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Forecasting Exchange Rates and Relative Prices with the Hamburger Standard: Is What You Want What You Get With McParity?

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Author Info
Robert E. Cumby
Abstract

A decade ago the Economist began an annual survey of Big Mac prices as a guide to whether currencies are trading at the right exchange rates. This paper asks how well the hamburger standard has performed. Although average deviations from absolute Big Mac parity are large for several currencies, once estimates of these average deviations are removed from the data, the evidence suggests that convergence to relative Big Mac parity is quite rapid. The half-life of deviations from Big Mac parity appear to be about 1 year, which is considerably shorter than estimates of the half-life of deviations from purchasing power parity (4-5 years) that are reported in the literature. In addition, deviations from relative Big Mac parity appear to provide useful information for forecasting exchange rates. After accounting for currency-specific constants, a 10 percent undervaluation according to the hamburger standard in one year is associated with a 3.5 percent appreciation over the following year. Finally, deviations from relative Big Mac parity seem to be helpful in forecasting relative local currency prices. When the U.S. dollar price of Big Macs is high in a country, the relative local currency price of Big Macs in that country is likely to fall during the following year.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 5675.

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Date of creation: Jul 1996
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:5675

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F31 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - Foreign Exchange
F30 - International Economics - - International Finance - - - General

References listed on IDEAS
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  1. Michael Funke & Jörg Rahn, 2005. "Just how Undervalued is the Chinese Renminbi," Quantitative Macroeconomics Working Papers 20504, Hamburg University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Mario J. Crucini & Chris I. Telmer & Marios Zachariadis, 2005. "Understanding European Real Exchange Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 724-738, June. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Michael Funke & Jorg Rahn, 2004. "By How Much Is The Chinese Renminbi Undervalued?," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2004 40, Money Macro and Finance Research Group. [Downloadable!]
  4. Kenneth W Clements & Yihui Lan, 2006. "A New Approach to Forecasting Exchange Rates," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 06-29, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  5. Giri, Rahul, 2008. "Local Costs of Distribution, International Trade Costs and Micro Evidence on the Law of One Price," MPRA Paper 10257, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
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  6. Chien-Fu Chen & Chung-Hua Shen & Chien-an Andy Wang, 2007. "Does PPP hold for Big Mac price or consumer price index? Evidence from panel cointegration," Economics Bulletin, Economics Bulletin, vol. 6(16), pages 1-15. [Downloadable!]
  7. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2008. "Understanding International Price Differences Using Barcode Data," NBER Working Papers 14017, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Joe Cox, 2008. "Purchasing power parity and cultural convergence: evidence from the global video games market," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer, vol. 32(3), pages 201-214, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Yihui Lan, 2001. "The Long-Run Value of Currencies: A Big Mac Perspective," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 01-17, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  10. Yihui Lan, 2003. "The Long-Term Behaviour of Exchange Rates, Part I: Introduction," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 03-05, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  11. Matthias Lutz, 2002. "Beyond Burgernomics and MacParity: Exchange Rate Forecasts Based on the Law of One Price," 10th International Conference on Panel Data, Berlin, July 5-6, 2002 D4-1, International Conferences on Panel Data. [Downloadable!]
  12. Charles Engel & Michael K. Hendrickson & John H. Rogers, 1997. "Intra-national, intra-continental, and intra-planetary PPP," International Finance Discussion Papers 589, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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  13. Matthias Lutz, 2003. "Price Convergence under EMU? First Estimates," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2003 2003-08, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen. [Downloadable!]
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  14. Yihui Lan, 2003. "The Long-Term Behaviour of Exchange Rates, Part V: The Stationarity of Exchange Rates," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 03-09, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  15. Kenneth W Clements & Yihui Lan & John Roberts, 2007. "Exchange-Rate Economics for the Resources Sector," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 07-13, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  16. Kenneth W. Clements & H.Y Izan & Yihui Lan, 2005. "A Stochastic Measure of International Competitiveness," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 05-15, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  17. Kenneth W. Clements & Yihui Lan, 2005. "How Long is the Long Run? Evidence from the Foreign Exchange Market," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 05-03, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
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