Fixed Versus Floating Exchange Rates Revisited

We investigate the welfare properties of fixed and floating exchange rate regimes in a two-country, dynamic, infinite-horizon model with agents optimizing in an environment of uncertainty created by monetary shocks. The optimal exchange rate regime may depend on whether prices are set in the currency of producers or the currency of consumers. When prices are set in consumers' currency, the variance of home consumption is not influenced by foreign monetary variance under floating exchange rates, while there is transmission of foreign disturbances under floating rates if prices are set in producers' currencies, or under fixed exchange rates. An important feature of the model is the exchange rate regime affects not just the variance of consumption and output, but also their average levels. When prices are set in producer's currency, as in the traditional framework, we find that there is a trade-off between floating and fixed exchange rates. Exchange rate adjustment under floating rates allows for a lower variance of consumption, but exchange rate volatility itself leads to a lower average level of consumption. When prices are set in consumer's currency, floating exchange rates always dominate fixed exchange rates.

Analyzes developments in the international monetary system since 1973, with anew added epilogue.

This paper develops a welfare-based model of monetary policy in an open economy. We focus on the extent to which monetary policy should be employed in maintaining the exchange rate. The traditional approach maintains that exchange rate flexibility is desirable in the presence of real country-specific shocks that require adjustment in relative prices. However, in the light of empirical evidence on nominal price response to exchange-rate changes specifically, that there appears to be a large degree of local-currency pricing in industrialized countries the expenditure-switching role played by nominal exchange rates may be exaggerated in the traditional literature. In the presence of local-currency, we find that optimal monetary policy in response to real shocks pricing is fully consistent with fixed exchange rates. On the other hand, when real country-specific shocks are not important, and when a country's monetary sector is stable, the case for freely floating rates (a monetary policy in which exchange rates are not a consideration) is strengthened in the presence of local-currency pricing.

The Cato Institute, a public policy research foundation in Washington, D.C., presents an article entitled "Fixed Versus Floating Exchange Rates," by Peter B. Kenen and published in the Spring/Summer 2000 issue of "The Cato Journal." The full text is available in PDF format. The author discusses the issue of of flexible and fixed exchange rates. Kenen also discusses the real costs of exchange rate changes, fixed exchange rates and monetary discipline, and fixed exchange rates and disinflation.