in January 1999, replacing thecurrencies of 11 European Union members, including France, Germany, Italy, and Spain(but not Britain; see Chapter 20). Do you think that, immediately after the euro’s intro-duction, the value of foreign exchange trading in euros was greater or less than the eurovalue of the pre-1999 trade in the 11 original national currencies? Explain your answer.

16. Multinationals generally have production plants in a number of countries. Consequently,they can move production from expensive locations to cheaper ones in response to vari-ous economic developments—a phenomenon called outsourcing when a domesticallybased firm moves part of its production abroad. If the dollar depreciates, what wouldyou expect to happen to outsourcing by American companies? Explain and provide anexample.

FURTHER READINGS

Sam Y. Cross. All About the Foreign Exchange Market in the United States. New York: FederalReserve Bank of New York, 1998. Primer on the market.

Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Basics of Foreign Trade and Exchange, at http://www.ny.frb.org/education/fx/index.html. Broad-ranging but highly accessible account of exchangemarkets and their role. Also supplies many useful Web links.

Philipp Hartmann. Currency Competition and Foreign Exchange Markets: The Dollar, the Yen and theEuro. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Theoretical and empirical micro-orientedstudy of the role of international currencies in world trade and asset markets.

John Maynard Keynes. A Tract on Monetary Reform, Chapter 3. London: MacMillan, 1923. Classicanalysis of the forward exchange market and covered interest parity.

Paul R. Krugman. “The International Role of the Dollar: Theory and Prospect,” in John F. O. Bilson andRichard C. Marston, eds. Exchange Rate Theory and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1984, pp. 261–278. Theoretical and empirical analysis of the dollar’s position as an “internationalmoney.”

$1.2$1.26$/€

t

57

Richard M. Levich. International Financial Markets: Prices and Policies, 2nd edition. Boston: IrwinMcGraw-Hill, 2001. Chapters 3–8 of this comprehensive text focus on the foreign exchangemarket.

Richard K. Lyons. The Microstructure Approach to Exchange Rates. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.Advanced treatise on the fine structure of markets for foreign exchange.

Ronald I. McKinnon. Money in International Exchange: The Convertible Currency System. NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1979. Theoretical and institutional analysis of the place of theforeign exchange market in international monetary relations.

Michael Mussa. “Empirical Regularities in the Behavior of Exchange Rates and Theories of the ForeignExchange Market,” in Karl Brunner and Allan H. Meltzer, eds. Policies for Employment, Prices andExchange Rates, Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 11. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1979, pp. 9–57. Examines the empirical basis of the asset price approach to exchange ratedetermination.

David Sawyer. “Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) and Foreign Exchange Settlement Risk.”Financial Stability Review 17 (December 2004), pp. 86–92. Describes the functioning of andrationale for the Continuous Linked Settlement system for rapid settlement of foreign exchangetransactions.

Julian Walmsley. The Foreign Exchange and Money Markets Guide, 2nd edition. New York: John Wileyand Sons, 2000. A basic text on the terminology and institutions of the foreign exchange market.



MyEconLab Practice Tests and Study Plans pinpoint which sections you havemastered and which ones you need to study. That way, you are more efficient withyour study time, and you are better prepared for your exams.

To see how it works, turn to page 39 and then go towww.myeconlab.com

58

381

a p p e n d i x t o c h a p t e r 14

Forward Exchange Rates and Covered Interest Parity

This appendix explains how forward exchange rates are determined. Under the assumptionthat the interest parity condition always holds, a forward exchange rate equals the spotexchange rate expected to prevail on the forward contract’s value date.

As the first step in the discussion, we point out the close connection among the forwardexchange rate between two currencies, their spot exchange rate, and the interest rates ondeposits denominated in those currencies. The connection is described by the coveredinterest parity condition, which is similar to the (noncovered) interest parity conditiondefining foreign exchange market equilibrium but involves the forward exchange raterather than the expected future spot exchange rate.

To be concrete, we again consider dollar and euro deposits. Suppose you want to buy aeuro deposit with dollars but would like to be certain about the number of dollars it will beworth at the end of a year. You can avoid exchange rate risk by buying a euro deposit and,at the same time, selling the proceeds of your investment forward. When you buy a eurodeposit with dollars and at the same time sell the principal and interest forward for dollars,we say you have “covered” yourself, that is, avoided the possibility of an unexpecteddepreciation of the euro.

The covered interest parity condition states that the rates of return on dollar depositsand “covered” foreign deposits must be the same. An example will clarify the meaning ofthe condition and illustrate why it must always hold. Let stand for the one-yearforward price of euros in terms of dollars, and suppose per euro. Assumethat at the same time, the spot exchange rate per euro, , and

. The (dollar) rate of return on a dollar deposit is clearly 0.10, or 10 percent, peryear. What is the rate of return on a covered euro deposit?

We answer this question as we did in the chapter. A deposit costs today, andit is worth after a year. If you sell forward today at the forward exchangerate of per euro, the dollar value of your investment at the end of a year is

The rate of return on a covered purchase of aeuro deposit is therefore . This 10.3 percent per year rate ofreturn exceeds the 10 percent offered by dollar deposits, so covered interest parity does nothold. In this situation, no one would be willing to hold dollar deposits; everyone wouldprefer covered euro deposits.

More formally, we can express the covered return on euro deposits as

which is approximately equal to

R€ + F$/€ - E$/€

E$/€

F$/€(1 + R€) - E$/€

E$/€ ,

(1.158 - 1.05)/1.05 = 0.103($1.113 per euro) * (€1.04) = $1.158.

$1.113€1.04€1.04

$1.05€1

R€ = 0.04R$ = 0.10E$/€ = $1.05

F$/€ = $1.113F$/€

59

when the product is a small number. The covered interest paritycondition can therefore be written

The quantity

is called the forward premium on euros against dollars. (It is also called the forward dis-count on dollars against euros.) Using this terminology, we can state the covered interestparity condition as follows: The interest rate on dollar deposits equals the interest rate oneuro deposits plus the forward premium on euros against dollars (the forward discount ondollars against euros).

There is strong empirical evidence that the covered interest parity condition holds fordifferent foreign currency deposits issued within a single financial center. Indeed, currencytraders often set the forward exchange rates they quote by looking at current interest ratesand spot exchange rates and using the covered interest parity formula.12 Deviations fromcovered interest parity can occur, however, if the deposits being compared are located indifferent countries. These deviations occur when asset holders fear that governments mayimpose regulations that will prevent the free movement of foreign funds across nationalborders. Our derivation of the covered interest parity condition implicitly assumed therewas no political risk of this kind. Deviations can occur also because of fears that bankswill fail, making them unable to pay off large deposits.13

By comparing the (noncovered) interest parity condition,

with the covered interest parity condition, you will find that both conditions can be true atthe same time only if the one-year forward rate quoted today equals the spot exchangerate people expect to materialize a year from today:

This makes intuitive sense. When two parties agree to trade foreign exchange on a date inthe future, the exchange rate they agree on is the spot rate they expect to prevail on thatdate. The important difference between covered and noncovered transactions should bekept in mind, however. Covered transactions do not involve exchange rate risk, whereasnoncovered transactions do.14

F$/€ = E $/€e .

$/€

R$ = R€ + (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€,

(F$/€ - E$/€)/E$/€

R$ = R€ + (F$/€ - E$/€)/E$/€.

R€ * (F$/€ - E$/€)/E$/€


12Empirical evidence supporting the covered interest parity condition is provided by Frank McCormick in“Covered Interest Arbitrage: Unexploited Profits? Comment,” Journal of Political Economy 87 (April 1979),pp. 411–417, and by Kevin Clinton in “Transactions Costs and Covered Interest Arbitrage: Theory andEvidence,” Journal of Political Economy 96 (April 1988), pp. 358–370.13For a more detailed discussion of the role of political risk in the forward exchange market, see Robert Z. Aliber,“The Interest Parity Theorem: A Reinterpretation,” Journal of Political Economy 81 (November/December 1973),pp. 1451–1459. Of course, actual government restrictions on cross-border money movements can also causecovered interest parity deviations. On the fear of bank failure as a cause for deviations from covered interest parity,see Naohiko Baba and Frank Packer, “Interpreting Deviations from Covered Interest Parity During the FinancialMarket Turmoil of 2007–2008,” Working Paper No. 267, Bank for International Settlements, December 2008. Theevents underlying this last paper are discussed in Chapter 21.14We indicated in the text that the (noncovered) interest parity condition, while a useful simplification, may notalways hold exactly if the riskiness of currencies influences demands in the foreign exchange market. Therefore,the forward rate may differ from the expected future spot rate by a risk factor even if covered interest parity holdstrue. As noted earlier, the role of risk in exchange rate determination is discussed more fully in Chapter 18.

60


The theory of covered interest parity helps explain the close correlation between themovements in spot and forward exchange rates shown in Figure 14-1, a correlation typicalof all major currencies. The unexpected economic events that affect expected asset returnsoften have a relatively small effect on international interest rate differences betweendeposits with short maturities (for example, three months). To maintain covered interestparity, therefore, spot and forward rates for the corresponding maturities must changeroughly in proportion to each other.

We conclude this appendix with one further application of the covered interest paritycondition. To illustrate the role of forward exchange rates, the chapter used the example ofan American importer of Japanese radios anxious about the exchange rate it wouldface in 30 days when the time came to pay the supplier. In the example, Radio Shacksolved the problem by selling forward for yen enough dollars to cover the cost of theradios. But Radio Shack could have solved the problem in a different, more complicatedway. It could have (1) borrowed dollars from a bank; (2) sold those dollars immediatelyfor yen at the spot exchange rate and placed the yen in a 30-day yen bank deposit; (3) then,after 30 days, used the proceeds of the maturing yen deposit to pay the Japanese supplier;and (4) used the realized proceeds of the U.S. radio sales, less profits, to repay the originaldollar loan.

Which course of action—the forward purchase of yen or the sequence of four transac-tions described in the preceding paragraph—is more profitable for the importer? We leaveit to you, as an exercise, to show that the two strategies yield the same profit when thecovered interest parity condition holds.

$/¥

61

384

15c h a p t e r

Money, Interest Rates, and Exchange Rates

Chapter 14 showed how the exchange rate between currencies depends ontwo factors, the interest that can be earned on deposits of those currenciesand the expected future exchange rate. To understand fully the

determination of exchange rates, however, we have to learn how interest ratesthemselves are determined and how expectations of future exchange rates areformed. In this and the next two chapters we examine these topics by building aneconomic model that links exchange rates, interest rates, and other importantmacroeconomic variables such as the inflation rate and output.

The first step in building the model is to explain the effects of a country’smoney supply and of the demand for its money on its interest rate and exchangerate. Because exchange rates are the relative prices of national monies, factorsthat affect a country’s money supply or demand are among the most powerfuldeterminants of its currency’s exchange rate against foreign currencies. It istherefore natural to begin a deeper study of exchange rate determination with adiscussion of money supply and money demand.

Monetary developments influence the exchange rate by changing both inter-est rates and people’s expectations about future exchange rates. Expectationsabout future exchange rates are closely connected with expectations about thefuture money prices of countries’ products; these price movements, in turn,depend on changes in money supply and demand. In examining monetaryinfluences on the exchange rate, we therefore look at how monetary factorsinfluence output prices along with interest rates. Expectations of future ex-change rates depend on many factors other than money, however, and thesenonmonetary factors are taken up in the next chapter.

Once the theories and determinants of money supply and demand are laidout, we use them to examine how equilibrium interest rates are determined bythe equality of money supply and money demand. Then we combine our modelof interest rate determination with the interest parity condition to study theeffects of monetary shifts on the exchange rate, given the prices of goods andservices, the level of output, and market expectations about the future. Finally,we take a first look at the long-term effects of monetary changes on outputprices and expected future exchange rates.

62

CHAPTER 15 Money, Interest Rates, and Exchange Rates 385

LEARNING GOALS


• Describe and discuss the national money markets in which interest rates aredetermined.

• Show how monetary policy and interest rates feed into the foreign exchangemarket.

• Distinguish between the economy’s long-run position and the short run, inwhich money prices and wages are sticky.

• Explain how price levels and exchange rates respond to monetary factorsin the long run.

• Outline the relationship between the short-run and the long-run effectsof monetary policy, and explain the concept of short-run exchange rateovershooting.

Money Defined: A Brief ReviewWe are so accustomed to using money that we seldom notice the roles it plays in almost allof our everyday transactions. As with many other modern conveniences, we take moneyfor granted until something goes wrong with it! In fact, the easiest way to appreciate theimportance of money is to imagine what economic life would be like without it.

In this section we do just that. Our purpose in carrying out this “thought experiment” isto distinguish money from other assets and to describe the characteristics of money thatlead people to hold it. These characteristics are central to an analysis of the demand formoney.

Money as a Medium of ExchangeThe most important function of money is to serve as a medium of exchange, a generally ac-cepted means of payment. To see why a medium of exchange is necessary, imagine howtime-consuming it would be for people to purchase goods and services in a world wherethe only type of trade possible is barter trade—the direct trade of goods or services forother goods or services. To have her car repaired, for example, your professor would haveto find a mechanic in need of economics lessons!

Money eliminates the enormous search costs connected with a barter system becausemoney is universally acceptable. It eliminates these search costs by enabling an individualto sell the goods and services she produces to people other than the producers of the goodsand services she wishes to consume. A complex modern economy would cease function-ing without some standardized and convenient means of payment.

Money as a Unit of AccountMoney’s second important role is as a unit of account, that is, as a widely recognized meas-ure of value. It is in this role that we encountered money in Chapter 14: Prices of goods,services, and assets are typically expressed in terms of money. Exchange rates allow us totranslate different countries’ money prices into comparable terms.

The convention of quoting prices in money terms simplifies economic calculations bymaking it easy to compare the prices of different commodities. The international pricecomparisons in Chapter 14, which used exchange rates to compare the prices of differentcountries’ outputs, are similar to the calculations you would have to do many times eachday if different commodities’ prices were not expressed in terms of a standardized unit of

63


account. If the calculations in Chapter 14 gave you a headache, imagine what it would belike to have to calculate the relative prices of each good and service you consume in termsof several other goods and services—for example, the price of a slice of pizza in terms ofbananas. This thought experiment should give you a keener appreciation of using moneyas a unit of account.

Money as a Store of ValueBecause money can be used to transfer purchasing power from the present into the future,it is also an asset, or a store of value. This attribute is essential for any medium ofexchange because no one would be willing to accept it in payment if its value in terms ofgoods and services evaporated immediately.

Money’s usefulness as a medium of exchange, however, automatically makes it themost liquid of all assets. As you will recall from the last chapter, an asset is said to beliquid when it can be transformed into goods and services rapidly and without hightransaction costs, such as brokers’ fees. Since money is readily acceptable as a meansof payment, money sets the standard against which the liquidity of other assets isjudged.

What Is Money?Currency and bank deposits on which checks may be written certainly qualify as money.These are widely accepted means of payment that can be transferred between owners atlow cost. Households and firms hold currency and checking deposits as a convenientway of financing routine transactions as they arise. Assets such as real estate do notqualify as money because, unlike currency and checking deposits, they lack the essentialproperty of liquidity.

When we speak in this book of the money supply, we are referring to the monetaryaggregate the Federal Reserve calls M1, that is, the total amount of currency and check-ing deposits held by households and firms. In the United States at the end of 2009, thetotal money supply amounted to trillion, equal to roughly 12 percent of thatyear’s GNP.1

The large deposits traded by participants in the foreign exchange market are not consid-ered part of the money supply. These deposits are less liquid than money and are not usedto finance routine transactions.

How the Money Supply Is DeterminedAn economy’s money supply is controlled by its central bank. The central bank directlyregulates the amount of currency in existence and also has indirect control over theamount of checking deposits issued by private banks. The procedures through which thecentral bank controls the money supply are complex, and we assume for now that the cen-tral bank simply sets the size of the money supply at the level it desires. We go into themoney supply process in more detail, however, in Chapter 18.

$1.722

1 A broader Federal Reserve measure of money supply, M2, includes time deposits, but these are less liquid thanthe assets included in M1 because the funds in them typically cannot be withdrawn early without penalty. Aneven broader measure, known as M3, is also tracked by the Fed. A decision on where to draw the line betweenmoney and near-money must be somewhat arbitrary and therefore controversial. For further discussion of thisquestion, see Chapter 3 of Frederic S. Mishkin, The Economics of Money, Banking and Financial Markets, 9thedition (Boston: Addison Wesley, 2010).

64


The Demand for Money by IndividualsHaving discussed the functions of money and the definition of the money supply, we nowexamine the factors that determine the amount of money an individual desires to hold. Thedeterminants of individual money demand can be derived from the theory of asset demanddiscussed in the last chapter.

We saw in the last chapter that individuals base their demand for an asset on threecharacteristics:

1. The expected return the asset offers compared with the returns offered by other assets.2. The riskiness of the asset’s expected return.3. The asset’s liquidity.

While liquidity plays no important role in determining the relative demands for assetstraded in the foreign exchange market, households and firms hold money only because ofits liquidity. To understand how the economy’s households and firms decide the amount ofmoney they wish to hold, we must look more closely at how the three considerations listedabove influence money demand.

Expected ReturnCurrency pays no interest. Checking deposits often do pay some interest, but they offer arate of return that usually fails to keep pace with the higher returns offered by less liquidforms of wealth. When you hold money, you therefore sacrifice the higher interest rate youcould earn by holding your wealth in a government bond, a large time deposit, or someother relatively illiquid asset such as vintage baseball cards or real estate. It is this last rateof interest we have in mind when we refer to “the” interest rate. Since the interest paid oncurrency is zero while that paid on “checkable” deposits tends to be relatively constant, thedifference between the rate of return of money in general and that of less liquid alternativeassets is reflected by the market interest rate: The higher the interest rate, the more yousacrifice by holding wealth in the form of money.2

Suppose, for example, that the interest rate you could earn from a U.S. Treasury bill is10 percent per year. If you use of your wealth to buy a Treasury bill, you will bepaid by Uncle Sam at the end of a year, but if you choose instead to keep the

as cash in a safe-deposit box, you give up the interest you could haveearned by buying the Treasury bill. You thus sacrifice a 10 percent rate of return by hold-ing your as money.

The theory of asset demand developed in the last chapter shows how changes in the rateof interest affect the demand for money. The theory states that, other things equal, peopleprefer assets offering higher expected returns. Because an increase in the interest rate is a risein the rate of return on less liquid assets relative to the rate of return on money, individualswill want to hold more of their wealth in nonmoney assets that pay the market interest rateand less of their wealth in the form of money if the interest rate rises. We conclude that, allelse equal, a rise in the interest rate causes the demand for money to fall.

$10,000

$1,000$10,000$11,000

$10,000

2 Many of the illiquid assets that individuals can choose from do not pay their returns in the form of interest.Stocks, for example, pay returns in the form of dividends and capital gains. The family summer house on CapeCod pays a return in the form of capital gains and the pleasure of vacations at the beach. The assumption behindour analysis of money demand is that once allowance is made for risk, all assets other than money offer an ex-pected rate of return (measured in terms of money) equal to the interest rate. This assumption allows us to use theinterest rate to summarize the return an individual forgoes by holding money rather than an illiquid asset.

65


We can also describe the influence of the interest rate on money demand in terms of theeconomic concept of opportunity cost—the amount you sacrifice by taking one course ofaction rather than another. The interest rate measures the opportunity cost of holdingmoney rather than interest-bearing bonds. A rise in the interest rate therefore raises thecost of holding money and causes money demand to fall.

RiskRisk is not an important factor in money demand. It is risky to hold money because an un-expected increase in the prices of goods and services could reduce the value of yourmoney in terms of the commodities you consume. Since interest-paying assets such asgovernment bonds have face values fixed in terms of money, however, the same unex-pected increase in prices would reduce the real value of those assets by the same percent-age. Because any change in the riskiness of money causes an equal change in the riskinessof bonds, changes in the risk of holding money need not cause individuals to reduce theirdemand for money and increase their demand for interest-paying assets.

