Jerome L. Stein

Polly Reynolds Allen

Existing models fail to explain the large fluctuations in the real exchange rates of most currencies over the past twenty years. The Natural Real Exchange Rate approach (NATREX) taken here offers an alternative paradigm to those which focus on short-run movements of nominal eschange rates, purchasing power parity of the representative agent intertemporal optimization models. Yet it is also neo-classical in its stress upon the accepted fundamentals driving a real economy. It concentrates on the real exchange rate, and explains medium- tolong-run movements in equilibrium real exchange rates in terms of fundamental variables: the productivity of capital and social (public plus private) thrift at home and abroad. The NATREX approach is a family of growth models, each tailored to the characteristics of the countries considered. The authors explain the real international value of the US dollar relativ to the G10 countries, and the US current account. These are two large economies. The model is also applied to small economies, where it explains the real value of the Australian dollar and the Latin American currencies relative to the US dollar. The model is relevant for developing countries where the foreign debt is a concern. Finally, it is applied to two medium-sized economies to explain the bilateral exchange rate between the French franc and the Deutsche Mark. The authors demonstrate both the promise of the NATREX model and its applicability to economies large and small. Alongside the analysis, econometrics, and technical details of these case studies, the introductory chapter explains in accessible terms the rationale behind the approach. The mix of theory and empirical evidence makes this book relevant to academics and advanced graduate students, and to central banks, ministries of finance, and those concerned with the foreign debt of developing countries.

Fundamental Determinants of Exchange Rates

Peter B. Kenen

Polly R. Allen

This paperback edition consists of the first three parts of Allen and Kenen's major book, Asset Markets, Exchange Rates, and Economic Integration. These three parts stand alone, as the authors intended and as reviewers have commented. In parts four and five of that volume they extend their model to two countries trading with the outside world and analyze questions of economic integration. The authors synthesize and extend recent developments in international monetary theory using a general model of an open economy that trades goods and assets with the outside world. The model embodies the asset market or portfolio approach to analyzing balance-of-payments adjustment. Exchange rates are determined in the short run by conditions in the asset markets and in the long run by conditions in the goods markets. The goods markets include an export good, and import good, and a nontradeable good. Allen and Kenen show that different assumptions about the substitutability between goods or between assets can generate several popular models as special cases of their own.

Polly Reynolds Allen

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