Essays On International Parity Conditions

This book presents an extensive survey of the theory and empirics of international parity conditions which are critical to our understanding of the linkages between world markets and the movement of interest and exchange rates across countries. The book falls into three parts dealing with the theory, methods of econometric testing and existing empirical evidence. Although it is intended to provide a consensus view on the subject, the authors also make some controversial propositions, particularly on the purchasing power parity conditions.

This thesis consists of three essays on international finance. The first essay is "Exchange rates and Fundamentals". A new open interest rate parity condition that takes account of economic fundamentals is developed from stochastic discount factors (SDFs) of two countries. Through this parity condition, business cycles or fundamentals are linked to exchange rates. Key empirical findings from this parity condition are as follows. First, this model beats the random walk hypothesis: economic fundamentals explain exchange rate movements for high interest rate currencies. Exchange rates of low interest rate currencies act like a random walk because they are less correlated with fundamentals owing to their low risk. For example, U.S. business cycles explain the direction of changes in exchange rates against the dollar. The same thing is true for Japan. Second, this model resolves the forward premium puzzle: the forward premium puzzle is not a general characteristic as regarded in previous studies. It happens when the risk awareness of investors is low, during economic expansions and for low risk currencies. The second essay is "Carry Trade and Global Financial Instability". Carry trade, an opportunistic investment strategy that takes advantage of interest rate differential across countries, is identified the cause of the large-scale depreciations of peripheral currencies in the later half of 2008. A simultaneous equations model, which is derived from a conceptual partial equilibrium model for a local foreign exchange market, is estimated from a cross-sectional sample. The results suggest that the larger appreciation of the yen than the dollar was brought about by a lack of the local supply of the yen rather than a more severe crunch of yen credits. The third essay is "The Economic Origin of Letters of Credit". This essay discusses the economic origin of letters of credit, an instrument widely used in international trade. A game theoretical analysis shows that letters of credit improve efficiency in trade settlements, increasing returns in trade. A few notable facts on letters of credit are discussed. First, the new institution is adopted by merchant banks to maximize their profits and in the process, an improvement in efficiency of international transactions is obtained. Second, the organization established by the legacy institution, bills of exchange, played a critical role in adopting the new institution. Third, the legal enforcement is not essential in this economic institution. Finally, two drivers are identified that improve efficiency of transactions: concentration and projection.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,3, University of Hull, language: English, abstract: The Swedish economist Gustav Cassel developed his theory of Purchasing Power Parity (henceforth PPP) more than 80 years. Ago, and today it is still an essential part of the framework for forecasting exchange rates, which includes parity conditions in international finance. International parity conditions imply purchasing power parity, the Fisher effect, the interest rate parity theory and the expectations theory. “They are the set of equilibrium relationships which should hold between product prices, interest rates, and spot and forward exchange rates assuming a freely floating exchange system.” (Demirag and Goddard, 1994, 70) Unfortunately, these theories do not always work out in reality, especially in times of financial crisis. However, they give us a central understanding of how and why multinational business is related in the world. Sometimes, “the mistake is not always in the theory itself, but in the way it is interpreted or applied in practice” (Eitemann et.al., 2004, 133). This essay will take a detailed look at PPP, its theoretical perspective, and the empirical evidence for it. [...]

This paper contains essays on sterilized intervention, on covered interest rate parity, and on chartist analysis in financial markets. Each essay contains a definition, brief survey of the empirical evidence and overall assessment of each topic.