LiquidityThe main benefit of holding money comes from its liquidity. Households and firms holdmoney because it is the easiest way of financing their everyday purchases. Some large pur-chases can be financed through the sale of a substantial illiquid asset. An art collector, forexample, could sell one of her Picassos to buy a house. To finance a continuing stream ofsmaller expenditures at various times and for various amounts, however, households andfirms have to hold some money.

An individual’s need for liquidity rises when the average daily value of his transactionsrises. A student who takes the bus every day, for example, does not need to hold as much cashas a business executive who takes taxis during rush hour. We conclude that a rise in the averagevalue of transactions carried out by a household or firm causes its demand for money to rise.

Aggregate Money DemandOur discussion of how individual households and firms determine their demands formoney can now be applied to derive the determinants of aggregate money demand, thetotal demand for money by all households and firms in the economy. Aggregate money de-mand is just the sum of all the economy’s individual money demands.

Three main factors determine aggregate money demand:

1. The interest rate. A rise in the interest rate causes each individual in the economyto reduce her demand for money. All else equal, aggregate money demand thereforefalls when the interest rate rises.

2. The price level. The economy’s price level is the price of a broad reference bas-ket of goods and services in terms of currency. Generally the reference basket includesthe standard, everyday consumption items such as food, clothing, and housing, butalso less routine purchases such as medical care and legal fees. If the price level rises,individual households and firms must spend more money than before to purchase theirusual weekly baskets of goods and services. To maintain the same level of liquidity asbefore the price level increase, they will therefore have to hold more money.

3. Real national income. When real national income (GNP) rises, more goods andservices are being sold in the economy. This increase in the real value of transactionsraises the demand for money, given the price level.

66


If P is the price level, R is the interest rate, and Y is real GNP, the aggregate demand formoney, can be expressed as

(15-1)

where the value of falls when R rises, and rises when Y rises.3 To see why we havespecified that aggregate money demand is proportional to the price level, imagine that allprices doubled but the interest rate and everyone’s real incomes remained unchanged. Themoney value of each individual’s average daily transactions would then simply double, aswould the amount of money each wished to hold.

We usually write the aggregate money demand relation (15-1) in the equivalent form

(15-2)

and call aggregate real money demand. This way of expressing money demand showsthat the aggregate demand for liquidity, , is not a demand for a certain number of cur-rency units but is instead a demand to hold a certain amount of real purchasing power in liquidform. The ratio —that is, desired money holdings measured in terms of a typical refer-ence basket of commodities—equals the amount of real purchasing power people would liketo hold in liquid form. For example, if people wished to hold in cash at a price levelof per commodity basket, their real money holdings would be equivalent to

. If the price level doubled (to per basket), the purchas-ing power of their in cash would be halved, since it would now be worth only 5 baskets.

Figure 15-1 shows how aggregate real money demand is affected by the interest rate fora fixed level of real income, Y. The aggregate real money demand schedule L(R, Y) slopesdownward because a fall in the interest rate raises the desired real money holdings of eachhousehold and firm in the economy.

For a given level of real GNP, changes in the interest rate cause movements alongthe schedule. Changes in real GNP, however, cause the schedule itself to shift.L(R, Y)

$1,000$200($100 per basket) = 10 baskets

$1,000/$100$1,000

Md/P

L(R, Y)L(R, Y)

Md/P = L(R, Y),

L(R, Y)

Md= P * L(R, Y),

Md,

3 Naturally, L(R, Y) rises when R falls, and falls when Y falls.

Interest rate, R

L(R, Y)

Aggregate realmoney demand

Figure 15-1

Aggregate Real Money Demandand the Interest Rate

The downward-sloping realmoney demand schedule showsthat for a given real income levelY, real money demand rises as theinterest rate falls.

67


Figure 15-2 shows how a rise in real GNP from to affects the position of the aggre-gate real money demand schedule. Because a rise in real GNP raises aggregate real moneydemand for a given interest rate, the schedule lies to the right of when is greater than .

The Equilibrium Interest Rate: The Interaction of Money Supply and Demand

As you might expect from other economics courses you’ve taken, the money market isin equilibrium when the money supply set by the central bank equals aggregate moneydemand. In this section we see how the interest rate is determined by money marketequilibrium, given the price level and output, both of which are temporarily assumed tobe unaffected by monetary changes.

Equilibrium in the Money MarketIf is the money supply, the condition for equilibrium in the money market is

(15-3)

After dividing both sides of this equality by the price level, we can express the moneymarket equilibrium condition in terms of aggregate real money demand as

(15-4)

Given the price level, P, and the level of output, Y, the equilibrium interest rate is the oneat which aggregate real money demand equals the real money supply.

In Figure 15-3, the aggregate real money demand schedule intersects the real moneysupply schedule at point 1 to give an equilibrium interest rate of . The money supplyschedule is vertical at because is set by the central bank while P is taken as given.

Let’s see why the interest rate tends to settle at its equilibrium level by considering whathappens if the market is initially at point 2, with an interest rate, , that is above .R1R2

MsMs/PR1

Ms/P = L(R, Y).

Ms= Md.

Ms

Y1Y2L(R, Y1)L(R, Y2)

Y2Y1

Interest rate, R

Aggregate realmoney demand

L(R, Y 1)

Increase inreal income

L(R, Y 2)

Figure 15-2

Effect on the Aggregate RealMoney Demand Schedule of aRise in Real Income

An increase in real income fromY1 to Y2 raises the demand for realmoney balances at every level ofthe interest rate and causes thewhole demand schedule to shiftupward.

68


At point 2 the demand for real money holdings falls short of the supply by , sothere is an excess supply of money. If individuals are holding more money than they desiregiven the interest rate of , they will attempt to reduce their liquidity by using somemoney to purchase interest-bearing assets. In other words, individuals will attempt to getrid of their excess money by lending it to others. Since there is an aggregate excess supplyof money at , however, not everyone can succeed in doing this: There are more peoplewho would like to lend money to reduce their liquidity than there are people who wouldlike to borrow money to increase theirs. Those who cannot unload their extra money try totempt potential borrowers by lowering the interest rate they charge for loans below .The downward pressure on the interest rate continues until the rate reaches . At thisinterest rate, anyone wishing to lend money can do so because the aggregate excess supplyof money has disappeared; that is, supply once again equals demand. Once the marketreaches point 1, there is therefore no further tendency for the interest rate to drop.4

Similarly, if the interest rate is initially at a level below , it will tend to rise. AsFigure 15-3 shows, there is excess demand for money equal to at point 3.Individuals therefore attempt to sell interest-bearing assets such as bonds to increasetheir money holdings (that is, they sell bonds for cash). At point 3, however, not every-one can succeed in selling enough interest-bearing assets to satisfy his or her demandfor money. Thus, people bid for money by offering to borrow at progressively higher in-terest rates and push the interest rate upward toward . Only when the market hasreached point 1 and the excess demand for money has been eliminated does the interestrate stop rising.

R1

Q3- Q1

R1R3

R1R2

R2

R2

Q1- Q2

Real money supply

Interest rate, R

Aggregate realmoney demand,L(R, Y)

Real moneyholdings

Q 2

R3

R1

R2

Q 3

2

1

3

Ms

P(= Q1)

Figure 15-3

Determination of the EquilibriumInterest Rate

With P and Y given and a realmoney supply of MS/P, moneymarket equilibrium is at point 1.At this point, aggregate realmoney demand and the realmoney supply are equal and theequilibrium interest rate is R1.

4 Another way to view this process is as follows: We saw in the last chapter that an asset’s rate of return fallswhen its current price rises relative to its future value. When there is an excess supply of money, the currentmoney prices of illiquid assets that pay interest will be bid up as individuals attempt to reduce their money hold-ings. This rise in current asset prices lowers the rate of return on nonmoney assets, and since this rate of return isequal to the interest rate (after adjustment for risk), the interest rate also must fall.

69


We can summarize our findings as follows: The market always moves toward an inter-est rate at which the real money supply equals aggregate real money demand. If there isinitially an excess supply of money, the interest rate falls, and if there is initially an excessdemand, it rises.

Interest Rates and the Money SupplyThe effect of increasing the money supply at a given price level is illustrated in Figure 15-4.Initially the money market is in equilibrium at point 1, with a money supply and aninterest rate . Since we are holding P constant, a rise in the money supply to increasesthe real money supply from to . With a real money supply of , point 2 isthe new equilibrium and is the new, lower interest rate that induces people to hold the in-creased available real money supply.

The process through which the interest rate falls is by now familiar. After is in-creased by the central bank, there is initially an excess real supply of money at the oldequilibrium interest rate, , which previously balanced the market. Since people areholding more money than they desire, they use their surplus funds to bid for assets thatpay interest. The economy as a whole cannot reduce its money holdings, so interest ratesare driven down as unwilling money holders compete to lend their excess cash balances.At point 2 in Figure 15-4, the interest rate has fallen sufficiently to induce an increase inreal money demand equal to the increase in the real money supply.

By running the above policy experiment in reverse, we can see how a reduction of themoney supply forces interest rates upward. A fall in causes an excess demand formoney at the interest rate that previously balanced supply and demand. People attempt tosell interest-bearing assets—that is, to borrow—to rebuild their depleted real money hold-ings. Since they cannot all be successful when there is excess money demand, the interestrate is pushed upward until everyone is content to hold the smaller real money stock.

We conclude that an increase in the money supply lowers the interest rate, while a fallin the money supply raises the interest rate, given the price level and output.

Ms

R1

Ms

R2M2/PM2/PM1/P

M2R1M1

M1

P

Interest rate, R

Real moneyholdings

2

1

L(R, Y)

R1

R2

Real money supply

Real moneysupply increases

M 2

P

Figure 15-4

Effect of an Increase in theMoney Supply on the InterestRate

For a given price level, P, and realincome level, Y, an increase in the money supply from M1 to M2

reduces the interest rate from R1

(point 1) to R2 (point 2).

70


Output and the Interest RateFigure 15-5 shows the effect on the interest rate of a rise in the level of output from to

, given the money supply and the price level. As we saw earlier, an increase in outputcauses the entire aggregate real money demand schedule to shift to the right, moving theequilibrium away from point 1. At the old equilibrium interest rate, , there is an excessdemand for money equal to (point ). Since the real money supply is given, theinterest rate is bid up until it reaches the higher, new equilibrium level (point 2). A fallin output has opposite effects, causing the aggregate real money demand schedule to shiftto the left and therefore causing the equilibrium interest rate to fall.

We conclude that an increase in real output raises the interest rate, while a fall in realoutput lowers the interest rate, given the price level and the money supply.

The Money Supply and the Exchange Rate in the Short Run

In Chapter 14 we learned about the interest parity condition, which predicts how interestrate movements influence the exchange rate, given expectations about the exchange rate’sfuture level. Now that we know how shifts in a country’s money supply affect the interestrate on nonmoney assets denominated in its currency, we can see how monetary changesaffect the exchange rate. We will discover that an increase in a country’s money supplycauses its currency to depreciate in the foreign exchange market, while a reduction in themoney supply causes its currency to appreciate.

In this section we continue to take the price level (along with real output) as given, andfor that reason we label the analysis of this section short run. The long-run analysis of aneconomic event allows for the complete adjustment of the price level (which may take along time) and for full employment of all factors of production. Later in this chapter weexamine the long-run effects of money supply changes on the price level, the exchange rate,

R21œQ2

- Q1R1

Y2Y1

Real money supply

Increase inreal income

2

1 1'

L(R, Y 2)

L(R, Y 1)

Interest rate, R

Q 2

Real moneyholdings

R2

R1

Ms

P(= Q1)

Figure 15-5

Effect on the Interest Rate of a Rise in Real Income

Given the real money supply,MS/P (= Q1), a rise in real incomefrom Y1 to Y2 raises the interestrate from R1 (point 1) to R2

(point 2).

71


and other macroeconomic variables. Our long-run analysis will show how the money sup-ply influences exchange rate expectations, which we also continue to take as given for now.

Linking Money, the Interest Rate, and the Exchange RateTo analyze the relationship between money and the exchange rate in the short run inFigure 15-6, we combine two diagrams that we have already studied separately. Let’s as-sume once again that we are looking at the dollar/euro exchange rate, that is, the price ofeuros in terms of dollars.

US

Dollar/euro exchange rate, E$/€

U.S. real money holdings

(increasing)

0

1

1'

Return on dollar deposits

Expected return on euro deposits


U.S. real money supply

L(R$,YUS)

E$/€1

R$1

Ms

PUS

Foreign exchange market

Money market

Figure 15-6

Simultaneous Equilibrium in the U.S. Money Market and the Foreign Exchange Market

Both asset markets are in equilibrium at the interest rate and exchange rate ; atthese values, money supply equals money demand (point 1) and the interest paritycondition holds (point ).1œ

E$/€1R$

1

72


The first diagram (introduced as Figure 14-4) shows equilibrium in the foreignexchange market and how it is determined given interest rates and expectations about fu-ture exchange rates. This diagram appears as the top part of Figure 15-6. The dollar inter-est rate, which is determined in the money market, defines the vertical schedule.

As you will remember from Chapter 14, the downward-sloping expected euro returnschedule shows the expected return on euro deposits, measured in dollars. The scheduleslopes downward because of the effect of current exchange rate changes on expectationsof future depreciation: A strengthening of the dollar today (a fall in ) relative to itsgiven expected future level makes euro deposits more attractive by leading people to antic-ipate a sharper dollar depreciation in the future.

At the intersection of the two schedules (point ), the expected rates of return on dollarand euro deposits are equal, and therefore interest parity holds. is the equilibriumexchange rate.

The second diagram we need to examine the relationship between money and theexchange rate was introduced as Figure 15-3. This figure shows how a country’s equilib-rium interest rate is determined in its money market, and it appears as the bottom part ofFigure 15-6. For convenience, however, the figure has been rotated clockwise by 90 degreesso that dollar interest rates are measured from 0 on the horizontal axis and the U.S. realmoney supply is measured from 0 on the descending vertical axis. Money market equilib-rium is shown at point 1, where the dollar interest rate induces people to demand realbalances equal to the U.S. real money supply, .

Figure 15-6 emphasizes the link between the U.S. money market (bottom) and the for-eign exchange market (top)—the U.S. money market determines the dollar interest rate,which in turn affects the exchange rate that maintains interest parity. (Of course, there is asimilar link between the European money market and the foreign exchange market thatoperates through changes in the euro interest rate.)

Figure 15-7 illustrates these linkages. The U.S. and European central banks, the FederalReserve System and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), respectively, deter-mine the U.S. and European money supplies, and Given the price levels andnational incomes of the two countries, equilibrium in national money markets leads to thedollar and euro interest rates and . These interest rates feed into the foreign exchangemarket, where, given expectations about the future dollar/euro exchange rate, the currentrate is determined by the interest parity condition.

U.S. Money Supply and the Dollar/Euro Exchange RateWe now use our model of asset market linkages (the links between the money and foreignexchange markets) to ask how the dollar/euro exchange rate changes when the FederalReserve changes the U.S. money supply The effects of this change are summarizedin Figure 15-8.

At the initial money supply , the money market is in equilibrium at point 1 with aninterest rate . Given the euro interest rate and the expected future exchange rate, a dollarinterest rate of implies that foreign exchange market equilibrium occurs at point , with an exchange rate equal to

What happens when the Federal Reserve, perhaps fearing the onset of a recession,raises the U.S. money supply to This increase sets in motion the following sequenceof events: (1) At the initial interest rate , there is an excess supply of money in the U.S.money market, so the dollar interest rate falls to as the money market reaches its newequilibrium position (point 2). (2) Given the initial exchange rate and the new, lower interest rate on dollars, the expected return on euro deposits is greater than that ondollar deposits. Holders of dollar deposits therefore try to sell them for euro deposits,

R$2,

E $/€1

R$2

R$1

MUS2 ?

E $/€1 .

1œR$1

R$1

MUS1

MUSs .

E$/€

R€R$

MEs .MUS

s

MUSs /PUS

R$1

E $/€1

1œ

E$/€

R$1,

73


which are momentarily more attractive. (3) The dollar depreciates to as holders ofdollar deposits bid for euro deposits. The foreign exchange market is once again in equi-librium at point because the exchange rate’s move to causes a fall in the dollar’sexpected future depreciation rate sufficient to offset the fall in the dollar interest rate.

We conclude that an increase in a country’s money supply causes its currency to depre-ciate in the foreign exchange market. By running Figure 15-8 in reverse, you can see that areduction in a country’s money supply causes its currency to appreciate in the foreignexchange market.

Europe’s Money Supply and the Dollar/Euro Exchange RateThe conclusions we have reached also apply when the ESCB changes Europe’s moneysupply. Suppose that the ESCB fears a recession in Europe and hopes to head it offthrough a looser monetary policy. An increase in causes a depreciation of the euro(that is, an appreciation of the dollar, or a fall in ), while a reduction in causes anappreciation of the euro (that is, a depreciation of the dollar, or a rise in ).

The mechanism at work, which runs from the European interest rate to the exchangerate, is the same as the one we just analyzed. It is good exercise to verify these assertionsby drawing figures similar to Figures 15-6 and 15-8 that illustrate the linkage between theEuropean money market and the foreign exchange market.

Here we use a different approach to show how changes in Europe’s money supplyaffect the dollar/euro exchange rate. In Chapter 14 we learned that a fall in the euro inter-est rate, shifts the downward-sloping schedule in the upper part of Figure 15-6 to theleft. The reason is that for any level of the exchange rate, a fall in lowers the expectedrate of return on euro deposits. Since a rise in the European money supply lowers we can see the effect on the exchange rate by shifting the expected euro return schedule inthe top part of Figure 15-6 to the left.

R€,MEs

R€,R€,

E$/€

MEsE$/€

MEs

E $/€22œ

E $/€2

U.S.money market

(European money supply)

R€

(Eurointerest rate)

Foreign exchange market

E$/€(Dollar/euro exchange rate)

Europeanmoney market

EuropeEuropean Systemof Central Banks

United StatesFederal Reserve System

(United Statesmoney supply)

R$(Dollarinterest rate)

US EMsMs

Figure 15-7

Money Market/Exchange RateLinkages

Monetary policy actions by theFed affect the U.S. interest rate,changing the dollar/euro ex-change rate that clears the foreignexchange market. The ESCB canaffect the exchange rate by chang-ing the European money supplyand interest rate.

74


E$/€1

R$1

MUS

PUS

Dollar/euro exchange rate, E$/


0

1

1'

Dollar return



L(R$,YUS)

2'

2

E$/€2

1

MUSPUS

2

R$2

Increase in U.S.real money supply

Figure 15-8

Effect on the Dollar/EuroExchange Rate and DollarInterest Rate of an Increase in theU.S. Money Supply

Given PUS and YUS when themoney supply rises from to

the dollar interest ratedeclines (as money marketequilibrium is reestablished atpoint 2) and the dollar depreciatesagainst the euro (as foreignexchange market equilibrium is reestablished at point 2’).

