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Exchange rate overshooting and the costs of floating

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Author Info
Michele Cavallo
Kate Kisselev
Fabrizio Perri
Nouriel Roubini

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Abstract

Currency crises are usually associated with large nominal and real depreciations. In some countries depreciations are perceived to be very costly (“fear of floating”). In this paper we try to understand the reasons behind this fear. We first look at episodes of currency crises in the 1990s and establish that countries entering a crisis with high levels of foreign debt tend to experience large real exchange rate overshooting (devaluation in excess of the long-run equilibrium level) and large output contractions. We then develop a model of a small open economy that helps to explain this evidence. The key element of the model is the presence of a margin constraint on the domestic country. Real devaluations, by reducing the value of domestic assets relative to international liabilities, make countries with high foreign debt more likely to hit the constraint. When countries hit the constraint they are forced to sell domestic assets, and this causes a further devaluation of the currency (overshooting) and a reduction of their stock prices (overreaction). This fire sale can have a significant negative wealth effect. The model highlights a key tradeoff when considering fixed versus flexible exchange rate regimes; a fixed exchange regime can, by avoiding exchange rate overshooting, mitigate the negative wealth effect but at the cost of additional distortions and output drops in the short run. There are plausible parameter values under which fixed exchange rates dominate flexible exchange rates from a welfare perspective.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in its series Working Paper Series with number 2005-07.

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Date of creation: 2005
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:2005-07

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Keywords: Foreign exchange rates Financial crises

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(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Nicolas Magud, 2002. "Exchange Rate Regime Choice and Country Characteristics: an Empirical Investigation into the Role of Openness," University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers 2004-15, University of Oregon Economics Department, revised 20 Oct 2004. [Downloadable!]
  2. Enrique G. Mendoza, 2002. "Why Should Emerging Economies Give up National Currencies: A Case for 'Institutions Substitution'," NBER Working Papers 8950, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Nicolas Magud, 2002. "Currency Mismatch, Openness and Exchange Rate Regime Choice," University of Oregon Economics Department Working Papers 2004-14, University of Oregon Economics Department, revised 01 Sep 2004. [Downloadable!]
  4. Felipe Meza & Erwan Quintin, 2007. "Factor Utilization and the Real Impact of Financial Crises," Advances in Macroeconomics, Berkeley Electronic Press, vol. 7(1), pages 1593-1593. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Han, Bing & Hirshleifer, David & Wang, Tracy, 2005. "Investor Overconfidence and the Forward Discount Puzzle," MPRA Paper 6497, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Dec 2007. [Downloadable!]
  6. Philip R. Lane, 2003. "Business Cycles and Macroeconomic Policy in Emerging Market Economies," Trinity Economics Papers 20032, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Felipe Meza & Erwan Quintin, 2005. "Financial crises and total factor productivity," Center for Latin America Working Papers 0105, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. [Downloadable!]
  8. Saki Bigio & Marco Vega, 2006. "Monetary Policy under Balance Sheet Uncertainty," Computing in Economics and Finance 2006 157, Society for Computational Economics. [Downloadable!]
  9. Michele Cavallo, 2005. "To float or not to float? exchange rate regimes and shocks," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, issue Jan 7. [Downloadable!]
  10. Alvaro Aguirre & César Calderón, 2005. "Financial Frictions and Real Devaluations," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 318, Central Bank of Chile. [Downloadable!]
  11. Jeffrey A. Frankel & Eduardo A. Cavallo, 2004. "Does Openness to Trade Make Countries More Vulnerable to Sudden Stops, Or Less? Using Gravity to Establish Causality," NBER Working Papers 10957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 2005. "Contractionary Currency Crashes in Developing Countries," NBER Working Papers 11508, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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