This thesis consists of three essays on international finance. The first essay is "Exchange rates and Fundamentals". A new open interest rate parity condition that takes account of economic fundamentals is developed from stochastic discount factors (SDFs) of two countries. Through this parity condition, business cycles or fundamentals are linked to exchange rates. Key empirical findings from this parity condition are as follows. First, this model beats the random walk hypothesis: economic fundamentals explain exchange rate movements for high interest rate currencies. Exchange rates of low interest rate currencies act like a random walk because they are less correlated with fundamentals owing to their low risk. For example, U.S. business cycles explain the direction of changes in exchange rates against the dollar. The same thing is true for Japan. Second, this model resolves the forward premium puzzle: the forward premium puzzle is not a general characteristic as regarded in previous studies. It happens when the risk awareness of investors is low, during economic expansions and for low risk currencies. The second essay is "Carry Trade and Global Financial Instability". Carry trade, an opportunistic investment strategy that takes advantage of interest rate differential across countries, is identified the cause of the large-scale depreciations of peripheral currencies in the later half of 2008. A simultaneous equations model, which is derived from a conceptual partial equilibrium model for a local foreign exchange market, is estimated from a cross-sectional sample. The results suggest that the larger appreciation of the yen than the dollar was brought about by a lack of the local supply of the yen rather than a more severe crunch of yen credits. The third essay is "The Economic Origin of Letters of Credit". This essay discusses the economic origin of letters of credit, an instrument widely used in international trade. A game theoretical analysis shows that letters of credit improve efficiency in trade settlements, increasing returns in trade. A few notable facts on letters of credit are discussed. First, the new institution is adopted by merchant banks to maximize their profits and in the process, an improvement in efficiency of international transactions is obtained. Second, the organization established by the legacy institution, bills of exchange, played a critical role in adopting the new institution. Third, the legal enforcement is not essential in this economic institution. Finally, two drivers are identified that improve efficiency of transactions: concentration and projection.

Written form 1957 through 1978 by one of the foremost authorities in the field of international economics, this collection of Peter Kenen's previously published essays deals with issues in the pure theory of international trade, international monetary theory, and international monetary reform. The essays in Part I, "Trade, Tariffs, and Welfare," concern the roles of tangible and human capital in the determination of trade patterns, the joint determination of demand conditions and trade patterns, the gains from international trade, and the effects of migration on economic welfare. Part II, "International Monetary Theory and Policy," contains essays on the theory of gold-exchange standard, the determination of forward exchange rates, the demand for international reserves, economic integration and the delineation of currency areas, and the process of balance of payments adjustment under pegged and floating exchange rates. The essays in Part III, "Monetary Reform and the Dollar," are arranged in chonological order, from 1963 through 1977, and focus on the problems and progress of international monetary reform and on the functioning of the present international monetary system. Peter B. Kenen is Walker Professor of Economics and International Finance at Princeton University. The Princeton Sereies of Collected Essays provides facsimile reprints, in paperback and in cloth, of important articles by leading scholars. Originally published in 1981. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The aim of the book is to make the author's scholarly research in the areas of international finance and monetary economics easily accessible to other researchers and students. The articles included in the book span a wide range. The topics include the behavior of the three key relations in international finance, purchasing power parity, interest rate parity and real interest rate equality, the relation between money and other key economic variables, financial globalization and the transmission of economic disturbances internationally.

This thesis consists of three essays in international finance, with a focus on the foreign exchange market. The first chapter provides an empirical investigation of the predictive ability of average variance and average correlation on the return to carry trades. Using quantile regressions, we find that higher average variance is significantly related to large future carry trade losses, whereas lower average correlation is significantly related to large gains. This is consistent with the carry trade unwinding in times of high volatility and the good performance of the carry trade when asset correlations are low. Finally, a new version of the carry trade that conditions on average variance and average correlation generates considerable performance gains net of transaction costs. In the second chapter I study the evolution over time of the response of exchange rates to fundamental shocks. Using Bayesian time-varying-parameters VARs with stochastic volatility, I provide empirical evidence that the transmission of these shocks has changed over time. Specifically, currency excess returns tend to initially underreact to interest rate differential shocks for the whole sample considered, undershooting the level implied by uncovered interest rate parity and long-run purchasing power parity. In contrast, at longer horizons the previously documented evidence of overshooting tends to disappear in recent years in the case of the euro, the British pound and the Canadian dollar. Instead, overreaction at long horizons is a persistent feature of the excess returns on the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc throughout the whole sample. In the third chapter we provide a comprehensive review of models that are used by policymakers and international investors to assess exchange rate misalignments from their fair value. We survey the literature and illustrate a number of models by means of examples and by evaluating their strengths and weaknesses. We analyse the sensitivity of underlying balance (UB) models with respect to estimated trade elasticities. We also illustrate a fair value concept extensively used by financial markets practitioners but not previously formalised in the academic literature, and dub it the indirect fair value (IFV). As case studies, we analyse the models used by Goldman Sachs and by the International Monetary Fund's Consultative Group on Exchange Rate Issues (CGER).