MUS2

MUS1

The result of an increase in the European money supply is shown in Figure 15-9. Initiallythe U.S. money market is in equilibrium at point 1 and the foreign exchange market is inequilibrium at point with an exchange rate . An increase in Europe’s money supplylowers and therefore shifts to the left the schedule linking the expected return on eurodeposits to the exchange rate. Foreign exchange market equilibrium is restored at point with an exchange rate of . We see that the increase in European money causes the euro todepreciate against the dollar (that is, causes a fall in the dollar price of euros). Similarly, a fallin Europe’s money supply would cause the euro to appreciate against the dollar (that is, would rise). The change in the European money supply does not disturb the U.S. moneymarket equilibrium, which remains at point 1.5

E$/€

E $/€2

2œ,R€

E $/€11œ,

5The U.S. money market equilibrium remains at point 1 because the price adjustments that equilibrate theEuropean money market and the foreign exchange market after the increase in Europe’s money supply do notchange either the money supply or the money demand in the United States, given and .PUSYUS

75


E$/€1

R$1

MUSPUS

E$/€2

s



0

1

1'

Dollar return



L(R$,YUS)

2'


Increase in European money supply (fall ineuro interest rate)

Figure 15-9

Effect of an Increase in theEuropean Money Supply on theDollar/Euro Exchange Rate

By lowering the dollar return oneuro deposits (shown as a leftwardshift in the expected euro returncurve), an increase in Europe’smoney supply causes the dollar toappreciate against the euro.Equilibrium in the foreign ex-change market shifts from point to point but equilibrium in theU.S. money market remains atpoint 1.

2œ,1œ

Money, the Price Level, and the Exchange Rate in the Long Run

Our short-run analysis of the link between countries’ money markets and the foreign ex-change market rested on the simplifying assumption that price levels and exchange rateexpectations were given. To extend our understanding of how money supply and moneydemand affect exchange rates, we must examine how monetary factors affect a country’sprice level in the long run.

An economy’s long-run equilibrium is the position it would eventually reach if nonew economic shocks occurred during the adjustment to full employment. You can thinkof long-run equilibrium as the equilibrium that would be maintained after all wages andprices had had enough time to adjust to their market-clearing levels. An equivalent way of

76


thinking of it is as the equilibrium that would occur if prices were perfectly flexible andalways adjusted immediately to preserve full employment.

In studying how monetary changes work themselves out over the long run, we will ex-amine how such changes shift the economy’s long-run equilibrium. Our main tool is onceagain the theory of aggregate money demand.

Money and Money PricesIf the price level and output are fixed in the short run, the condition (15-4) of money mar-ket equilibrium,

determines the domestic interest rate, R. The money market always moves to equilibrium,however, even if we drop our “short-run” assumption and think of periods over which P andY, as well as R, can vary. The above equilibrium condition can therefore be rearranged to give

(15-5)

which shows how the price level depends on the interest rate, real output, and the domesticmoney supply.

The long-run equilibrium price level is just the value of P that satisfies condition (15-5)when the interest rate and output are at their long-run levels, that is, at levels consistentwith full employment. When the money market is in equilibrium and all factors of produc-tion are fully employed, the price level will remain steady if the money supply, the aggre-gate money demand function, and the long-run values of R and Y remain steady.

One of the most important predictions of the above equation for P concerns the relation-ship between a country’s price level and its money supply, : All else equal, an increasein a country’s money supply causes a proportional increase in its price level. If, for exam-ple, the money supply doubles (to 2 ) but output and the interest rate do not change, theprice level must also double (to 2P) to maintain equilibrium in the money market.

The economic reasoning behind this very precise prediction follows from our observationabove that the demand for money is a demand for real money holdings: Real money demandis not altered by an increase in that leaves R and Y (and thus aggregate real money de-mand ) unchanged. If aggregate real money demand does not change, however, themoney market will remain in equilibrium only if the real money supply also stays the same.To keep the real money supply constant, P must rise in proportion to .

The Long-Run Effects of Money Supply ChangesOur theory of how the money supply affects the price level given the interest rate and output isnot yet a theory of how money supply changes affect the price level in the long run. To de-velop such a theory, we still have to determine the long-run effects of a money supply changeon the interest rate and output. This is easier than you might think. As we now argue, a changein the supply of money has no effect on the long-run values of the interest rate or real output.6

MsMs/P

L(R, Y)Ms

Ms

Ms

P = Ms/L(R, Y),

Ms/P = L(R, Y),

6 The preceding statement refers only to changes in the level of the nominal money supply and not, for example,to changes in the rate at which the money supply is growing over time. The proposition that a one-time change inthe level of the money supply has no effects on the long-run values of real economic variables is often called thelong-run neutrality of money. In contrast, changes in the money supply growth rate need not be neutral in thelong run. At the very least, a sustained change in the monetary growth rate will eventually affect equilibrium realmoney balances by raising the money interest rate (as discussed in the next chapter).

77


The best way to understand the long-run effects of money supply on the interest rate andoutput is to think first about a currency reform, in which a country’s government redefines thenational currency unit. For example, the government of Turkey reformed its currency onJanuary 1, 2005, simply by issuing “new” Turkish lira, each equal to 1 million “old” Turkishlira. The effect of this reform was to lower the number of currency units in circulation, and alllira prices, to of their old lira values. But the redefinition of the monetary unit had noeffect on real output, the interest rate, or the relative prices of goods: All that occurred was aone-time change in all values measured in lira. A decision to measure distance in half-milesrather than miles would have as little effect on real economic variables as the Turkish govern-ment’s decision to chop six zeros off the end of every magnitude measured in terms of money.

An increase in the supply of a country’s currency has the same effect in the long run asa currency reform. A doubling of the money supply, for example, has the same long-runeffect as a currency reform in which each unit of currency is replaced by two units of“new” currency. If the economy is initially fully employed, every money price in the econ-omy eventually doubles, but real GNP, the interest rate, and all relative prices return totheir long-run or full-employment levels.

Why is a money supply change just like a currency reform in its effects on the economy’slong-run equilibrium? The full-employment output level is determined by the economy’sendowments of labor and capital, so in the long run, real output does not depend on themoney supply. Similarly, the interest rate is independent of the money supply in the long run.If the money supply and all prices double permanently, there is no reason why people previ-ously willing to exchange today for a year from now should not be willing after-ward to exchange today for a year from now, so the interest rate will remain at10 percent per annum. Relative prices also remain the same if all money prices double, sincerelative prices are just ratios of money prices. Thus, money supply changes do not changethe long-run allocation of resources. Only the absolute level of money prices changes.7

When studying the effect of an increase in the money supply over long time periods, weare therefore justified in assuming that the long-run values of R and Y will not be changedby a change in the supply of money. Thus, we can draw the following conclusion fromequation (15-5): A permanent increase in the money supply causes a proportional increasein the price level’s long-run value. In particular, if the economy is initially at full employ-ment, a permanent increase in the money supply eventually will be followed by a propor-tional increase in the price level.

Empirical Evidence on Money Supplies and Price LevelsIn looking at actual data on money and prices, we should not expect to see an exactlyproportional relationship over long periods, partly because output, the interest rate, and theaggregate real money demand function can shift for reasons that have nothing to do withthe supply of money. Output changes as a result of capital accumulation and technologicaladvance (for example, more powerful computers), and money demand behavior maychange as a result of demographic trends or financial innovations such as electronic cash-transfer facilities. In addition, actual economies are rarely in positions of long-run equilib-rium. Nonetheless, we should expect the data to show a clear-cut positive associationbetween money supplies and price levels. If real-world data did not provide strong evidence

$2.20$2$1.10$1

11,000,000

7 To understand more fully why a one-time change in the money supply does not change the long-run level of theinterest rate, it may be useful to think of interest rates measured in terms of money as defining relative prices ofcurrency units available on different dates. If the dollar interest rate is R percent per annum, giving up $1 todaybuys you next year. Thus, is the relative price of future dollars in terms of current dollars,and this relative price would not change if the real value of the monetary units were scaled up or down by thesame factor on all dates.

1/(1 + R)$(1 + R)

78


that money supplies and price levels move together in the long run, the usefulness of thetheory of money demand we have developed would be in severe doubt.

The wide swings in Latin American rates of price level increase in recent decades makethe region an ideal case study of the relationship between money supplies and price levels.Price level inflation had been high and variable in Latin America for more than a decade,when efforts at macroeconomic reform began to bring inflation lower by the mid-1990s.

On the basis of our theories, we would expect to find such sharp swings in inflationrates accompanied by swings in growth rates of money supplies. This expectation is con-firmed by Figure 15-10, which plots annual average growth rates of the money supplyagainst annual inflation rates. On average, years with higher money growth also tend to beyears with higher inflation. In addition, the data points cluster around the 45-degree line,along which money supplies and price levels increase in proportion.

The main lesson to be drawn from Figure 15-10 is that the data confirm the stronglong-run link between national money supplies and national price levels predicted byeconomic theory.

Money and the Exchange Rate in the Long RunThe domestic currency price of foreign currency is one of the many prices in the econ-omy that rise in the long run after a permanent increase in the money supply. If youthink again about the effects of a currency reform, you will see how the exchange ratemoves in the long run. Suppose, for example, that the U.S. government replaced everypair of “old” dollars with one “new” dollar. Then if the dollar/euro exchange rate hadbeen 1.20 old dollars per euro before the reform, it would change to 0.60 new dollars

Percent increase inprice level

Percent increase inmoney supply

1 10 100 10001

10

100

1000

2001

1990

1989

19881993

1992

1991

1994

1987

1995

1996

2007 2005

2000

2004

20032002

1997

19981999

2006

45°

Figure 15-10

Average Money Growth andInflation in Western HemisphereDeveloping Countries, by Year,1987–2007

Even year by year, there is a strongpositive relation between averageLatin American money supplygrowth and inflation. (Both axeshave logarithmic scales.)

Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook,various issues. Regional aggregates areweighted by shares of dollar GDP in totalregional dollar GDP.

79


per euro immediately after the reform. In much the same way, a halving of the U.S.money supply would eventually lead the dollar to appreciate from an exchange rate of1.20 dollars/euro to one of 0.60 dollars/euro. Since the dollar prices of all U.S. goodsand services would also decrease by half, this 50 percent appreciation of the dollarleaves the relative prices of all U.S. and foreign goods and services unchanged.

We conclude that, all else equal, a permanent increase in a country’s money supplycauses a proportional long-run depreciation of its currency against foreign currencies.Similarly, a permanent decrease in a country’s money supply causes a proportional long-run appreciation of its currency against foreign currencies.

Inflation and Exchange Rate DynamicsIn this section we tie together our short-run and long-run findings about the effects ofmonetary changes by examining the process through which the price level adjusts to itslong-run position. An economy experiences inflation when its price level is rising anddeflation when its price level is falling. Our examination of inflation will give us a deeperunderstanding of how the exchange rate adjusts to monetary disturbances in the economy.

Short-Run Price Rigidity versus Long-Run Price FlexibilityOur analysis of the short-run effects of monetary changes assumed that a country’s price level,unlike its exchange rate, does not jump immediately. This assumption cannot be exactly cor-rect, because many commodities, such as agricultural products, are traded in markets whereprices adjust sharply every day as supply or demand conditions shift. In addition, exchangerate changes themselves may affect the prices of some tradable goods and services that enterinto the commodity basket defining the price level.

Many prices in the economy, however, are written into long-term contracts and cannotbe changed immediately when changes in the money supply occur. The most importantprices of this type are workers’ wages, which are negotiated only periodically in many in-dustries. Wages do not enter indices of the price level directly, but they make up a largefraction of the cost of producing goods and services. Since output prices depend heavilyon production costs, the behavior of the overall price level is influenced by the sluggish-ness of wage movements. The short-run “stickiness” of price levels is illustrated byFigure 15-11, which compares data on month-to-month percentage changes in the dollar/yen exchange rate, , with data on month-to-month percentage changes in the ratio ofmoney price levels in the United States and Japan, . As you can see, the exchangerate is much more variable than relative price levels, a fact consistent with the view thatprice levels are relatively rigid in the short run. The pattern shown in the figure applies toall of the main industrial countries in recent decades. In light of this and other evidence,we will therefore continue to assume that the price level is given in the short run and doesnot make significant jumps in response to policy changes.

This assumption would not be reasonable, however, for all countries at all times. In ex-tremely inflationary conditions, such as those seen in the 1980s in some Latin Americancountries, long-term contracts specifying domestic money payments may go out of use.Automatic price level indexation of wage payments may also be widespread under highlyinflationary conditions. Such developments make the price level much less rigid than itwould be under moderate inflation, and large price level jumps become possible. Someprice rigidity can remain, however, even in the face of inflation rates that would be high byeveryday industrial-country standards. For example, Turkey’s 30 percent inflation rate for2002 seems high until it is compared with the 114 percent depreciation of the Turkish liraagainst the U.S. dollar over the same year.

PUS/PJ

E$/ ¥

80


Our analysis assuming short-run price rigidity is nonetheless most applicable to coun-tries with histories of comparative price level stability, such as the United States. Even inthe cases of low-inflation countries, there is a lively academic debate over the possibilitythat seemingly sticky wages and prices are in reality quite flexible.8

Although the price levels appear to display short-run stickiness in many countries, achange in the money supply creates immediate demand and cost pressures that eventuallylead to future increases in the price level. These pressures come from three main sources:

1. Excess demand for output and labor. An increase in the money supply has an ex-pansionary effect on the economy, raising the total demand for goods and services. Tomeet this demand, producers of goods and services must employ workers overtime andmake new hires. Even if wages are given in the short run, the additional demand for laborallows workers to ask for higher wages in the next round of wage negotiations. Producers

8 For a discussion of this debate, and empirical evidence that U.S. aggregate prices and wages show significantrigidity, see the book by Hall and Papell listed in Further Readings. Other summaries of U.S. evidence are givenby Mark A. Wynne, “Sticky Prices: What Is the Evidence?” Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Economic Review(First Quarter 1995), pp. 1–12; and by Mark J. Bils and Peter J. Klenow, “Some Evidence of the Importance ofSticky Prices,” Journal of Political Economy 112 (October 2004), pp. 947–985.

Price level ratio change

Exchange rate change

–15

–10

–5

0

5

10

15

20

Changes in exchange rates and price levelratios–U.S./Japan (percent per month)

2004 2006 2008200220001998199619941992199019881986198419821980

Figure 15-11

Month-to-Month Variability of the Dollar/Yen Exchange Rate and of the U.S./Japan Price Level Ratio,1980–2009

The much greater month-to-month variability of the exchange rate suggests that price levels are relativelysticky in the short run.

Source: International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics.

81


step, as the theory in the text would predict.Moreover, the trends in the price level and exchangerate are of the same order of magnitude: The pricelevel rose by 22,908 percent between April 1984and July 1985 and the peso price of dollars rose by24,662 percent over the same period. These percent-age changes actually are greater than the correspon-ding percentage increase in the money supply(which is “only” 17,433 percent), but the differenceis to be expected. Exploding inflation causes realmoney demand to fall over time, and this additionalmonetary change makes money prices rise evenmore quickly than the money supply itself rises.

We chose July 1985 as the endpoint for the com-parison because the Bolivian government intro-duced a dramatic stabilization plan near the end ofAugust 1985. You can see in the data how themoney supply and, more dramatically, the pricelevel and exchange rate all began to level out in thetwo months after August.

Money Supply Growth and Hyperinflation in Bolivia

In 1984 and 1985 the small Latin American countryof Bolivia experienced hyperinflation—an explosiveand seemingly uncontrollable inflation in whichmoney loses value rapidly and may even go out ofuse.* During hyperinflations the magnitudes of mon-etary changes are so enormous that the “long-run”effects of money on the price level can occur veryquickly. These episodes therefore provide laboratoryconditions well suited for testing long-run theoriesabout the effects of money supplies on prices.

On the next page we show data on Bolivia’smoney supply and price level during the hyperinfla-tion. An official exchange rate between the Bolivianpeso and the U.S. dollar was controlled by theBolivian government during this period, so we listinstead values for an exchange rate that better re-flected market forces, the price of dollars in terms ofpesos on the La Paz black market.

The data show a clear tendency for the moneysupply, price level, and exchange rate to move in

*In a classic paper, Columbia University economist Phillip Cagan drew the line between inflation and hyperinflation at aninflation rate of 50 percent per month (which, through the power of compounding, comes out to 12,875 percent per year).See “The Monetary Dynamics of Hyperinflation,” in Milton Friedman, ed., Studies in the Quantity Theory of Money.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, pp. 25–117.

are willing to pay these higher wages, for they know that in a booming economy, it willnot be hard to pass higher wage costs on to consumers through higher product prices.

2. Inflationary expectations. If everyone expects the price level to rise in the fu-ture, their expectation will increase the pace of inflation today. Workers bargainingover wage contracts will insist on higher money wages to counteract the effect ontheir real wages of the anticipated general increase in prices. Producers, once again,will give in to these wage demands if they expect product prices to rise and cover theadditional wage costs.

3. Raw materials prices. Many raw materials used in the production of final goods,for example, petroleum products and metals, are sold in markets where prices adjustsharply even in the short run. By causing the prices of such materials to jump upward, amoney supply increase raises production costs in materials-using industries. Eventually,producers in those industries will raise product prices to cover their higher costs.

Permanent Money Supply Changes and the Exchange RateWe now apply our analysis of inflation to study the adjustment of the dollar/euro exchangerate following a permanent increase in the U.S. money supply. Figure 15-12 shows boththe short-run (Figure 15-12a) and the long-run (Figure 15-12b) effects of this disturbance.We suppose that the economy starts with all variables at their long-run levels and that out-put remains constant as the economy adjusts to the money supply change.

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Figure 15-12a assumes the U.S. price level is initially given at An increase in thenominal money supply from to therefore raises the real money supply from

to in the short run, lowering the interest rate from (point 1) to (point 2). So far, our analysis proceeds exactly as it did earlier in this chapter.

The first change in our analysis comes when we ask how the American money supplychange (shown in the bottom part of panel (a)) affects the foreign exchange market (shownin the top part of panel (a)). As before, the fall in the U.S. interest rate is shown as a left-ward shift in the vertical schedule giving the dollar return on dollar deposits. This is nolonger the whole story, however, for the money supply increase now affects exchange rateexpectations. Because the U.S. money supply change is permanent, people expect a long-run increase in all dollar prices, including the exchange rate, which is the dollar price of eu-ros. As you will recall from Chapter 14, a rise in the expected future dollar/euro exchangerate (a future dollar depreciation) raises the expected dollar return on euro deposits; it thusshifts the downward-sloping schedule in the top part of Figure 15-12a to the right. The dol-lar depreciates against the euro, moving from an exchange rate of (point ) to (point ). Notice that the dollar depreciation is greater than it would be if the expectedfuture dollar/euro exchange rate stayed fixed (as it might if the money supply increase weretemporary rather than permanent). If the expectation did not change, the new short-runequilibrium would be at point rather than at point .2œ3œ

E $/€e

2œ

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1

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1MUS1 /PUS

1MUS

2MUS1

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Macroeconomic Data for Bolivia, April 1984–October 1985

MonthMoney Supply

(Billions of Pesos)Price Level

(Relative to 1982 Average � 1Exchange Rate

(Pesos per Dollar)

1984April 270 21.1 3,576May 330 31.1 3,512June 440 32.3 3,342July 599 34.0 3,570August 718 39.1 7,038September 889 53.7 13,685October 1,194 85.5 15,205November 1,495 112.4 18,469December 3,296 180.9 24,515

1985January 4,630 305.3 73,016February 6,455 863.3 141,101March 9,089 1,078.6 128,137April 12,885 1,205.7 167,428May 21,309 1,635.7 272,375June 27,778 2,919.1 481,756July 47,341 4,854.6 885,476August 74,306 8,081.0 1,182,300September 103,272 12,647.6 1,087,440October 132,550 12,411.8 1,120,210

Source: Juan-Antonio Morales, “Inflation Stabilization in Bolivia,” in Michael Bruno et al., eds., Inflation Stabilization: TheExperience of Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Mexico. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988, table 7A-1. Money supply is M1.

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Figure 15-12b shows how the interest rate and exchange rate behave as the price levelrises during the economy’s adjustment to its long-run equilibrium. The price level be-gins to rise from the initially given level eventually reaching Because thelong-run increase in the price level must be proportional to the increase in the moneysupply, the final real money supply, is shown equal to the initial real moneysupply, . Since output is given and the real money supply has returned to itsoriginal level, the equilibrium interest rate must again equal in the long run (point 4). The interest rate therefore rises from (point 2) to (point 4) as the price level risesfrom to .

