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Can world real interest rates explain business cycles in a small open economy?

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Author Info
William Blankenau
M. Ayhan Kose
Kei-Mu Yi

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Abstract

While the world real interest rate is potentially an important mechanism for transmitting international shocks to small open economies, much of the recent quantitative research that studies this mechanism concludes that it has little effect on output, investment, and net exports. We reexamine the importance of world real interest rate shocks using an approach that reverses the standard real business cycle methodology. We begin with a small open economy business cycle model. But, rather than specifying the stochastic processes for the shocks, and then solving and simulating the model to evaluate how well these shocks explain business cycles, we use the model to back out the shocks that are consistent with the model’s observable endogenous variables. Then we use variance decompositions to examine the importance of each shock. We apply this methodology to Canada and find that world real interest rate shocks can play an important role in explaining the cyclical variation in a small open economy. In particular, they can explain up to one-third of the fluctuations in output and more than half of the fluctuations in net exports and net foreign assets.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its series Staff Reports with number 94.

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Date of creation: 1999
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:94

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Keywords: Interest rates ; Business cycles ; Econometric models ; Canada;

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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.:
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Full references

Cited by:
(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. M. Ayhan Kose & William Blankenau, 2006. "How Different Is the Cyclical Behavior of Home Production Across Countries?," IMF Working Papers 06/46, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Thomas Lubik & Wing Teo, 2005. "Do World Shocks Drive Domestic Business Cycles? Some Evidence from Structural Estimation," Economics Working Paper Archive 522, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  3. Pierre Richard Agénor, 2006. "External Shocks and the Urban Poor," The School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 0607, Economics, The University of Manchester. [Downloadable!]
  4. P R Agénor, 2006. "Corruption Clubs: Endogenous Thresholds in Corruption and Development," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 68, Economics, The Univeristy of Manchester. [Downloadable!]
  5. Charles Nolan & Christoph Thoenissen, 2008. " Financial shocks and the US business cycle," CDMA Working Paper Series 0810, Centre for Dynamic Macroeconomic Analysis. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Takashi Kano, 2003. "A Structural VAR Approach to the Intertemporal Model of the Current Account," Working Papers 03-42, Bank of Canada. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Calderon, Cesar & Loayza, Norman & Schmidt-Hebbel, Klaus, 2005. "Does openness imply greater exposure ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3733, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  8. James M. Nason & John H. Rogers, 2003. "The present-value model of the current account has been rejected: round up the usual suspects," International Finance Discussion Papers 760, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  9. Joshua Aizenman & Menzie D. Chinn & Hiro Ito, 2008. "Assessing the Emerging Global Financial Architecture: Measuring the Trilemma's Configurations over Time," NBER Working Papers 14533, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  10. Thomas Lubik & Wing Leong Teo, 2005. "Do Terms of Trade Shocks Drive Business Cycles? Some Evidence from Structural Estimation," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 377, Society for Computational Economics. [Downloadable!]
  11. César Calderón & Norman V. Loayza & Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel, 2008. "Does Openness Imply Greater Vulnerability?," Working Papers Central Bank of Chile 485, Central Bank of Chile. [Downloadable!]
  12. AndrŽ, NYEMBWE & Konstantin, KHOLODILIN, 2005. "North-South Asymmetric Relationships : Does the EMU Business Affect Small African Economies ?," Discussion Papers (ECON - Département des Sciences Economiques) 2005032, Université catholique de Louvain, Département des Sciences Economiques. [Downloadable!]
  13. Alejandro Justiniano, 2004. "Sources and Propagation Mechanims of Foreign Disturbances in Small Open Economies: A Dynamic Factor Analysis," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 148, Econometric Society. [Downloadable!]
  14. M. Ayhan Kose & Eswar Prasad & Marco Terrones, 2003. "Financial Integration and Macroeconomic Volatility," IMF Working Papers 03/50, International Monetary Fund. [Downloadable!]
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