In recent years the term “fear of floating” has been used to describe exchange rate regimes that, while officially flexible, in practice intervene heavily to avoid sudden or large depreciations. However, the data reveals that in most cases (and increasingly so in the 2000s) intervention has...

In recent years, the term “fear of floating” has been used to describe exchange rate regimes that, while officially flexible, in practice intervene heavily to avoid sudden or large depreciations. However, the data reveals that in most cases (and increasingly so in the 2000s) intervention has...

This paper analyses the impact of exchange rate regimes on real exchange rates, as defined by the relative price of nontradables to tradables in Argentina, Brazil, Chile (ABC) and Mexico from 1990 to 2002. As identified by the empirical literature, the real exchange rate is determined in the...

Financial dollarization in Bolivia is near complete (over 90% of total deposits and loans). The paper gives an inventory of the problems caused by de facto dollarization to actual policy making. The phenomenon has deep roots and was engendered by high inflation that reached hyperinflationary...

This paper investigates the impact of the distribution sector on the real exchange rate, controlling for the Balassa-Samuelson effect, as well as other macro variables. Long-run coefficients are estimated using a panel dynamic OLS estimator. The main result is that an increase in the...

Real exchange rates are quite persistent. Standard unit root tests are not very powerful in drawing a conclusion regarding the validity of purchasing power parity [PPP]. Rather than asking if PPP holds throughout the whole sample period, we examine if PPP holds sometimes by employing...

Purchasing power parity (PPP) hypothesis has attracted a lot of attention from academics and policy-makers particularly, during the recent float. Most previous studies used data from the developed world. This study examines the validity of the PPP hypothesis using data during the recent float...

This paper analyzes the properties of multivariate tests of purchasing power parity (PPP) that fail to take heterogeneity in the speed of mean reversion across real exchange rates into account. We compare the performance of homogeneous and heterogeneous unit root testing methodologies. The...

This paper analyzes purchasing power parity (PPP) for the euro area. We study the impact of the introduction of the euro in 1999 on the behavior of real exchange rates. We test the PPP hypothesis for a panel of real exchange rates within the euro area over the period 1973-2003. Our methodology...

A unique panel of retail prices spanning 123 cities in 79 countries from 1990 to 2005 is used to uncover the novel properties of long-run international price dispersion. At the PPP level, almost all of price dispersion is attributed to unskilled wage dispersion. At the level of individual goods...