The rising U.S. interest rate has exchange rate effects that can also be seen inFigure 15-12b: The dollar appreciates against the euro in the process of adjustment. Ifexchange rate expectations do not change further during the adjustment process, theforeign exchange market moves to its long-run position along the downward-slopingschedule defining the dollar return on euro deposits. The market’s path is just the pathtraced out by the vertical dollar interest rate schedule as it moves rightward because of

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Figure 15-12

Short-Run and Long-Run Effects of an Increase in the U.S. Money Supply (Given Real Output, Y)

(a) Short-run adjustment of the asset markets. (b) How the interest rate, price level, and exchange ratemove over time as the economy approaches its long-run equilibrium.

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the price level’s gradual rise. In the long run (point ), the equilibrium exchange rate,is higher than at the original equilibrium, point . Like the price level, the dollar/

euro exchange rate has risen in proportion to the increase in the money supply.Figure 15-13 shows time paths like the ones just described for the U.S. money supply,

the dollar interest rate, the U.S. price level, and the dollar/euro exchange rate. The figure isdrawn so that the long-run increases in the price level (Figure 15-13c) and exchange rate(Figure 15-13d) are proportional to the increase in the money supply (Figure 15-13a).

Exchange Rate OvershootingIn its initial depreciation after a money supply rise, the exchange rate jumps from upto , a depreciation greater than its long-run depreciation from to (seeFigure 15-13d). The exchange rate is said to overshoot when its immediate response toa disturbance is greater than its long-run response. Exchange rate overshooting is animportant phenomenon because it helps explain why exchange rates move so sharplyfrom day to day.

The economic explanation of overshooting comes from the interest parity condition.The explanation is easiest to grasp if we assume that before the money supply increasefirst occurs, no change in the dollar/euro exchange rate is expected, so that equals the given interest rate on euro deposits. A permanent increase in the U.S. money supplydoesn’t affect so it causes to fall below and remain below that interest rateR€R$

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Timet0

t0 Time t0 Time

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Figure 15-13

Time Paths of U.S. Economic Variables After a Permanent Increase in the U.S. Money Supply

After the money supply increases at in panel (a), the interest rate (in panel (b)), price level (in panel(c)), and exchange rate (in panel (d)) move as shown toward their long-run levels. As indicated inpanel (d) by the initial jump from to , the exchange rate overshoots in the short run beforesettling down to its long-run level, .E$/€

3E$/€

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t0

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(Figure 15-13b) until the U.S. price level has completed the long-run adjustment to shown in Figure 15-13c. For the foreign exchange market to be in equilibrium during thisadjustment process, however, the interest difference in favor of euro deposits must be off-set by an expected appreciation of the dollar against the euro, that is, by an expected fall in

Only if the dollar/euro exchange rate overshoots initially will market partici-pants expect a subsequent appreciation of the dollar against the euro.

Overshooting is a direct consequence of the short-run rigidity of the price level. In ahypothetical world where the price level could adjust immediately to its new, long-run levelafter a money supply increase, the dollar interest rate would not fall because prices wouldadjust immediately and prevent the real money supply from rising. Thus, there would be noneed for overshooting to maintain equilibrium in the foreign exchange market. The exchangerate would maintain equilibrium simply by jumping to its new, long-run level right away.

Case Study

Can Higher Inflation Lead to Currency Appreciation?The Implications of Inflation Targeting

In the overshooting model that we have just examined, an increase in the money supplyleads to higher inflation and currency depreciation, as shown in Figure 15–13. It mayseem puzzling, then, that readers of the financial press often see headlines such as thefollowing one from the Financial Times of May 24, 2007: “Inflation Drives CanadianDollar Higher.” In light of the seemingly reasonable model set out in this chapter, cansuch statements possibly make sense?

A clue comes from reading further in the Financial Times news story on Canadianinflation. According to the FT:

[A]nalysts said that the main driver of the recent bout of Canadian dollar apprecia-tion was higher-than-expected April inflation data, which saw the bond market fullyprice in a 25 basis point rise in Canadian interest rates by the end of the year.

If central banks act to raise interest rates when inflation rises, then because higher inter-est rates cause currency appreciation, it might be possible to resolve the apparent contra-diction to our model. To do so fully, however, we must consider two aspects of the wayin which modern central banks actually formulate and implement monetary policy.

1. The interest rate, not the money supply, is the prime instrument of monetarypolicy. Nowadays, most central banks do not actually target the money supply in orderto control inflation. They instead target a benchmark short-term rate of interest (suchas the overnight “federal funds” rate in the United States). How does our discussion ofmoney market equilibrium help us to understand this process? Consider Figure 15-3,and assume that the central bank wishes to set an interest rate of . It can do sosimply by agreeing to provide or take up all of the cash that the market wishes to tradeat that rate of interest. If the money supply is initially , for example, there will be anexcess demand for money at the interest rate , so people will sell bonds to the cen-tral bank for money (in effect, borrowing) until the money supply has expanded to and the excess demand is gone. Central banks tend to set an interest rate, rather thanthe money supply, because the money demand schedule shifts around fre-quently in practice. If the central bank were to fix the money supply, the result would

L(R, Y)

Q1R1

Q2

R1

E $/€3E$/€.

PUS2

86


be high and possibly damaging interest rate volatility; it is thus more practical to fixthe interest rate and let the money supply adjust automatically when necessary.9

Our discussion above of the positive relationship between the money supply andprice level will tip you off, however, to one potential problem of an interest rate in-strument. If the money supply is free to grow or shrink as markets collectively de-sire, how can the price level and inflation be kept under control? For example, ifmarket actors doubt the central bank’s resolve to control inflation, and suddenlypush the price level up because they expect higher prices in the future, they couldsimply borrow more money from the central bank, thereby bringing about themoney supply increase needed to maintain higher prices in the long run. This worri-some possibility brings us to the second pillar of modern monetary policy.

2. Most central banks adjust their policy interest rates expressly so as to keep in-flation in check. A central bank can keep inflation from getting too high or too lowby raising the interest rate when it learns that inflation is running higher than ex-pected, and lowering it when inflation is running lower. As we will see more fully inChapter 17, a rise in the interest rate, which causes the currency to appreciate, puts adamper on demand for a country’s products by making them more expensive com-pared to foreign goods. This fall in demand, in turn, promotes lower domestic prices.A fall in the interest rate, symmetrically, supports domestic prices. Indeed, manycentral banks now follow formal strategies of inflation targeting, under which theyannounce a target (or target range) for the inflation rate and adjust the interest rate tokeep inflation on target. Central banks generally target so-called core inflation,which is inflation in the price level excluding volatile components such as energyprices, rather than headline inflation, which is inflation in the total consumer priceindex. The formal practice of inflation targeting was initiated by New Zealand’scentral bank in 1989, and the central banks of many other developed and developingareas, including Canada, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, Thailand, the UnitedKingdom, and the euro zone, have followed suit. The central banks of the UnitedStates and Japan, while strongly averse to inflation, have so far been reluctant toannounce definite inflation targets.10

We can now understand the “paradox” of higher-than-expected inflation causingcurrency appreciation rather than depreciation. Suppose market participants unex-pectedly push up prices and borrow to enlarge the money supply. Thus, when theCanadian government releases new price data, the data show a price level higher than

9 For a nontechnical account of modern central bank policy implementation, see Michael Woodford, “MonetaryPolicy in a World Without Money,” International Finance 3 (July 2000), pp. 229–260. Woodford’s provocativetitle points to another advantage of the interest rate instrument for central banks: It is possible to conduct mone-tary policy even if checking deposits pay interest at competitive rates. For many purposes, however, it is reason-able to ignore the variability of the L(R, Y) schedule and simply assume that the central bank directly sets themoney supply. In the rest of the book we shall, for the most part, make that simplifying assumption. The majorexception will be when we introduce fixed exchange rates in Chapter 18.10The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which we will discuss in Chapter 19, maintains a useful classificationof its member countries with regard to their monetary policy frameworks as well as their exchange rate systems;see the documentation and data at http://www.imf.org/external/np/mfd/er/2008/eng/0408.htm. The IMF does notconsider Switzerland to be an inflation targeter, but the difference between its actual procedures and inflation tar-geting is small, and this Case Study therefore includes it among the inflation-targeting countries. On inflation-targeting practices and the theory behind them, see the books by Bernanke et al. and by Truman in FurtherReadings. For a critique of the idea of targeting core rather than headline inflation, see Stephen Cecchetti, “CoreInflation Is an Unreliable Guide,” Financial Times, September 12, 2006.

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what market participants had previously predicted. If the Bank of Canada is expectedto raise interest rates quickly so as to push the price level and money supply back oncourse, there is no reason for the future expected exchange rate to change. But withhigher Canadian interest rates, interest parity requires an expected futuredepreciation of the Canadian dollar, which is consistent with an unchanged futureexchange rate only if the Canadian dollar appreciates immediately. The picture of theeconomy’s adjustment after the unexpected increase in money and prices would looklike Figure 15–13 in reverse (that is, constructed to reflect a monetary contractionrather than an expansion)—with the added assumption that the Bank of Canada grad-ually moves interest rates back to their initial level as the price level returns to itstargeted path.11

Economists Richard Clarida of Columbia University and Daniel Waldman ofBarclays Capital offer striking statistical evidence consistent with this explanation.12

These writers measure unexpected inflation as the inflation rate estimate initially an-nounced by a government, prior to any data revisions, less the median of inflation fore-casts for that period previously published by a set of banking industry analysts. For asample of ten countries—Australia, Britain, Canada, the euro area, Japan, New Zealand,Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States—Clarida and Waldman examinethe exchange rate changes that occur in the period lasting from five minutes prior to aninflation announcement to five minutes afterward. Their key findings are these:

1. On average for the ten currencies that they study, news that inflation is unexpect-edly high does indeed lead a currency to appreciate, not depreciate.

2. The effect is stronger for core than for headline inflation.3. The effect is much stronger for the inflation-targeting countries than for the United

States and Japan, the two countries that do not announce inflation targets. In thecase of Canada, for example, the announcement of an annual core inflation rate thatis 1 percent per year above the market expectation leads the Canadian dollar toappreciate immediately by about 3 percent against the U.S. dollar. The correspon-ding effect for the U.S. dollar/euro exchange rate, while in the same direction, isonly about one-quarter as big.

4. For countries where sufficiently long data series are available, the strengtheningeffect of unexpected inflation on the currency is present after the introduction ofinflation targeting, but not before.

Scientific theories can be conclusively disproved, of course, but never conclusivelyproved. So far, however, the theory that strict inflation targeting makes bad news oninflation good news for the currency looks quite persuasive.

1 1 Strictly speaking, the narrative in the text describes a setting with price level rather than inflation rate target-ing. (Can you see the difference?) The reasoning in the case of inflation targeting is nearly identical, however,provided that the central bank’s interest rate response to unexpectedly high inflation is sufficiently strong.1 2 See Clarida and Waldman, “Is Bad News About Inflation Good News for the Exchange Rate? And If So, CanThat Tell Us Anything about the Conduct of Monetary Policy?” in John Y. Campbell, ed., Asset Prices andMonetary Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Michael W. Klein of Tufts University and LindaS. Goldberg of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York used a related approach to investigate changing marketperceptions of the European Central Bank’s inflation aversion after its founding in 1999; see “EstablishingCredibility: Evolving Perceptions of the European Central Bank,” Institute for International Integration StudiesDiscussion Paper 194, Trinity College, Dublin, December 2006.

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aggregate money demand, p. 388deflation, p. 402exchange rate overshooting,

p. 407

inflation, p. 402long run, p. 393long-run equilibrium,

p. 398

money supply, p. 386price level, p. 388short run, p. 393

SUMMARY

1. Money is held because of its liquidity. When considered in real terms, aggregatemoney demand is not a demand for a certain number of currency units but is instead ademand for a certain amount of purchasing power. Aggregate real money demand de-pends negatively on the opportunity cost of holding money (measured by the domesticinterest rate) and positively on the volume of transactions in the economy (measuredby real GNP).

2. The money market is in equilibrium when the real money supply equals aggregate realmoney demand. With the price level and real output given, a rise in the money supplylowers the interest rate and a fall in the money supply raises the interest rate. A rise inreal output raises the interest rate, given the price level, while a fall in real output hasthe opposite effect.

3. By lowering the domestic interest rate, an increase in the money supply causes the do-mestic currency to depreciate in the foreign exchange market (even when expectationsof future exchange rates do not change). Similarly, a fall in the domestic money supplycauses the domestic currency to appreciate against foreign currencies.

4. The assumption that the price level is given in the short run is a good approximation toreality in countries with moderate inflation, but it is a misleading assumption over thelong run. Permanent changes in the money supply push the long-run equilibrium pricelevel proportionally in the same direction but do not influence the long-run values ofoutput, the interest rate, or any relative prices. One important money price whose long-run equilibrium level rises in proportion to a permanent money supply increase is theexchange rate, the domestic currency price of foreign currency.

5. An increase in the money supply can cause the exchange rate to overshoot its long-runlevel in the short run. If output is given, a permanent money supply increase, for exam-ple, causes a more-than-proportional short-run depreciation of the currency, followedby an appreciation of the currency to its long-run exchange rate. Exchange rate over-shooting, which heightens the volatility of exchange rates, is a direct result of sluggishshort-run price level adjustment and the interest parity condition.

KEY TERMS

PROBLEMS

1. Suppose there is a reduction in aggregate real money demand, that is, a negative shiftin the aggregate real money demand function. Trace the short-run and long-run effectson the exchange rate, interest rate, and price level.

2. How would you expect a fall in a country’s population to alter its aggregate moneydemand function? Would it matter if the fall in population were due to a fall in thenumber of households or to a fall in the size of the average household?

3. The velocity of money, V, is defined as the ratio of real GNP to real money holdings,in this chapter’s notation. Use equation (15-4) to derive an expression

for velocity and explain how velocity varies with changes in R and in Y. (Hint: TheV = Y/(M/P)

89


effect of output changes on V depends on the elasticity of aggregate money demandwith respect to real output, which economists believe to be less than unity.) What isthe relationship between velocity and the exchange rate?

4. What is the short-run effect on the exchange rate of an increase in domestic real GNP,given expectations about future exchange rates?

5. Does our discussion of money’s usefulness as a medium of exchange and unit of ac-count suggest reasons why some currencies become vehicle currencies for foreign ex-change transactions? (The concept of a vehicle currency was discussed in Chapter 14.)

6. If a currency reform has no effects on the economy’s real variables, why do govern-ments typically institute currency reforms in connection with broader programs aimedat halting runaway inflation? (There are many instances in addition to the Turkishcase mentioned in the text. Other examples include Israel’s switch from the pound tothe shekel, Argentina’s switches from the peso to the austral and back to the peso, andBrazil’s switches from the cruzeiro to the cruzado, from the cruzado to the cruzeiro,from the cruzeiro to the cruzeiro real, and from the cruzeiro real to the real, the cur-rent currency, which was introduced in 1994.)

7. Imagine that the central bank of an economy with unemployment doubles its moneysupply. In the long run, full employment is restored and output returns to its full-employment level. On the (admittedly unlikely) assumption that the interest rate beforethe money supply increase equals the long-run interest rate, is the long-run increase inthe price level more than proportional or less than proportional to the money supplychange? What if (as is more likely) the interest rate is initially below its long-run level?

8. Between 1984 and 1985, the money supply in the United States increased to billion from billion, while that of Brazil increased to 106.1 billion cruzadosfrom 24.4 billion. Over the same period, the U.S. consumer price index rose to 100from a level of 96.6, while the corresponding index for Brazil rose to 100 from a levelof only 31. Calculate the 1984–1985 rates of money supply growth and inflation forthe United States and Brazil, respectively. Assuming that other factors affecting themoney markets did not change too dramatically, how do these numbers match up withthe predictions of this chapter’s model? How would you explain the apparently differ-ent responses of U.S. compared with Brazilian prices?

9. Continuing with the preceding question, note that the monetary value of output in1985 was billion in the United States and 1,418 billion cruzados in Brazil.Refer back to question 3 and calculate velocity for the two countries in 1985. Why doyou think velocity was so much higher in Brazil?

10. In our discussion of short-run exchange rate overshooting, we assumed that real outputwas given. Assume instead that an increase in the money supply raises real output in theshort run (an assumption that will be justified in Chapter 17). How does this affect theextent to which the exchange rate overshoots when the money supply first increases? Isit likely that the exchange rate undershoots? (Hint: In Figure 15-12a, allow the aggre-gate real money demand schedule to shift in response to the increase in output.)

11. Figure 14-2 shows that Japan’s short-term interest rates have had periods duringwhich they are near or equal to zero. Is the fact that the yen interest rates shown neverdrop below zero a coincidence, or can you think of some reason why interest ratesmight be bounded below by zero?

12. How might a zero interest rate complicate the task of monetary policy? (Hint: At azero rate of interest, there is no advantage in switching from money to bonds.)

13. As we observed in this chapter, central banks, rather than purposefully setting thelevel of the money supply, usually set a target level for a short-term interest rateby standing ready to lend or borrow whatever money people wish to hold at thatinterest rate. (When people need more money for a reason other than a change in

$4,010

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90


the interest rate, the money supply therefore expands, and it contracts when theywish to hold less.)a. Describe the problems that might arise if a central bank sets monetary policy by

holding the market interest rate constant. (First, consider the flexible-price case,and ask yourself if you can find a unique equilibrium price level when the centralbank simply gives people all the money they wish to hold at the pegged interestrate. Then consider the sticky-price case.)

b. Does the situation change if the central bank raises the interest rate when prices arehigh, according to a formula such as where a is a positiveconstant and a target price level?

c. Suppose the central bank’s policy rule is where u is arandom movement in the policy interest rate. In the overshooting model shown inFigure 15-12, describe how the economy would adjust to a permanent one-timeunexpected fall in the random factor u, and say why. You can interpret the fall in uas an interest rate cut by the central bank, and therefore as an expansionary mone-tary action. Compare your story with the one depicted in Figure 15-13.

FURTHER READINGS

Ben S. Bernanke, Thomas Laubach, Frederic S. Mishkin, and Adam S. Posen. Inflation Targeting:Lessons from the International Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.Discusses recent monetary policy experience and the consequences for inflation and other macro-economic variables.

Rudiger Dornbusch. “Expectations and Exchange Rate Dynamics.” Journal of Political Economy 84(December 1976), pp. 1161–1176. A theoretical analysis of exchange rate overshooting.

Jacob A. Frenkel and Michael L. Mussa. “The Efficiency of Foreign Exchange Markets andMeasures of Turbulence.” American Economic Review 70 (May 1980), pp. 374–381. Contraststhe behavior of national price levels with that of exchange rates and other asset prices.

Robert E. Hall and David H. Papell. Macroeconomics: Economic Growth, Fluctuations, and Policy,6th edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005. Chapter 15 discusses some theories ofnominal price rigidity.

Richard M. Levich. “Overshooting” in the Foreign Exchange Market. Occasional Paper 5. NewYork: Group of Thirty, 1981. An examination of the theory and evidence on exchange rateovershooting.

Edwin M. Truman. Inflation Targeting in the World Economy. Washington, D.C.: Institute forInternational Economics, 2003. Overview of the international aspects of monetary policy frame-works that target low inflation.

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414

16c h a p t e r

Price Levels and the Exchange Rate in the Long Run

A t the end of 1970, you could have bought 358 Japanese yen with a singleAmerican dollar; by Christmas 1980 a dollar was worth only 203 yen.Despite a temporary comeback during the 1980s, the dollar’s price in yen

slumped to 80 by the autumn of 2010. Many investors found these price changesdifficult to predict, and as a result fortunes were lost—and made—in the foreignexchange market. What economic forces lie behind such dramatic long-termmovements in exchange rates?

