Date Available
12-14-2011
Year of Publication
2009
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Document Type
Dissertation
College
Arts and Sciences
Department
Economics
First Advisor
Dr. Kim Yoonbai
Abstract
A country’s economy is becoming more and more dynamic and complicated in its scale and mobility. So, the concerns of exchange rate economics have become more popular. My research interest is in international economics with its major factor, exchange rates and other macroeconomic variables. Chapter 1 presents a brief introduction of the three studies.
Chapter Two investigate the role of exchange rate changes with particular attention to international capital flows. With liberalization of capital movements, international capital movements became free and unrestricted in many emerging market economies as well as developed countries. Using a Vector Auto-regressive (VAR) model for a small open economy in which the endogeneity of exchange rate changes is fully taken into account, I find that capital movements are more likely to be a cause of output fluctuations and current account deficits in developing countries than a channel of equilibrium changes. I also find that domestic currency depreciation is far more likely to be contractionary on domestic output in developing countries than in developed countries. Interestingly, the trade balance improves after depreciation regardless of its output consequence. These findings suggest that there are important differences between developed and developing economies in the way capital movements and exchange rate changes affect and are affected.
Chapter Three demonstrates the dynamic relationship between the current account and the real exchange rate in response to permanent and temporary shocks using structural VAR models for seven developed countries and five developing countries. Special focus is given to the issue of the stationarity of the current account. Capital flows are also included to capture external shocks as well as potential structural breaks due to financial liberalization. I find that the results for unit root tests for the current account are ambiguous. By testing two different VAR models, each taking an opposing stance on the stationarity of the current account, I conclude that responses based on a stationary current account are a better fit to the current theoretical view than those based on a nonstationary current account process. Additionally, the real exchange rate and the current account are positively correlated under a permanent shock while two variables are negatively correlated under a monetary shock. I also find that real exchange rate is an endogenous variable, which is not closely related to the temporary factors that affect the current account in the short run.
Chapter Four examines the long-run mean reverting behavior of the real exchange rates with its six different definitions for 27 economies using annual data from 1974 to 2003. I find that Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) holds better, and the half-life of the real exchange rates is shorter when the wholesale price index, rather than consumer price index, is used as price level measure. Somewhat surprisingly, there is no evidence that PPP holds better with trade-weighted real exchange rates than with bilateral ones regardless of the price index used. Strong evidence for PPP emerges only with the use of Im, Pesaran, and Shin (2003) panel tests but not with the Levine, Lin, and Chu (2002).
Recommended Citation
Kim, Gil, "THREE ESSAYS ON EXCHANGE RATE ECONOMICS" (2009). University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations. 752.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/752