We have seen that exchange rates are determined by interest rates and expec-tations about the future, which are, in turn, influenced by conditions in nationalmoney markets. To understand fully long-term exchange rate movements, how-ever, we have to extend our model in two directions. First, we must complete ouraccount of the linkages among monetary policies, inflation, interest rates, andexchange rates. Second, we must examine factors other than money supplies anddemands—for example, demand shifts in markets for goods and services—thatalso can have sustained effects on exchange rates.

The model of long-run exchange rate behavior that we develop in thischapter provides the framework that actors in asset markets use to forecastfuture exchange rates. Because the expectations of these agents influenceexchange rates immediately, however, predictions about long-run move-ments in exchange rates are important even in the short run. We thereforewill draw heavily on this chapter’s conclusions when we begin our study inChapter 17 of short-run interactions between exchange rates and output.

In the long run, national price levels play a key role in determining bothinterest rates and the relative prices at which countries’ products are traded.A theory of how national price levels interact with exchange rates is thus cen-tral to understanding why exchange rates can change dramatically over peri-ods of several years. We begin our analysis by discussing the theory ofpurchasing power parity (PPP), which explains movements in the exchangerate between two countries’ currencies by changes in the countries’ price lev-els. Next, we examine reasons why PPP may fail to give accurate long-run pre-dictions and show how the theory must sometimes be modified to account for

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CHAPTER 16 Price Levels and the Exchange Rate in the Long Run 415

supply or demand shifts in countries’ output markets. Finally, we look at whatour extended PPP theory predicts about how changes in money and outputmarkets affect exchange and interest rates.

LEARNING GOALS


• Explain the purchasing power parity theory of exchange rates and thetheory’s relationship to international goods-market integration.

• Describe how monetary factors such as ongoing price level inflation affectexchange rates in the long run.

• Discuss the concept of the real exchange rate.• Understand factors that affect real exchange rates and relative currency

prices in the long run.• Explain the relationship between international real interest rate differences

and expected changes in real exchange rates.

The Law of One PriceTo understand the market forces that might give rise to the results predicted by the purchas-ing power parity theory, we discuss first a related but distinct proposition known as the lawof one price. The law of one price states that in competitive markets free of transportationcosts and official barriers to trade (such as tariffs), identical goods sold in different coun-tries must sell for the same price when their prices are expressed in terms of the samecurrency. For example, if the dollar/pound exchange rate is per pound, a sweater thatsells for in New York must sell for £30 in London. The dollar price of the sweaterwhen sold in London is then ($1.50 per pound) × (£30 per sweater) = $45 per sweater, thesame as its price in New York.

Let’s continue with this example to see why the law of one price must hold when tradeis free and there are no transport costs or other trade barriers. If the dollar/pound exchangerate were per pound, you could buy a sweater in London by converting $43.50(= $1.45 per pound × £30) into £30 in the foreign exchange market. Thus, the dollar priceof a sweater in London would be only . If the same sweater were selling for inNew York, U.S. importers and British exporters would have an incentive to buy sweatersin London and ship them to New York, pushing the London price up and the New Yorkprice down until prices were equal in the two locations. Similarly, at an exchange rate of

per pound, the dollar price of sweaters in London would be $46.50 (= $1.55 perpound × £30), $1.50 more than in New York. Sweaters would be shipped from west to eastuntil a single price prevailed in the two markets.

The law of one price is a restatement, in terms of currencies, of a principle that wasimportant in the trade theory portion of this book: When trade is open and costless, identi-cal goods must trade at the same relative prices regardless of where they are sold. Weremind you of that principle here because it provides one link between the domestic pricesof goods and exchange rates. We can state the law of one price formally as follows: Let

be the dollar price of good when sold in the United States, the correspondingeuro price in Europe. Then the law of one price implies that the dollar price of good is thesame wherever it is sold.

PUSi

= 1E$/€2 * 1PEi 2.

iPE

iiPUSi

$1.55

$45$43.50

$1.45

$45$1.50

93


Equivalently, the dollar/euro exchange rate is the ratio of good ’s U.S. and Europeanmoney prices,

Purchasing Power ParityThe theory of purchasing power parity states that the exchange rate between two coun-tries’ currencies equals the ratio of the countries’ price levels. Recall from Chapter 15 thatthe domestic purchasing power of a country’s currency is reflected in the country’s pricelevel, the money price of a reference basket of goods and services. The PPP theory there-fore predicts that a fall in a currency’s domestic purchasing power (as indicated by anincrease in the domestic price level) will be associated with a proportional currency depre-ciation in the foreign exchange market. Symmetrically, PPP predicts that an increase in thecurrency’s domestic purchasing power will be associated with a proportional currencyappreciation.

The basic idea of PPP was put forth in the writings of 19th-century British economists,among them David Ricardo (the originator of the theory of comparative advantage).Gustav Cassel, a Swedish economist writing in the early 20th century, popularized PPP bymaking it the centerpiece of a theory of exchange rates. While there has been much con-troversy about the general validity of PPP, the theory does highlight important factorsbehind exchange rate movements.

To express the PPP theory in symbols, let be the dollar price of a reference com-modity basket sold in the United States and the euro price of the same basket in Europe.(Assume for now that a single basket accurately measures money’s purchasing power inboth countries.) Then PPP predicts a dollar/euro exchange rate of

(16-1)

If, for example, the reference commodity basket costs in the United Statesand in Europe, PPP predicts a dollar/euro exchange rate of

. If the U.S. price level were to triple (to per basket), sowould the dollar price of a euro. PPP would imply an exchange rate of per euro

By rearranging equation (16-1) to read

we get an alternative interpretation of PPP. The left side of this equation is the dollar priceof the reference commodity basket in the United States; the right side is the dollar price ofthe reference basket when purchased in Europe (that is, its euro price multiplied by thedollar price of a euro). These two prices are the same if PPP holds. PPP thus asserts that allcountries’ price levels are equal when measured in terms of the same currency.

Equivalently, the right side of the last equation measures the purchasing power of adollar when exchanged for euros and spent in Europe. PPP therefore holds when, at goingexchange rates, every currency’s domestic purchasing power is always the same as itsforeign purchasing power.

The Relationship Between PPP and the Law of One PriceSuperficially, the statement of PPP given by equation (16-1) looks like the law of one price,which says that for any commodity . There is a difference between PPPand the law of one price, however: The law of one price applies to individual commodities

iE$/€ = PiUS/Pi

E

PUS = (E$/€) * (PE),

(= $600 per basket/€160 per basket).$3.75

$600basket/€160 per basket)$1.25 per euro ($200 per€160

$200

E$/€ = PUS/PE.

PE

PUS

E$/€ = PUSi /PE

i .

i

94


(such as commodity ), while PPP applies to the general price level, which is a composite ofthe prices of all the commodities that enter into the reference basket.

If the law of one price holds true for every commodity, of course, PPP must holdautomatically as long as the reference baskets used to reckon different countries’ price lev-els are the same. Proponents of the PPP theory argue, however, that its validity (in particu-lar, its validity as a long-run theory) does not require the law of one price to hold exactly.

Even when the law of one price fails to hold for each individual commodity, the argu-ment goes, prices and exchange rates should not stray too far from the relation predictedby PPP. When goods and services become temporarily more expensive in one country thanin others, the demands for its currency and its products fall, pushing the exchange rate anddomestic prices back in line with PPP. The opposite situation of relatively cheap domesticproducts leads, analogously, to currency appreciation and price level inflation. PPP thusasserts that even when the law of one price is not literally true, the economic forces behindit will help eventually to equalize a currency’s purchasing power in all countries.

Absolute PPP and Relative PPPThe statement that exchange rates equal relative price levels (equation (16-1)) is some-times referred to as absolute PPP. Absolute PPP implies a proposition known as relativePPP, which states that the percentage change in the exchange rate between two currenciesover any period equals the difference between the percentage changes in national pricelevels. Relative PPP thus translates absolute PPP from a statement about price andexchange rate levels into one about price and exchange rate changes. It asserts that pricesand exchange rates change in a way that preserves the ratio of each currency’s domesticand foreign purchasing powers.

If the U.S. price level rises by 10 percent over a year while Europe’s rises by only5 percent, for example, relative PPP predicts a 5 percent depreciation of the dollar againstthe euro. The dollar’s 5 percent depreciation against the euro just cancels the 5 percentby which U.S. inflation exceeds European inflation, leaving the relative domestic andforeign purchasing powers of both currencies unchanged.

More formally, relative PPP between the United States and Europe would be written as

(16-2)

where denotes an inflation rate (that is, the percentage change in aprice level between dates and ).1 Unlike absolute PPP, relative PPP can be definedonly with respect to the time interval over which price levels and the exchange rate change.

In practice, national governments do not take pains to compute the price level indexes theypublish using an internationally standardized basket of commodities. Absolute PPP makes nosense, however, unless the two baskets whose prices are compared in equation (16-1) are the

t - 1tpt = (Pt - Pt-1)/Pt-1,pt

(E$/€, t - E$/€, t-1)/E$/€, t-1 = pUS, t - pE, t

i

1 To be precise, equation (16-1) implies a good approximation to equation (16-2) when rates of change are nottoo large. The exact relationship is

After subtracting 1 from both sides, we write the preceding exact equation as

But if and are small, the term in the last equality is negligibly small,implying a very good approximation to (16-2).

-pE, t(pUS, t - pE, t)/(1 + pE, t)pE, tpUS, t

= (pUS, t - pE, t) - pE, t(pUS, t - pE, t)/(1 + pE, t). = (pUS, t - pE, t)/(1 + pE, t)

(E$/€, t - E$/€, t-1)/E$/€, t-1 = (pUS, t +1) (PE, t-1/PE, t) - (PE, t /PE, t)

E$/€, t /E$/€, t-1 = (PUS, t /PUS, t-1)/(PE, t /PE, t-1).

95


same. (There is no reason to expect different commodity baskets to sell for the same price!)The notion of relative PPP therefore comes in handy when we have to rely on governmentprice level statistics to evaluate PPP. It makes logical sense to compare percentage exchangerate changes to inflation differences, as above, even when countries base their price level esti-mates on product baskets that differ in coverage and composition.

Relative PPP is important also because it may be valid even when absolute PPP is not.Provided the factors causing deviations from absolute PPP are more or less stable overtime, percentage changes in relative price levels can still approximate percentage changesin exchange rates.

A Long-Run Exchange Rate Model Based on PPPWhen combined with the framework of money demand and supply that we developed inChapter 15, the theory of PPP leads to a useful theory of how exchange rates and monetaryfactors interact in the long run. Because factors that do not influence money supply ormoney demand play no explicit role in this theory, it is known as the monetary approachto the exchange rate. The monetary approach is this chapter’s first step in developing ageneral long-run theory of exchange rates.

We think of the monetary approach as a long-run and not a short-run theory because itdoes not allow for the price rigidities that seem important in explaining short-run macro-economic developments, in particular departures from full employment. Instead, the mone-tary approach proceeds as if prices can adjust right away to maintain full employment aswell as PPP. Here, as in the previous chapter, when we refer to a variable’s “long-run”value, we mean the variable’s equilibrium value in a hypothetical world of perfectly flexibleoutput and factor market prices.

There is actually considerable controversy among macroeconomists about the sources ofapparent price level stickiness, with some maintaining that prices and wages only appearrigid and in reality adjust immediately to clear markets. To an economist of the aforemen-tioned school, this chapter’s models would describe the short-run behavior of an economyin which the speed of price level adjustment is so great that no significant unemploymentever occurs.

The Fundamental Equation of the Monetary ApproachTo develop the monetary approach’s predictions for the dollar/euro exchange rate, we willassume that in the long run, the foreign exchange market sets the rate so that PPP holds(see equation (16-1)):

In other words, we assume the above equation would hold in a world where there are nomarket rigidities to prevent the exchange rate and other prices from adjusting immediatelyto levels consistent with full employment.

In the previous chapter, equation (15-5) showed how we can explain domestic pricelevels in terms of domestic money demands and supplies. In the United States,

(16-3)

while in Europe,

(16-4)PE = MEs /L(R€, YE).

PUS = MUSs /L(R$, YUS),

E$/€ = PUS/PE.

96


As before, we have used the symbol to stand for a country’s money supply and to stand for its aggregate real money demand, which decreases when the interest rate risesand increases when real output rises.2

Equations (16-3) and (16-4) show how the monetary approach to the exchange ratecomes by its name. According to the statement of PPP in equation (16-1), the dollar priceof a euro is simply the dollar price of U.S. output divided by the euro price of Europeanoutput. These two price levels, in turn, are determined completely by the supply anddemand for each currency area’s money: The United States’ price level is the U.S. moneysupply divided by U.S. real money demand, as shown in (16-3), and Europe’s price levelsimilarly is the European money supply divided by European real money demand, asshown in (16-4). The monetary approach therefore makes the general prediction that theexchange rate, which is the relative price of American and European money, is fully deter-mined in the long run by the relative supplies of those monies and the relative realdemands for them. Shifts in interest rates and output levels affect the exchange rate onlythrough their influences on money demand.

In addition, the monetary approach makes a number of specific predictions about thelong-run effects on the exchange rate of changes in money supplies, interest rates, andoutput levels:

1. Money supplies. Other things equal, a permanent rise in the U.S. money supply causes a proportional increase in the long-run U.S. price level as equation (16-3)shows. Because under PPP however, also rises in the long run in pro-portion to the increase in the U.S. money supply. (For example, if rises by 10 percent,

and both eventually rise by 10 percent as well.) Thus, an increase in the U.S.money supply causes a proportional long-run depreciation of the dollar against the euro.Conversely, equation (16-4) shows that a permanent increase in the European money sup-ply causes a proportional increase in the long-run European price level. Under PPP, thisprice level rise implies a proportional long-run appreciation of the dollar against the euro(which is the same as a proportional depreciation of the euro against the dollar).

2. Interest rates. A rise in the interest rate on dollar-denominated assets lowersreal U.S. money demand By (16-3), the long-run U.S. price level rises, andunder PPP the dollar must depreciate against the euro in proportion to this U.S. pricelevel increase. A rise in the interest rate on euro-denominated assets has the reverselong-run exchange rate effect. Because real European money demand falls,Europe’s price level rises, by (16-4). Under PPP, the dollar must appreciate against theeuro in proportion to Europe’s price level increase.

3. Output levels. A rise in U.S. output raises real U.S. money demand leading by (16-3) to a fall in the long-run U.S. price level. According to PPP, there isan appreciation of the dollar against the euro. Symmetrically, a rise in European out-put raises and, by (16-4), causes a fall in Europe’s long-run price level.PPP predicts that this development will make the dollar depreciate against the euro.

To understand these predictions, remember that the monetary approach, like any long-run theory, essentially assumes that price levels adjust as quickly as exchange rates do—that is, right away. For example, a rise in real U.S. output raises the transactions demandfor real U.S. money balances. According to the monetary approach, the U.S. price leveldrops immediately to bring about a market-clearing increase in the supply of real balances.

L(R€, YE)

L(R$, YUS),

L(R€, YE)R€

L(R$, YUS).R$

E$/€PUS

MUSs

E$/€E$/€ = PUS/PE,PUS,

MUSs

L(R, Y)Ms

2 To simplify the notation, we assume identical money demand functions for the United States and Europe.

97


PPP implies that this instantaneous American price deflation is accompanied by an instan-taneous dollar appreciation on the foreign exchanges.

The monetary approach leads to a result familiar from Chapter 15, that the long-runforeign exchange value of a country’s currency moves in proportion to its money supply(prediction 1). The theory also raises what seems to be a paradox (prediction 2). In ourprevious examples, we always found that a currency appreciates when the interest rate itoffers rises relative to foreign interest rates. How is it that we have now arrived at preciselythe opposite conclusion—that a rise in a country’s interest rate depreciates its currency bylowering the real demand for its money?

At the end of Chapter 14, we warned that no account of how a change in interest ratesaffects the exchange rate is complete until we specify exactly why interest rates havechanged. This point explains the apparent contradiction in our findings about interest andexchange rates. To resolve the puzzle, however, we must first examine more closely howmonetary policies and interest rates are connected in the long run.

Ongoing Inflation, Interest Parity, and PPPIn the last chapter we saw that a permanent increase in the level of a country’s moneysupply ultimately results in a proportional rise in its price level but has no effect on thelong-run values of the interest rate or real output. While the conceptual experiment of aone-time, stepwise money supply change is useful for thinking about the long-run effectsof money, it is not very realistic as a description of actual monetary policies. More often,the monetary authorities choose a growth rate for the money supply, say, 5, 10, or 50 per-cent per year, and then allow money to grow gradually, through incremental but frequentincreases. What are the long-run effects of a policy that allows the money supply to growsmoothly forever at a positive rate?

The reasoning in Chapter 15 suggests that continuing money supply growth willrequire a continuing rise in the price level—a situation of ongoing inflation. As firms andworkers catch on to the fact that the money supply is growing steadily at, say, a 10 percentannual rate, they will adjust by raising prices and wages by the same 10 percent everyyear, thus keeping their real incomes constant. Full-employment output depends on sup-plies of productive factors, but it is safe to assume that factor supplies, and thus output, areunaffected over the long run by different choices of a constant growth rate for the moneysupply. Other things equal, money supply growth at a constant rate eventually results inongoing price level inflation at the same rate, but changes in this long-run inflation rate donot affect the full-employment output level or the long-run relative prices of goods andservices.

The interest rate, however, is definitely not independent of the money supply growthrate in the long run. While the long-run interest rate does not depend on the absolute levelof the money supply, continuing growth in the money supply eventually will affect theinterest rate. The easiest way to see how a permanent increase in inflation affects the long-run interest rate is by combining PPP with the interest rate parity condition on which ourprevious analysis of exchange rate determination was built.

As in the preceding two chapters, the condition of interest parity between dollar andeuro assets is

(recall equation (14-2), page 368). Now let’s ask how this parity condition, which musthold in the long run as well as in the short run, fits with the other parity condition weare assuming in our long-run model, purchasing power parity. According to relative PPP,the percentage change in the dollar/euro exchange rate over the next year, say, will equal

R$ = R€ + (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€

98


the difference between the inflation rates of the United States and Europe over that year(see equation (16-2)). Since people understand this relationship, however, it must also betrue that they expect the percentage exchange rate change to equal the U.S.–Europe infla-tion difference. The interest parity condition written above now tells us the following:If people expect relative PPP to hold, the difference between the interest rates offered bydollar and euro deposits will equal the difference between the inflation rates expected,over the relevant horizon, in the United States and in Europe.

Some additional notation is helpful in deriving this result more formally. If is theprice level expected in a country for a year from today, the expected inflation rate in thatcountry, is the expected percentage increase in the price level over the coming year,

If relative PPP holds, however, market participants will also expect relative PPP to hold,which means that we can replace the actual depreciation and inflation rates in equation(16-2) with the values the market expects to materialize:

By combining this “expected” version of relative PPP with the interest parity condition

and rearranging, we arrive at a formula that expresses the international interest rate differ-ence as the difference between expected national inflation rates:

(16-5)

If, as PPP predicts, currency depreciation is expected to offset the international inflationdifference (so that the expected dollar depreciation rate is ), the interest ratedifference must equal the expected inflation difference.

The Fisher EffectEquation (16-5) gives us the long-run relationship between ongoing inflation and interestrates that we need to explain the monetary approach’s predictions about how interest ratesaffect exchange rates. The equation tells us that all else equal, a rise in a country’sexpected inflation rate will eventually cause an equal rise in the interest rate that depositsof its currency offer. Similarly, a fall in the expected inflation rate will eventually cause afall in the interest rate.

This long-run relationship between inflation and interest rates is called the Fisher effect.The Fisher effect implies, for example, that if U.S. inflation were to rise permanently from aconstant level of 5 percent per year to a constant level of 10 percent per year, dollar interestrates would eventually catch up with the higher inflation, rising by 5 percentage points peryear from their initial level. These changes would leave the real rate of return on dollarassets, measured in terms of U.S. goods and services, unchanged. The Fisher effect is there-fore another example of the general idea that in the long run, purely monetary develop-ments should have no effect on an economy’s relative prices.3

pUSe

- pEe

R$ - R€ = pUSe

- pEe .

R$ = R€ + (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€

(E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€ = pUSe

- pEe .

pe= (Pe

- P)/P.

pe,

Pe

3 The effect is named after Irving Fisher of Yale University, one of the great American economists of the early20th century. The effect is discussed at length in his book The Theory of Interest (New York: Macmillan, 1930).Fisher, incidentally, gave an early account of the interest parity condition on which our theory of foreignexchange market equilibrium is based.

99


The Fisher effect is behind the seemingly paradoxical monetary approach prediction that acurrency depreciates in the foreign exchange market when its interest rate rises relative to for-eign currency interest rates. In the long-run equilibrium assumed by the monetary approach, arise in the difference between home and foreign interest rates occurs only when expectedhome inflation rises relative to expected foreign inflation. This is certainly not the case in theshort run, when the domestic price level is sticky. In the short run, as we saw in Chapter 15,the interest rate can rise when the domestic money supply falls, because the sticky domesticprice level leads to an excess demand for real money balances at the initial interest rate. Underthe flexible-price monetary approach, however, the price level would fall right away, leavingthe real money supply unchanged and thus making the interest rate change unnecessary.

We can better understand how interest rates and exchange rates interact under the mon-etary approach by thinking through an example. Our example illustrates why the monetaryapproach associates sustained interest rate hikes with current as well as future currencydepreciation, and sustained interest rate declines with appreciation.

Imagine that at time , the Federal Reserve unexpectedly increases the growth rate ofthe U.S. money supply from to the higher level Figure 16-1 illustrates howthis change affects the dollar/euro exchange rate, as well as other U.S. variables, un-der the assumptions of the monetary approach. To simplify the graphs, we assume that inEurope, the inflation rate remains constant at zero.

Figure 16-1a shows the sudden acceleration of U.S. money supply growth at time (We have scaled the vertical axes of the graphs so that constant slopes represent constantproportional growth rates of variables.) The policy change generates expectations of morerapid currency depreciation in the future: Under PPP the dollar will now depreciate at therate rather than at the lower rate Interest parity therefore requires the dollarinterest rate to rise, as shown in Figure 16-1b, from its initial level to a new level thatreflects the extra expected dollar depreciation, (see equation (16-5)).Notice that this adjustment leaves the euro interest rate unchanged; but since Europe’smoney supply and output haven’t changed, the original euro interest rate will still maintainequilibrium in Europe’s money market.

You can see from Figure 16-1a that the level of the money supply does not actuallyjump upward at —only the future growth rate changes. Since there is no immediateincrease in the money supply, but there is an interest rate rise that reduces money demand,there would be an excess supply of real U.S. money balances at the price level prevailingjust prior to In the face of this potential excess supply, the U.S. price level does jumpupward at (see Figure 16-1c), reducing the real money supply so that it again equals realmoney demand (see equation (16-3)). Consistently with the upward jump in at ,Figure 16-1d shows the simultaneous proportional upward jump in implied by PPP.

How can we visualize the reaction of the foreign exchange market at time ? The dollarinterest rate rises not because of a change in current levels of money supply or demand, butsolely because people expect more rapid future money supply growth and dollar depreciation.As investors respond by moving into foreign deposits, which momentarily offer higherexpected returns, the dollar depreciates sharply in the foreign exchange market, moving to anew trend line along which depreciation is more rapid than it was up to time 4

Notice how different assumptions about the speed of price level adjustment lead to con-trasting predictions about how exchange and interest rates interact. In the example of a fallin the money supply under sticky prices, an interest rate rise is needed to preserve money

t0.

t0

E$/€

t0PUS

t0

t0.

t0

R$2

= R$1

+ ¢p

R$1

p.p + ¢p

t0.

E$/€,p + ¢p.p

t0

4In the general case in which Europe’s inflation rate is not zero, the dollar, rather than depreciating againstthe euro at rate before and at rate afterward, depreciates at rate until and at rate

thereafter.p + ¢p - pE

t0p - pEp + ¢pt0p

pE

100


+ Δπ

R$1

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

U.S. moneysupply, MUS

U.S. pricelevel, PUS

Dollar interestrate, R$


MUS,t0

Time

Slope = π

Slope = π + Δπ

Time

t0Time

Time

t0

t0t0

Slope = π

Slope = π

Slope = π + Δπ

Slope = π + Δπ

R$2 R$

1=

Figure 16-1

Long-Run Time Paths of U.S. Economic Variables After a Permanent Increase in the Growth Rateof the U.S. Money Supply

After the money supply growth rate increases at time in panel (a), the interest rate (in panel (b)),price level (in panel (c)), and exchange rate (in panel (d)) move to new long-run equilibrium paths.(The money supply, price level, and exchange rate are all measured on a natural logarithmic scale,which makes variables that change at constant proportional rates appear as straight lines when theyare graphed against time. The slope of the line equals the variable’s proportional growth rate.)

t0

market equilibrium, given that the price level cannot do so by dropping immediately inresponse to the money supply reduction. In that sticky-price case, an interest rate rise isassociated with lower expected inflation and a long-run currency appreciation, so thecurrency appreciates immediately. In our monetary approach example of a rise in moneysupply growth, however, an interest rate increase is associated with higher expected infla-tion and a currency that will be weaker on all future dates. An immediate currencydepreciation is the result.5

5 National money supplies typically trend upward over time, as in Figure 16-1a. Such trends lead to correspon-ding upward trends in price levels; if two countries’ price level trends differ, PPP implies a trend in theirexchange rate as well. From now on, when we refer to a change in the money supply, price level, or exchangerate, we will mean by this a change in the level of the variable relative to its previously expected trend path—thatis, a parallel shift in the trend path. When instead we want to consider changes in the slopes of trend paths them-selves, we will say so explicitly.

101


6 Some of the negative evidence on absolute PPP is discussed in the Case Study to follow. Regarding the law ofone price, see, for example, Peter Isard, “How Far Can We Push the Law of One Price?” American EconomicReview 67 (December 1977), pp. 942–948; Irving B. Kravis and Robert E. Lipsey, “Price Behavior in the Light ofBalance of Payments Theories,” Journal of International Economics 8 (May 1978), pp. 193–246; and the paper byGoldberg and Knetter in Further Readings.7 The price level measures in Figure 16-2 are index numbers, not dollar amounts. For example, the U.S. consumerprice index (CPI) was 100 in the base year 2000 and only about 50 in 1980, so the dollar price of a referencecommodity basket of typical U.S. consumption purchases doubled between 1980 and 2000. Base years for theU.S. and Japanese price indexes were chosen so that their 1980 ratio would equal the 1980 exchange rate, but thisimposed equality does not mean that absolute PPP held in 1980. Although Figure 16-2 uses CPIs, other priceindexes lead to similar pictures.8 See, for example, the paper by Taylor and Taylor in this chapter’s Further Readings.

These contrasting results of interest rate changes underlie our earlier warning that anexplanation of exchange rates based on interest rates must carefully account for the factorsthat cause interest rates to move. These factors can simultaneously affect expected futureexchange rates and can therefore have a decisive impact on the foreign exchange market’sresponse to the interest rate change. The appendix to this chapter shows in detail howexpectations change in the case we analyzed.

Empirical Evidence on PPP and the Law of One PriceHow well does the PPP theory explain actual data on exchange rates and national pricelevels? A brief answer is that all versions of the PPP theory do badly in explaining thefacts. In particular, changes in national price levels often tell us relatively little aboutexchange rate movements.

Do not conclude from this evidence, however, that the effort you’ve put into learning aboutPPP has been wasted. As we’ll see later in this chapter, PPP is a key building block ofexchange rate models that are more realistic than the monetary approach. Indeed, the empiri-cal failures of PPP give us important clues about how more realistic models should be set up.

To test absolute PPP, economic researchers compare the international prices of a broadreference basket of commodities, making careful adjustments for intercountry qualitydifferences among supposedly identical goods. These comparisons typically conclude thatabsolute PPP is way off the mark: The prices of identical commodity baskets, when convertedto a single currency, differ substantially across countries. Even the law of one price has notfared well in some recent studies of price data broken down by commodity type.Manufactured goods that seem to be very similar to each other have sold at widely differentprices in various markets since the early 1970s. Because the argument leading to absolute PPPbuilds on the law of one price, it is not surprising that PPP does not stand up well to the data.6

Relative PPP is sometimes a reasonable approximation to the data, but it, too, usually per-forms poorly. Figure 16-2 illustrates relative PPP’s weakness by plotting both the yen/dollarexchange rate, , and the ratio of the Japanese and U.S. price levels, , through 2009.Price levels are measured by indexes reported by the Japanese and U.S. governments.7

Relative PPP predicts that and will move in proportion, but clearly they donot. In the early 1980s there was a steep appreciation of the dollar against the yen eventhough, with Japan’s price level consistently falling relative to that in the United States,relative PPP suggests that the dollar should have depreciated instead. The same inflationtrends continued after the mid-1980s, but the yen then appreciated by far more than theamount that PPP would have predicted. Only over fairly long periods is relative PPPapproximately satisfied. In view of the lengthy departures from PPP in between, however,that theory appears to be of limited use even as a long-run explanation.

Studies of other currencies largely confirm the results in Figure 16-2. Relative PPP hasnot held up well.8 As you will learn later in this book, between the end of World War II

PJ/PUSE¥/$

PJ/PUSE¥/$

102


in 1945 and the early 1970s, exchange rates were fixed within narrow, internationallyagreed-upon margins through the intervention of central banks in the foreign exchangemarket. During that period of fixed exchange rates, PPP did not do too badly. However,during the first half of the 1920s, when many exchange rates were market-determined asin the 1970s and after, important deviations from relative PPP occurred, just as in recentdecades.9

Explaining the Problems with PPPWhat explains the negative empirical results described in the previous section? There areseveral immediate problems with our rationale for the PPP theory of exchange rates,which was based on the law of one price:

1. Contrary to the assumption of the law of one price, transport costs and restric-tions on trade certainly do exist. These trade barriers may be high enough to preventsome goods and services from being traded between countries.

PJ /PUS

E¥/$

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

220

240

260

1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

Exchange rate (E¥/$),Japan-U.S. price level ratio (PJ /PUS)

Figure 16-2

The Yen/Dollar Exchange Rate and Relative Japan–U.S. Price Levels, 1980–2009

The graph shows that relative PPP does not explain the yen/dollar exchange rate during 1980–2009.

Source: IMF, International Financial Statistics. Exchange rates and price levels are end-of-year data.

9 See Paul R. Krugman, “Purchasing Power Parity and Exchange Rates: Another Look at the Evidence,” Journalof International Economics 8 (August 1978), pp. 397–407; Paul De Grauwe, Marc Janssens, and Hilde Leliaert, Real-Exchange-Rate Variability from 1920 to 1926 and 1973 to 1982, Princeton Studies in International Finance 56(International Finance Section, Department of Economics, Princeton University, September 1985); and Hans Genberg,“Purchasing Power Parity Under Fixed and Flexible Exchange Rates,” Journal of International Economics 8(May 1978), pp. 247–276.

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2. Monopolistic or oligopolistic practices in goods markets may interact with trans-port costs and other trade barriers to weaken further the link between the prices ofsimilar goods sold in different countries.

3. Because the inflation data reported in different countries are based on differentcommodity baskets, there is no reason for exchange rate changes to offset officialmeasures of inflation differences, even when there are no barriers to trade and allproducts are tradable.

Trade Barriers and NontradablesTransport costs and governmental trade restrictions make it expensive to move goodsbetween markets located in different countries and therefore weaken the law of one pricemechanism underlying PPP. Suppose once again that the same sweater sells for inNew York and for £30 in London, but that it costs to ship a sweater between the twocities. At an exchange rate of per pound, the dollar price of a London sweater is

but an American importer would have to payto purchase the sweater in London and get it to New York. At an

exchange rate of per pound, it therefore would not pay to ship sweaters fromLondon to New York even though their dollar price would be higher in the latter location.Similarly, at an exchange rate of per pound, an American exporter would losemoney by shipping sweaters from New York to London even though the New York priceof would then be below the dollar price of the sweater in London, .

The lesson of this example is that transport costs sever the close link between exchangerates and goods prices implied by the law of one price. The greater the transport costs, thegreater the range over which the exchange rate can move, given goods prices in differentcountries. Official trade restrictions such as tariffs have a similar effect, because a fee paidto the customs inspector affects the importer’s profit in the same way as an equivalentshipping fee. Either type of trade impediment weakens the basis of PPP by allowing thepurchasing power of a given currency to differ more widely from country to country. Forexample, in the presence of trade impediments, a dollar need not go as far in London as inChicago—and it doesn’t, as anyone who has ever been to London has found out.

As you will recall from Chapter 3, transport costs may be so large relative to the cost ofproducing some goods and services that they can never be traded internationally at a profit.Such goods and services are called nontradables. The time-honored classroom example ofa nontradable is the haircut. A Frenchman desiring an American haircut would have totransport himself to the United States or transport an American barber to France; in eithercase, the cost of transport is so large relative to the price of the service being purchasedthat (tourists excepted) French haircuts are consumed only by residents of France whileAmerican haircuts are consumed only by residents of the United States.

The existence in all countries of nontraded goods and services, whose prices are notlinked internationally, allows systematic deviations even from relative PPP. Because theprice of a nontradable is determined entirely by its domestic supply and demand curves,shifts in those curves may cause the domestic price of a broad commodity basket to changerelative to the foreign price of the same basket. Other things equal, a rise in the price of acountry’s nontradables will raise its price level relative to foreign price levels (measuring allcountries’ price levels in terms of a single currency). Looked at another way, the purchasingpower of any given currency will fall in countries where the prices of nontradables rise.

Each country’s price level includes a wide variety of nontradables, including (alongwith haircuts) routine medical treatment, dance instruction, and housing, among others.Broadly speaking, we can identify traded goods with manufactured products, raw materials,and agricultural products. Nontradables are primarily services and the outputs of the

$46.50$45

$1.55

$1.45$43.50 + $2 = $45.501$1.45 per pound2 * 1£302 = $43.50,

$1.45$2

$45

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construction industry. There are, naturally, exceptions to this rule. For example, financialservices provided by banks and brokerage houses often can be traded internationally. (Therise of the Internet, in particular, has expanded the range of tradable services.) In addition,trade restrictions, if sufficiently severe, can cause goods that would normally be traded tobecome nontraded. Thus, in most countries, some manufactures are nontraded.

We can get a very rough idea of the importance of nontradables in the American econ-omy by looking at the contribution of the service and construction industries to U.S. GNP.In 2009, the output of these industries accounted for about 51 percent of U.S. GNP.

Numbers like these are likely to understate the importance of nontradables in determin-ing national price levels. Even the prices of tradable products usually include costs of non-traded distribution and marketing services that bring goods from producers to consumers.(See “Some Meaty Evidence on the Law of One Price,” pages 428–430.) Nontradableshelp explain the wide departures from relative PPP illustrated by Figure 16-2.

Departures from Free CompetitionWhen trade barriers and imperfectly competitive market structures occur together, link-ages between national price levels are weakened further. An extreme case occurs when asingle firm sells a commodity for different prices in different markets.

When a firm sells the same product for different prices in different markets, we say thatit is practicing pricing to market. Pricing to market may reflect different demand condi-tions in different countries. For example, countries where demand is more price-inelasticwill tend to be charged higher markups over a monopolistic seller’s production cost.Empirical studies of firm-level export data have yielded strong evidence of pervasive pric-ing to market in manufacturing trade.10

In 2007, for example, a Ford Focus cost more in Germany than in Finland despitethose countries’ shared currency (the euro) and despite the European Union’s efforts overmany years to remove intra-European trade barriers (see Chapter 20). Such price differen-tials would be difficult to enforce if it were not costly for consumers to buy autos in Finlandand drive or ship them to Germany, or if consumers viewed cheaper cars available inGermany as good substitutes for the Focus. The combination of product differentiation andsegmented markets, however, leads to large violations of the law of one price and absolutePPP. Shifts in market structure and demand over time can invalidate relative PPP.

Differences in Consumption Patterns and Price Level MeasurementGovernment measures of the price level differ from country to country. One reason for thesedifferences is that people living in different countries spend their incomes in different ways.In general, people consume relatively higher proportions of their own country’s products—including its tradable products—than of foreign-made products. The average Norwegianconsumes more reindeer meat than her American counterpart, the average Japanese moresushi, and the average Indian more chutney. In constructing a reference commodity basket tomeasure purchasing power, it is therefore likely that the Norwegian government will put a

$5,000

1 0 For a detailed review of the evidence, see the paper by Goldberg and Knetter in this chapter’s FurtherReadings. Theoretical contributions on pricing to market include Rudiger Dornbusch, “Exchange Rates andPrices,” American Economic Review 77 (March 1987), pp. 93–106; Paul R. Krugman, “Pricing to Market Whenthe Exchange Rate Changes,” in Sven W. Arndt and J. David Richardson, eds., Real-Financial Linkages amongOpen Economies (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987); and Andrew Atkeson and Ariel Burstein, “Pricing-to-Market, Trade Costs, and International Relative Prices,” American Economic Review 98 (December 2008),pp. 1998–2031.

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In the summer of 1986 the Economist magazine con-ducted an extensive survey on the prices of Big Machamburgers at McDonald’s restaurants throughoutthe world. This apparently whimsical undertakingwas not the result of an outbreakof editorial giddiness. Rather,the magazine wanted to poke funat economists who confidentlydeclare exchange rates to be“overvalued” or “undervalued”on the basis of PPP compar-isons. Since Big Macs are “soldin 41 countries, with only themost trivial changes of recipe,”the magazine argued, a compari-son of hamburger prices shouldserve as a “medium-rare guide towhether currencies are trading atthe right exchange rates.”* Since1986, the Economist has periodi-cally updated its calculations.

One way of interpreting the Economist survey isas a test of the law of one price. Viewed in this way,the results of the initial test were quite startling.The dollar prices of Big Macs turned out to bewildly different in different countries. For example,the price of a Big Mac in New York was 50 percenthigher than in Australia and 64 percent higher thanin Hong Kong. In contrast, a Parisian Big Mac cost54 percent more than its New York counterpart, anda Tokyo Big Mac cost 50 percent more. Only inBritain and Ireland were the dollar prices of theburgers close to New York levels.

How can this dramatic violation of the law ofone price be explained? As the Economist noted,transport costs and government regulations arepart of the explanation. Product differentiation isprobably an important additional factor. Becauserelatively few close substitutes for Big Macs areavailable in some countries, product differentia-tion may give McDonald’s some power to tailorprices to the local market. Finally, remember thatthe price of a Big Mac must cover not only thecost of ground meat and buns, but also the wages

of serving people, rent, electricity, and so on. Theprices of these nonfood inputs can differ sharplyin different countries.

We have reproduced the results of theEconomist’s January 2009 sur-vey report. The table on the fol-lowing page shows variouscountries’ prices of Big Macs,measured in U.S. dollar terms.These range from a high of

in Norway (63.5 percentabove the U.S. price) to only$1.52 in Malaysia (less than halfthe U.S. price).

For each country, we can fig-ure out a “Big Mac PPP,” whichis the hypothetical level of theexchange rate that would equatethe dollar price of a locally soldBig Mac to its U.S. price.For example, in January 2009, a

Norwegian krone cost about in the foreignexchange market. The exchange rate that wouldhave equalized U.S. and Norwegian burger prices,however, was

or 11.3 kroner per U.S. dollar.It is often said that a currency is overvalued when

its exchange rate makes domestic goods expensiverelative to similar goods sold abroad and underval-ued in the opposite case. For the Norwegian krone,for example, the degree of overvaluation on the BigMac scale is the percentage by which the marketdollar price of a krone exceeds the hypothetical BigMac PPP rate, or

Of course, this is exactly the percentage by whichthe dollar price of a Norwegian burger exceeds thatof a U.S. burger.

100 * 10.1447 - 0.08852/0.0885 = 63.5 percent.

= 0.0885 dollars per krone,* 13.54 dollars per burger/5.79 dollars per burger2(0.1447 dollars per krone)

$0.1447

$3.54

$5.79

Some Meaty Evidence on the Law of One Price

*“On the Hamburger Standard,” Economist, September 6–12, 1986.

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The hamburger standard

Big Mac prices ImpliedPPP*

of the dollar

Actual exchange

rate: Jan 30th

Under (-)/over(+)Valuation against

the dollar,%in local

currencyin

dollars

United States† $3.54 3.54 - -Argentina Peso 11.50 3.30 3.25 3.49 -7Australia A$3.45 2.19 0.97 1.57 -38Brazil Real 8.02 3.45 2.27 2.32 -2Britain £2.29 3.30 1.55‡ 1.44‡

-7Canada C$4.16 3.36 1.18 1.24 -5Chile Peso 1.550 2.51 438 617 -29China Yuan 12.5 1.83 3.53 6.84 -48Czech Republic Koruna 65.94 3.02 18.6 21.9 -15Denmark DK 29.5 5.07 8.33 5.82 43

Pound 13.0 2.34 3.67 5.57 -34€3.42 4.38 1.04** 1.28** 24

HK$13.3 1.72 3.76 7.75 -52Forint 680 2.92 192 233 -18

Rupiah 19.800 1.74 5,593 11,380 -51Shekel 15.0 3.69 4.24 4.07 4

¥290 3.23 81.9 89.8 -9Ringgit 5.50 1.52 1.55 3.61 -57

Peso 33.0 2.30 9.32 14.4 -35NZ$4.90 2.48 1.38 1.97 -30

Kroner 40.0 5.79 11.3 6.61 63Sol 8.06 2.54 2.28 3.18 -28

Peso 98.0 2.07 27.7 47.4 -42Zloty 7.00 2.01 1.98 3.48 -43Ruble 62.0 1.73 17.5 35.7 -51Riyal 10.0 2.66 2.82 3.75 -25

S$3.95 2.61 1.12 1.51 -26Rand 16.95 1.66 4.79 10.2 -53Won 3,300 2.39 932 1,380 -32SKR 38.0 4.58 10.7 8.30 29CHF 6.50 5.60 1.84 1.16 58NT$75.0 2.23 21.2 33.6 -37

Baht 62.0 1.77 17.5 35.0 -50

Egypt

Euro areas§

Hong Kong SARHungaryIndonesiaIsraelJapanMalaysiaMexicoNew ZealandNorwayPeruPhilippinesPolandRussia SaudiArabiaSingaporeSouth AfricaSouth KoreaSwedenSwitzerlandTaiwan, ChinaThailandTurkey Lire 5.15 3.13 1.45 1.64 -12

*Purchasing power parity: local price divided by price in United States; †Average of New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and SanFrancisco; ‡Dollars per pound; §Weighted average of prices in euro area; **Dollars per euro

Sources: McDonald’s; the Economist, February 4, 2010. Exchange rates are local currency per dollar, except where noted.

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relatively high weight on reindeer, the Japanese government a high weight on sushi, and theIndian government a high weight on chutney.

Because relative PPP makes predictions about price changes rather than price levels, itis a sensible concept regardless of the baskets used to define price levels in the countriesbeing compared. If all U.S. prices increase by 10 percent and the dollar depreciates againstforeign currencies by 10 percent, relative PPP will be satisfied (assuming there are nochanges abroad) for any domestic and foreign choices of price level indexes.

Change in the relative prices of basket components, however, can cause relative PPP tofail tests that are based on official price indexes. For example, a rise in the relative price offish would raise the dollar price of a Japanese government reference commodity basketrelative to that of a U.S. government basket, simply because fish takes up a larger share ofthe Japanese basket. Relative price changes could lead to PPP violations like those shownin Figure 16-2 even if trade were free and costless.

PPP in the Short Run and in the Long RunThe factors we have examined so far in explaining the PPP theory’s poor empirical per-formance can cause national price levels to diverge even in the long run, after all priceshave had time to adjust to their market-clearing levels. As we discussed in Chapter 15,however, many prices in the economy are sticky and take time to adjust fully. Departuresfrom PPP may therefore be even greater in the short run than in the long run.

An abrupt depreciation of the dollar against foreign currencies, for example, makesfarm equipment in the United States cheaper relative to similar equipment producedabroad. As farmers throughout the world shift their demand for tractors and reapers to

Likewise, in January 2009 the dollar price of theChinese renminbi was 48 percent below the levelneeded to bring about burger price parity: Thatcountry’s currency was undervalued by 48 percent,according to the Big Mac measure. China’s cur-rency would have had to appreciate substantiallyagainst the dollar to bring the Chinese and U.S.prices of Big Macs into line. Norway’s currency,in contrast, would have had to depreciate sub-stantially.

In general, a “PPP exchange rate” is defined asone that equates the international prices of somebroad basket of goods and services, not just hamburg-ers. As we shall see, there are several reasons why wemight expect PPP not to hold exactly, even over longperiods. Thus, despite the widespread use of termslike overvaluation, policy makers have to be verycautious in judging whether any particular level ofthe exchange rate may signal the need for economicpolicy changes.

Policy makers would be wise, however, to takeinto account extremes of over- or undervaluation.Consider the case of Iceland. In January 2006,Iceland had a dollar Big Mac price of and awhopping 131 percent currency overvaluation onthe Big Mac scale. Then the tiny country wasswept up in a global financial crisis that we willdiscuss in detail in Chapters 19 and 21. Fromaround 68 kronur per dollar in 2006, the currencydepreciated all the way to around 120 per dollarby 2010. Unlike many other countries, Icelandimports the burgers’ ingredients, the kronurprices of which rose sharply because of the depre-ciation. The sudden cost increase made the fran-chise unprofitable without a big rise in prices tocustomers. But Iceland’s economy had sufferedseverely in the crisis. Rather than boosting prices,the franchise owner closed all three of Iceland’sMcDonald’s restaurants. As a result, the countryno longer appears in the Economist’s survey.†

$7.44

†See Omar R. Valdimarsson, “McDonald’s Closes in Iceland after Krona Collapse,” Bloomberg News, October 26, 2009.Available at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/ news?pid=newsarchive&sid=amu4.WTVaqjI

108

U.S. producers, the price of American farm equipment tends to rise to reduce the diver-gence from the law of one price caused by the dollar’s depreciation. It takes time forthis process of price increase to be complete, however, and prices for U.S. and foreignfarm equipment may differ considerably while markets adjust to the exchange ratechange.

You might suspect that short-run price stickiness and exchange rate volatility helpexplain a phenomenon we noted in discussing Figure 16-2—that violations of relative PPPhave been much more flagrant over periods when exchange rates have floated. Empiricalresearch supports this interpretation of the data. Figure 15-11, which we used to illustratethe stickiness of goods prices compared with exchange rates, is quite typical of floating-rate episodes. In a careful study covering many countries and historical episodes, econo-mist Michael Mussa of the Peterson Institute for International Economics compared theextent of short-run deviations from PPP under fixed and floating exchange rates. He foundthat floating exchange rates systematically lead to much larger and more frequent short-run deviations from relative PPP.11 The box on pages 436–437 provides an especiallyvivid illustration of how price stickiness can generate violations of the law of one priceeven for absolutely identical goods.

Recent research suggests that short-run deviations from PPP such as those due tovolatile exchange rates die away over time, with only half the effect of a temporary depar-ture from PPP remaining after four years.12 Even when these temporary PPP deviationsare removed from the data, however, it still appears that the cumulative effect of certainlong-run trends causes predictable departures from PPP for many countries. The CaseStudy entitled “Why Price Levels Are Lower in Poorer Countries” discusses one of themajor mechanisms behind such trends.

Case Study

Why Price Levels Are Lower in Poorer CountriesResearch on international price level differences has uncovered a striking empiricalregularity: When expressed in terms of a single currency, countries’ price levels arepositively related to the level of real income per capita. In other words, a dollar, whenconverted to local currency at the market exchange rate, generally goes much further ina poor country than in a rich one. Figure 16-3 illustrates the relation between pricelevels and income, with each dot representing a different country.

The previous section’s discussion of the role of nontraded goods in the determina-tion of national price levels suggests that international variations in the prices of non-tradables may contribute to price level discrepancies between rich and poor nations.


1 1 See Mussa, “Nominal Exchange Rate Regimes and the Behavior of Real Exchange Rates: Evidence andImplications,” in Karl Brunner and Allan H. Meltzer, eds., Real Business Cycles, Real Exchange Rates andActual Policies, Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 25 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1986),pp. 117–214. Charles Engel of the University of Wisconsin has found that under a floating exchange rate, inter-national price differences for the same good can be more variable than the relative price of different goods withina single country. See Engel, “Real Exchange Rates and Relative Prices: An Empirical Investigation,” Journal ofMonetary Economics 32 (August 1993), pp. 35–50.1 2 See, for example, Jeffrey A. Frankel and Andrew K. Rose, “A Panel Project on Purchasing Power Parity: MeanReversion Within and Between Countries,” Journal of International Economics 40 (February 1996), pp. 209–224.The statistical validity of these results is challenged by Paul G. J. O’Connell in “The Overvaluation of PurchasingPower Parity,” Journal of International Economics 44 (February 1998), pp. 1–19.

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0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

0 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000

Real per capita income(in 2000 U.S. dollars)

Price level relative to U.S. (U.S. = 100)

1 3 See Balassa, “The Purchasing Power Parity Doctrine: A Reappraisal,” Journal of Political Economy 72(December 1964), pp. 584–596; and Samuelson, “Theoretical Notes on Trade Problems,” Review of Economicsand Statistics 46 (May 1964), pp. 145–154. The Balassa-Samuelson theory was foreshadowed by some observa-tions of Ricardo. See Jacob Viner, Studies in the Theory of International Trade (New York: Harper & Brothers,1937), p. 315.

The available data indeed show that nontradables tend to be more expensive (relative totradables) in richer countries.

One reason for the lower relative price of nontradables in poor countries was sug-gested by Bela Balassa and Paul Samuelson.13 The Balassa-Samuelson theory assumesthat the labor forces of poor countries are less productive than those of rich countries inthe tradables sector but that international productivity differences in nontradables arenegligible. If the prices of traded goods are roughly equal in all countries, however,lower labor productivity in the tradables industries of poor countries implies lowerwages than abroad, lower production costs in nontradables, and therefore a lower priceof nontradables. Rich countries with higher labor productivity in the tradables sectorwill tend to have higher nontradables prices and higher price levels. Productivity sta-tistics give some empirical support to the Balassa-Samuelson differential productiv-ity postulate. And it is plausible that international productivity differences aresharper in traded than in nontraded goods. Whether a country is rich or poor, a barber

Figure 16-3

Price Levels and Real Incomes, 2007

Countries’ price levels tend to rise as their real incomes rise. Each dot represents a country.The straight line indicates a statistician’s best prediction of a country’s price level relative tothat of the United States based on knowing its real per capita income.

Source: Penn World Table, version 6.3.

110


can give only so many haircuts in a week, but there may be a significant scope forproductivity differences across countries in the manufacture of traded goods likepersonal computers.

An alternative theory that attempts to explain the lower price levels of poor coun-tries was put forth by Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University, and by Irving Kravisof the University of Pennsylvania and Robert Lipsey of the City University of NewYork.14 The Bhagwati-Kravis-Lipsey view relies on differences in endowments ofcapital and labor rather than productivity differences, but it also predicts that the rela-tive price of nontradables increases as real per capita income increases. Rich countrieshave high capital-labor ratios, while poor countries have more labor relative to capital.Because rich countries have higher capital-labor ratios, the marginal productivity oflabor is greater in rich countries than in poor countries, and the former will thereforehave a higher wage level than the latter.15 Nontradables, which consist largely ofservices, are naturally labor-intensive relative to tradables. Because labor is cheaper inpoor countries and is used intensively in producing nontradables, nontradables alsowill be cheaper there than in the rich, high-wage countries. Once again, this interna-tional difference in the relative price of nontradables suggests that overall price levels,when measured in a single currency, should be higher in rich countries than in poorcountries.16

Beyond Purchasing Power Parity: A General Model of Long-Run Exchange Rates

Why devote so much discussion to the purchasing power parity theory when it is fraughtwith exceptions and apparently contradicted by the data? We examined the implications ofPPP so closely because its basic idea of relating long-run exchange rates to long-runnational price levels is a very useful starting point. The monetary approach presentedabove, which assumed PPP, is too simple to give accurate predictions about the real world,but we can generalize it by taking account of some of the reasons why PPP predicts badlyin practice. In this section we do just that.

The long-run analysis below continues to ignore short-run complications caused bysticky prices. An understanding of how exchange rates behave in the long run is, as men-tioned earlier, a prerequisite for the more complicated short-run analysis that we undertakein the next chapter.

1 4 See Kravis and Lipsey, Toward an Explanation of National Price Levels, Princeton Studies in Inter-national Finance 52 (International Finance Section, Department of Economics, Princeton University,November 1983); and Bhagwati, “Why Are Services Cheaper in the Poor Countries?” Economic Journal 94(June 1984), pp. 279–286.1 5 This argument assumes that factor endowment differences between rich and poor countries are sufficiently greatthat factor-price equalization cannot hold.16You may wonder about the group of countries in Figure 16-3 that have higher per capita incomes than the U.S.but significantly lower price levels. These are countries such as Saudi Arabia, where wealth is the result ofresource endowments rather than high manufacturing productivity or abundant capital. Excluding these countriesfrom the sample would make the regression line in Figure 16-3 steeper, at the same time improving its fit.

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1 7 A similar presumption was made in our discussion of the transfer problem in Chapter 6. Nontradables are oneimportant factor behind the relative preference for home products.

The Real Exchange RateAs the first step in extending the PPP theory, we define the concept of a real exchangerate. The real exchange rate between two countries’ currencies is a broad summary meas-ure of the prices of one country’s goods and services relative to the other country’s. It isnatural to introduce the real exchange rate concept at this point because the major predic-tion of PPP is that real exchange rates never change, at least not permanently. To extendour model so that it describes the world more accurately, we need to examine systemati-cally the forces that can cause dramatic and permanent changes in real exchange rates.

As we will see, real exchange rates are important not only for quantifying deviationsfrom PPP but also for analyzing macroeconomic demand and supply conditions in openeconomies. When we wish to differentiate a real exchange rate—which is the relativeprice of two output baskets—from a relative price of two currencies, we will refer to thelatter as a nominal exchange rate. But when there is no risk of confusion, we willcontinue to use the shorter term, exchange rate, to refer to nominal exchange rates.

Real exchange rates are defined in terms of nominal exchange rates and price levels.Before we can give a more precise definition of real exchange rates, however, we need toclarify the price level measure we will be using. Let , as usual, be the price level in theUnited States, and the price level in Europe. Since we will not be assuming absolutePPP (as we did in our discussion of the monetary approach), we no longer assume that theprice level can be measured by the same basket of commodities in the United States as inEurope. Because we will soon want to link our analysis to monetary factors, we requireinstead that each country’s price index give a good representation of the purchases thatmotivate its residents to demand its money supply.

No measure of the price level does this perfectly, but we must settle on some definitionbefore we can formally define the real exchange rate. To be concrete, you can think of as the dollar price of an unchanging basket containing the typical weekly purchases ofU.S. households and firms; , similarly, is based on an unchanging basket reflecting thetypical weekly purchases of European households and firms. The point to remember is thatthe U.S. price level will place a relatively heavy weight on commodities produced and con-sumed in America, and the European price level a relatively heavy weight on commoditiesproduced and consumed in Europe.17

Having described the reference commodity baskets used to measure price levels, wecan now formally define the real dollar/euro exchange rate, denoted as the dollarprice of the European basket relative to that of the American basket. We can express thereal exchange rate as the dollar value of Europe’s price level divided by the U.S. pricelevel or, in symbols, as

(16-6)

A numerical example will clarify the concept of the real exchange rate. Imagine that theEuropean reference commodity basket costs 100 (so that basket),that the U.S. basket costs (so that ), and that the nominalexchange rate is The real dollar/euro exchange rate would then be

1 U.S. basket per European basket.=

= 1$120 per European basket2/1$120 per U.S. basket2

q$/€ =

1$1.20 per euro2 * 1€100 per European basket2

1$120 per U.S. basket2

E$/€ = $1.20 per euro.PUS = $120 per U.S. basket$120

PE = €100 per European€

q$/€ = (E$/€ * PE)/PUS.

q$/:,

PE

PUS

PE

PUS

112


A rise in the real dollar/euro exchange rate (which we call a real depreciation ofthe dollar against the euro) can be thought of in several equivalent ways. Most obviously,(16-6) shows this change to be a fall in the purchasing power of a dollar within Europe’sborders relative to its purchasing power within the United States. This change in relativepurchasing power occurs because the dollar prices of European goods riserelative to those of U.S. goods .

In terms of our numerical example, a 10 percent nominal dollar depreciation, tocauses to rise to 1.1 U.S. baskets per European basket, a real

dollar depreciation of 10 percent against the euro. (The same change in could resultfrom a 10 percent rise in or a 10 percent fall in .) The real depreciation means thatthe dollar’s purchasing power over European goods and services falls by 10 percent rela-tive to its purchasing power over U.S. goods and services.

Alternatively, even though many of the items entering national price levels are nontraded,it is useful to think of the real exchange rate as the relative price of European products ingeneral in terms of American products, that is, the price at which hypothetical trades ofAmerican for European commodity baskets would occur if trades at domestic prices werepossible. The dollar is considered to depreciate in real terms against the euro when risesbecause the hypothetical purchasing power of America’s products in general over Europe’sdeclines. America’s goods and services thus become cheaper relative to Europe’s.

A real appreciation of the dollar against the euro is a fall in . This fall indicates adecrease in the relative price of products purchased in Europe, or a rise in the dollar’sEuropean purchasing power compared with that in the United States.18

Our convention for describing real depreciations and appreciations of the dollar againstthe euro is the same one we use for nominal exchange rates (that is, up is a dollardepreciation, down is an appreciation). Equation (16-6) shows that at unchanged outputprices, nominal depreciation (appreciation) implies real depreciation (appreciation). Our dis-cussion of real exchange rate changes thus includes, as a special case, an observation wemade in Chapter 14: With the domestic money prices of goods held constant, a nominaldollar depreciation makes U.S. goods cheaper compared with foreign goods, while a nomi-nal dollar appreciation makes them more expensive.

Equation (16-6) makes it easy to see why the real exchange rate can never change whenrelative PPP holds. Under relative PPP, a 10 percent rise in , for instance, would alwaysbe exactly offset by a 10 percent fall in the price level ratio , leaving unchanged.

Demand, Supply, and the Long-Run Real Exchange RateIt should come as no surprise that in a world where PPP does not hold, the long-run valuesof real exchange rates, just like other relative prices that clear markets, depend on demandand supply conditions. Since a real exchange rate tracks changes in the relative price oftwo countries’ expenditure baskets, however, conditions in both countries matter. Changesin countries’ output markets can be complex, and we do not want to digress into anexhaustive (and exhausting) catalogue of the possibilities. We focus instead on two spe-cific cases that are both easy to grasp and important in practice for explaining why thelong-run values of real exchange rates can change.

1. A change in world relative demand for American products. Imagine that total worldspending on American goods and services rises relative to total world spending on

q$/€PE/PUS

E$/€

E$/€

E$/€

q$/€

q$/€

q$/€

PUSPE

q$/€

q$/€E$/€ = $1.32 per euro,

(PUS)(E$/€ * PE)

q$/€,

1 8 This is true because implying that a real depreciation of the dollar against the euro is the sameas a real appreciation of the euro against the dollar (that is, a rise in the purchasing power of the euro within theUnited States relative to its purchasing power within Europe, or a fall in the relative price of American productsin terms of European products).

E€/$ = 1/E$/€,

113


Sticky nominal prices and wages are central to macro-economic theories, but just why might it be difficultfor money prices to change from day to day as marketconditions change? One reason is based on the idea of“menu costs.” Menu costs could arise from severalfactors, such as the actual costs of printing new pricelists and catalogs. In addition, firms may perceive adifferent type of menu cost due to their customers’imperfect information about competitors’ prices.When a firm raises its price, some customers will shoparound elsewhere and find it convenient to remainwith a competing seller even if all sellers have raisedtheir prices. In the presence of these various types ofmenu costs, sellers will often hold prices constantafter a change in market conditions until they are cer-tain the change is permanent enough to make incur-ring the costs of price changes worthwhile.*

If there were truly no barriers between two mar-kets with goods priced in different currencies, stickyprices would be unable to survive in the face of anexchange rate change. All buyers would simply

flock to the market where a good had becomecheapest. But when some trade impediments exist,deviations from the law of one price do not induceunlimited arbitrage, so it is feasible for sellers tohold prices constant despite exchange rate changes.In the real world, trade barriers appear to be signifi-cant, widespread, and often subtle in nature.

Apparently, arbitrage between two markets maybe limited even when the physical distance betweenthem is zero, as a surprising study of pricing behav-ior in Scandinavian duty-free outlets shows.Swedish economists Marcus Asplund and RichardFriberg studied pricing behavior in the duty-freestores of two Scandinavian ferry lines whose cata-logs quote the prices of each good in several curren-cies for the convenience of customers from differentcountries.† Since it is costly to print the catalogs,they are reissued with revised prices only from timeto time. In the interim, however, fluctuations inexchange rates induce multiple, changing prices forthe same good. For example, on the Birka Line of

Sticky Prices and the Law of One Price: Evidence from ScandinavianDuty-Free Shops

*It is when economic conditions are very volatile that prices seem to become most flexible. For example, restaurant menuswill typically price their catch of the day at “market” so that the price charged (and the fish offered) can reflect the highvariability in fishing outcomes.†“The Law of One Price in Scandinavian Duty-Free Stores,” American Economic Review 91 (September 2001), pp. 1072–1083.

European goods and services. Such a change could arise from several sources—for example,a shift in private U.S. demand away from European goods and toward American goods; asimilar shift in private foreign demand toward American goods; or an increase in U.S.government demand falling primarily on U.S. output. Any increase in relative worlddemand for U.S. products causes an excess demand for them at the previous realexchange rate. To restore equilibrium, the relative price of American output in terms ofEuropean output will therefore have to rise: The relative prices of U.S. nontradables willrise, and the prices of tradables produced in the United States, and consumed intensivelythere, will rise relative to the prices of tradables made in Europe. These changes all workto reduce , the relative price of Europe’s reference expenditure basket in terms of theUnited States’. We conclude that an increase in world relative demand for U.S. outputcauses a long-run real appreciation of the dollar against the euro (a fall in ).Similarly, a decrease in world relative demand for U.S. output causes a long-run realdepreciation of the dollar against the euro (a rise in ).

2. A change in relative output supply. Suppose that the productive efficiency of U.S.labor and capital rises. Since Americans spend part of their increased income on foreigngoods, the supplies of all types of U.S. goods and services increase relative to thedemand for them, the result being an excess relative supply of American output at the

q$/€

q$/€

q$/€

114

1 9 Our discussion of the Balassa-Samuelson effect in the Case Study on pages 431–433 would lead you to expectthat a productivity increase concentrated in the U.S. tradables sector might cause the dollar to appreciate, ratherthan depreciate, in real terms against the euro. In the last paragraph, however, we have in mind a balanced pro-ductivity increase that benefits the traded and nontraded sectors in equal proportion, thus resulting in a real dollardepreciation by causing a drop in the prices of nontraded goods and in those of traded goods that are moreimportant in America’s consumer price index than in Europe’s.


previous real exchange rate. A fall in the relative price of American products—both non-tradables and tradables—shifts demand toward them and eliminates the excess supply.This price change is a real depreciation of the dollar against the euro, that is, an increasein . A relative expansion of U.S. output causes a long-run real depreciation of thedollar against the euro ( rises). A relative expansion of European output causes along-run real appreciation of the dollar against the euro ( falls).19

A useful diagram summarizes our discussion of demand, supply, and the long-run realexchange rate. In Figure 16-4, the supply of U.S. output relative to European output,

, is plotted along the horizontal axis while the real dollar/euro exchange rate, , isplotted along the vertical axis.

The equilibrium real exchange rate is determined by the intersection of two schedules.The upward-sloping schedule RD shows that the relative demand for U.S. products in gen-eral, relative to the demand for European products, rises as rises, that is, as Americanproducts become relatively cheaper. This “demand” curve for U.S. relative to Europeangoods has a positive slope because we are measuring a fall in the relative price of U.S.goods by a move upward along the vertical axis. What about relative supply? In the longrun, relative national output levels are determined by factor supplies and productivity, with

q$/€

q$/€YUS/YE

q$/€

q$/€

q$/€

ferries between Sweden and Finland, prices werelisted in both Finnish markka and Swedish kronorbetween 1975 and 1998, implying that a relativedepreciation of the markka would make it cheaperto buy cigarettes or vodka by paying markka ratherthan kronor.

Despite such price discrepancies, Birka Linewas always able to do business in both currencies—passengers did not rush to buy at the lowest price.Swedish passengers, who held relatively largequantities of their own national currency, tended tobuy at the kronor prices, whereas Finnish cus-tomers tended to buy at the markka prices.

Often, Birka Line would take advantage ofpublishing a new catalog to reduce deviationsfrom the law of one price. The average deviationfrom the law of one price in the month just beforesuch a price adjustment was 7.21 percent, but only

2.22 percent in the month of the price adjustment.One big impediment to taking advantage of thearbitrage opportunities was the cost of changingcurrencies at the onboard foreign exchangebooth—roughly 7.5 percent. That transaction cost,given different passengers’ currency preferencesat the time of embarkation, acted as an effectivetrade barrier.‡

Surprisingly, Birka Line did not completely elim-inate law of one price deviations when it changedcatalog prices. Instead, Birka Line practiced a kindof pricing to market on its ferries. Usually, ex-porters who price to market discriminate amongdifferent consumers based on their different loca-tions, but Birka was able to discriminate based ondifferent nationality and currency preferences, evenwith all potential consumers located on the sameferry boat.

‡Customers could pay in the currency of their choice not only with cash, but also with credit cards, which involve lower foreignexchange conversion fees but convert at an exchange rate prevailing a few days after the purchase of the goods. Asplund andFriberg suggest that for such small purchases, uncertainty and the costs of calculating relative prices (in addition to the credit-card exchange fees) might have been a sufficient deterrent to transacting in a relatively unfamiliar currency.

115


Real exchangerate, q$/€

q$/€

Ratio of U.S. toEuropean realoutput (YUS/YE)

1

(YUS/YE)1

RDRS

1

Figure 16-4

Determination of theLong-Run Real ExchangeRate

The long-run equilibriumreal exchange rate equatesworld relative demand tothe full-employment levelof relative supply.

2 0 Notice that these RD and RS schedules differ from the ones used in Chapter 6. The earlier ones referred to rel-ative world demand for and supply of two products that could be produced in either of two countries. In contrast,the RD and RS curves in this chapter refer to the relative world demand for and supply of one country’s overalloutput (its GDP) relative to another’s.

little, if any, effect on the real exchange rate. The relative supply curve, RS, therefore isvertical at the long-run (that is, full-employment) relative output ratio, . The equi-librium long-run real exchange rate is the one that sets relative demand equal to long-runrelative supply (point 1).20

The diagram easily illustrates how changes in world markets affect the real exchangerate. Suppose world gasoline prices fall, making American sport-utility vehicles moredesirable for people everywhere. This change would be a rise in world relative demand forAmerican goods and would shift RD to the right, causing to fall (a real dollar appreci-ation against the euro). Suppose the United States improves its health-care system, reduc-ing illness throughout the American work force. If workers are able to produce moregoods and services in an hour as a result, the rise in U.S. productivity shifts RS to the right,causing to rise (a real dollar depreciation against the euro).

Nominal and Real Exchange Rates in Long-Run EquilibriumWe now pull together what we have learned in this chapter and the last one to show howlong-run nominal exchange rates are determined. One central conclusion is that changes innational money supplies and demands give rise to the proportional long-run movementsin nominal exchange rates and international price level ratios predicted by the relativepurchasing power parity theory. Demand and supply shifts in national output markets,however, cause nominal exchange rate movements that do not conform to PPP.

q$/€

q$/€

(YUS/YE)1

116


Recall our definition of the real dollar/euro exchange rate as

(See equation (16-6).) If we now solve this equation for the nominal exchange rate, we getan equation that gives us the nominal dollar/euro exchange rate as the real dollar/euroexchange rate times the U.S.–Europe price level ratio:

(16-7)

Formally speaking, the only difference between (16-7) and equation (16-1), on which webased our exposition of the monetary approach to the exchange rate, is that (16-7)accounts for possible deviations from PPP by adding the real exchange rate as an addi-tional determinant of the nominal exchange rate. The equation implies that for a given realdollar/euro exchange rate, changes in money demand or supply in Europe or the UnitedStates affect the long-run nominal dollar/euro exchange rate as in the monetary approach.Changes in the long-run real exchange rate, however, also affect the long-run nominalexchange rate. The long-run theory of exchange rate determination implied by equation(16-7) thus includes the valid elements of the monetary approach, but in addition it cor-rects the monetary approach by allowing for nonmonetary factors that can cause sustaineddeviations from purchasing power parity.

Assuming that all variables start out at their long-run levels, we can now understand themost important determinants of long-run swings in nominal exchange rates:

1. A shift in relative money supply levels. Suppose the Fed wishes to stimulate theeconomy and therefore carries out an increase in the level of the U.S. money supply.As you will remember from Chapter 15, a permanent, one-time increase in a country’smoney supply has no effect on the long-run levels of output, the interest rate, or anyrelative price (including the real exchange rate). Thus, (16-3) implies once again that

rises in proportion to , while (16-7) shows that the U.S. price level is the solevariable changing in the long run along with the nominal exchange rate . Becausethe real exchange rate does not change, the nominal exchange rate change is con-sistent with relative PPP: The only long-run effect of the U.S. money supply increaseis to raise all dollar prices, including the dollar price of the euro, in proportion to theincrease in the money supply. It should be no surprise that this result is the same as theone we found using the monetary approach, since that approach is designed to accountfor the long-run effects of monetary changes.

2. A shift in relative money supply growth rates. Suppose the Fed concludes, to itsdismay, that over the next few years the U.S. price level will fall. (A falling price level iscalled deflation.) A permanent increase in the growth rate of the U.S. money supplyraises the long-run U.S. inflation rate and, through the Fisher effect, raises the dollarinterest rate relative to the euro interest rate. Because relative U.S. real money demandtherefore declines, equation (16-3) implies that rises (as shown in Figure 16-1).Because the change bringing this outcome about is purely monetary, however, it is neu-tral in its long-run effects; specifically, it does not alter the long-run real dollar/euroexchange rate. According to (16-7), then, rises in proportion to the increase in (a depreciation of the dollar against the euro). Once again, a purely monetary changebrings about a long-run nominal exchange rate shift in line with relative PPP, just as themonetary approach predicted.

3. A change in relative output demand. This type of change is not covered by themonetary approach, so now the more general perspective we’ve developed, in which thereal exchange rate can change, is essential. Since a change in relative output demand

PUSE$/€

PUS

q$/€

E$/€

MUSPUS

E$/€ = q$/€ * (PUS/PE).

q$/€ = (E$/€ * PE)/PUS.

117


does not affect long-run national price levels—these depend solely on the factors appear-ing in equations (16-3) and (16-4)—the long-run nominal exchange rate in (16-7) willchange only insofar as the real exchange rate changes. Consider an increase in worldrelative demand for U.S. products. Earlier in this section, we saw that a rise in demandfor U.S. products causes a long-run real appreciation of the dollar against the euro (a fallin ); this change is simply a rise in the relative price of U.S. output. Given that long-run national price levels are unchanged, however, (16-7) tells us that a long-run nominalappreciation of the dollar against the euro (a fall in ) must also occur. This predictionhighlights the important fact that even though exchange rates are nominal prices, theyrespond to nonmonetary as well as monetary events, even over long horizons.

4. A change in relative output supply. As we saw earlier in this section, an increasein relative U.S. output supply causes the dollar to depreciate in real terms againstthe euro, lowering the relative price of U.S. output. This rise in is not, however,the only change in equation (16-7) implied by a relative rise in U.S. output. In addi-tion, the U.S. output increase raises the transaction demand for real U.S. money bal-ances, raising aggregate U.S. real money demand and, by (16-3), pushing the long-runU.S. price level down. Referring back to equation (16-7), you will see that since rises while falls, the output and money market effects of a change in output supplywork in opposite directions, thus making the net effect on is ambiguous. Ouranalysis of an output-supply change illustrates that even when a disturbance originatesin a single market (in this case, the output market), its influence on exchange rates maydepend on repercussion effects that are channeled through other markets.

We conclude that when all disturbances are monetary in nature, exchange rates obeyrelative PPP in the long run. In the long run, a monetary disturbance affects only the gen-eral purchasing power of a currency, and this change in purchasing power changesequally the currency’s value in terms of domestic and foreign goods. When disturbancesoccur in output markets, the exchange rate is unlikely to obey relative PPP, even in thelong run. Table 16-1 summarizes these conclusions regarding the effects of monetary andoutput market changes on long-run nominal exchange rates.

In the chapters that follow, we will appeal to this section’s general long-run exchangerate model even when we are discussing short-run macroeconomic events. Long-runfactors are important in the short run because of the central role that expectations about thefuture play in the day-to-day determination of exchange rates. That is why news about thecurrent account, for example, can have a big impact on the exchange rate. The long-runexchange rate model of this section will provide the anchor for market expectations, that is,the framework market participants use to forecast future exchange rates on the basis ofinformation at hand today.

International Interest Rate Differences and the Real Exchange Rate

Earlier in this chapter we saw that relative PPP, when combined with interest parity,implies that international interest rate differences equal differences in countries’expected inflation rates. Because relative PPP does not hold true in general, however, therelation between international interest rate differences and national inflation rates islikely to be more complex in practice than that simple formula suggests. Despite thiscomplexity, economic policy makers who hope to influence exchange rates, as well asprivate individuals who wish to forecast them, cannot succeed without understandingthe factors that cause countries’ interest rates to differ.

E$/€

PUS

q$/€

q$/€

E$/€

q$/€

118


In this section we therefore extend our earlier discussion of the Fisher effect to includereal exchange rate movements. We do this by showing that in general, interest rate differ-ences between countries depend not only on differences in expected inflation, as themonetary approach asserts, but also on expected changes in the real exchange rate.

We begin by recalling that the change in , the real dollar/euro exchange rate, is thedeviation from relative PPP; that is, the change in is the percentage change in thenominal dollar/euro exchange rate less the international difference in inflation ratesbetween the United States and Europe. We thus arrive at the corresponding relationshipbetween the expected change in the real exchange rate, the expected change in the nominalrate, and expected inflation:

(16-8)

where (as per our usual notation) is the real exchange rate expected for a year fromtoday.

Now we return to the interest parity condition between dollar and euro deposits,

An easy rearrangement of (16-8) shows that the expected rate of change in the nominaldollar/euro exchange rate is just the expected rate of change in the real dollar/euroexchange rate plus the U.S.–Europe expected inflation difference. Combining (16-8) withthe above interest parity condition, we thus are led to the following breakdown of theinternational interest rate gap:

(16-9)

Notice that when the market expects relative PPP to prevail, and the firstterm on the right side of this equation drops out. In this special case, (16-9) reduces to thesimpler (16-5), which we derived by assuming relative PPP.

q $/€e

= q$/€

R$ - R€ = [(q $/€e

- q$/€)/q$/€] + (pUSe

- pEe ).

R$ - R€ = (E $/€e

- E$/€)/E$/€.

q $/€e

(qe$/€ - q$/€)/q$/€ = [(E $/€

e- E$/€)/E$/€] - (pUS

e- pE

e ),

q$/€

q$/€

TABLE 16-1 Effects of Money Market and Output Market Changes on the Long-Run Nominal Dollar/Euro Exchange Rate, E$/€

ChangeEffect on the Long-Run NominalDollar/Euro Exchange Rate, E$/€

Money market

1. Increase in U.S. money supply level Proportional increase (nominal depreciation of $)

2. Increase in European money supply level Proportional decrease (nominal depreciation of euro)

3. Increase in U.S. money supply growth rate Increase (nominal depreciation of $)4. Increase in European money supply growth rate Decrease (nominal depreciation of

euro)

Output market

1. Increase in demand for U.S. output Decrease (nominal appreciation of $)2. Increase in demand for European output Increase (nominal appreciation

of euro)3. Output supply increase in the

United StatesAmbiguous

4. Output supply increase in Europe Ambiguous

119


In general, however, the dollar/euro interest difference is the sum of two compo-nents: (1) the expected rate of real dollar depreciation against the euro and (2) theexpected inflation difference between the United States and Europe. For example, ifU.S. inflation will be 5 percent per year forever and European inflation will be zeroforever, the long-run interest difference between dollar and euro deposits need not bethe 5 percent that PPP (when combined with interest parity) would suggest. If, in addi-tion, everyone knows that output demand and supply trends will make the dollardecline against the euro in real terms at a rate of 1 percent per year, the internationalinterest spread will actually be 6 percent.

Real Interest ParityEconomics makes an important distinction between nominal interest rates, which are ratesof return measured in monetary terms, and real interest rates, which are rates of return meas-ured in real terms, that is, in terms of a country’s output. Because real rates of return often areuncertain, we usually will refer to expected real interest rates. The interest rates we discussedin connection with the interest parity condition and the determinants of money demand werenominal rates, for example, the dollar return on dollar deposits. But for many other purposes,economists need to analyze behavior in terms of real rates of return. No one who is thinkingof investing money, for example, could make a decision knowing only that the nominal inter-est rate is 15 percent. The investment would be quite attractive at zero inflation, but disas-trously unattractive if inflation were bounding along at 100 percent per year!21

We conclude this chapter by showing that when the nominal interest parity conditionequates nominal interest rate differences between currencies to expected changes innominal exchange rates, a real interest parity condition equates expected real interest ratedifferences to expected changes in real exchange rates. Only when relative PPP isexpected to hold (meaning no real exchange rate change is anticipated) are expected realinterest rates in all countries identical.

The expected real interest rate, denoted , is defined as the nominal interest rate, , less the expected inflation rate,

In other words, the expected real interest rate in a country is just the real rate of return adomestic resident expects to earn on a loan of his or her currency. The definition of theexpected real interest rate clarifies the generality of the forces behind the Fisher effect:Any increase in the expected inflation rate that does not alter the expected real interest ratemust be reflected, one for one, in the nominal interest rate.

A useful consequence of the preceding definition is a formula for the difference inexpected real interest rates between two currency areas such as the United States and Europe:

If we rearrange equation (16-9) and combine it with the equation above, we get thedesired real interest parity condition:

(16-10)r USe

- r Ee

= (q $/€e

- q$/€)/q$/€.

r USe

- r Ee

= (R$ - pUSe ) - (R€ - pE

e ).

r e= R - pe.

pe:Rr e

21We could get away with examining nominal return differences in the foreign exchange market because (asChapter 14 showed) nominal return differences equal real return differences for any given investor. In the contextof the demand for money, the nominal interest rate is the real rate of return you sacrifice by holding interest-barrencurrency.

120

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