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Nonlinear Aspects of Goods-Market Arbitrage and Adjustment: Heckscher's Commodity Points Revisited

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Author Info
Maurice Obstfeld and Alan M. Taylor.

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Abstract

We propose that analysis of purchasing power parity (PPP) and the law of one price (LOOP) should explicitly take into account the possibility of "commodity points" -- thresholds delineating a region of no central tendency among relative prices, possib ly due to lack of perfect arbitrage in the presence of transaction costs and uncertainty. More than eighty years ago, Heckscher stressed the importance of such incomplete arbitrage in the empirical application of PPP. We devise an econometric method to identify commodity points. Price adjustment is treated as a nonlinear process, and a threshold autoregression (TAR) offers a parsimonious specification within which both thresholds and adjustment speeds are estimated by maximum likelihood methods. Our m odel performs well using post-1980 data, and yields parameter estimates that appear quite reasonable: adjustment outside the thresholds might imply half-lives of price deviations measured in months rather than years, and the thresholds correspond to popu lar rough estimates as to the order of magnitude of actual transport costs. The estimated commodity points appear to be positively related to objective measures of market segmentation, notably nominal exchange rate volatility.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of California at Berkeley in its series Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers with number C97-088.

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Date of creation: 01 May 1997
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Handle: RePEc:ucb:calbcd:c97-088

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References listed on IDEAS
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. Patrick K. Asea, 1994. "The Balassa-Samuelson Model: A General Equilibrium Appraisal," UCLA Economics Working Papers 709, UCLA Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  2. Froot, Kenneth A. & Kim, Michael & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1995. "The Law of One Price Over 700 Years," Working Papers 95-13, C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics, New York University. [Downloadable!]
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  3. Parsley, David C & Wei, Shang-Jin, 1996. "Convergence to the Law of One Price without Trade Barriers or Currency Fluctuations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 111(4), pages 1211-36, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  4. Engel, C., 1996. "Long-Run PPP May Not Hold After All," Working Papers 96-05, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
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  5. Gauri Prakash & Alan M. Taylor, 1997. "Measuring Market Integration: A Model of Arbitrage with an Econometric Application to the Gold Standard, 1879-1913," NBER Working Papers 6073, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Sercu, Piet & Uppal, Raman & Van Hulle, Cynthia, 1995. " The Exchange Rate in the Presence of Transaction Costs: Implications for Tests of Purchasing Power Parity," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1309-19, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Michael, Panos & Nobay, A Robert & Peel, David A, 1997. "Transactions Costs and Nonlinear Adjustment in Real Exchange Rates: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(4), pages 862-79, August.
  8. Kenneth A. Froot & Kenneth Rogoff, 1996. "Perspectives on PPP and Long-Run Real Exchange Rates," NBER Working Papers 4952, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Balke, Nathan S & Fomby, Thomas B, 1997. "Threshold Cointegration," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(3), pages 627-45, August.
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  10. Oh, Keun-Yeob, 1996. "Purchasing power parity and unit root tests using panel data," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(3), pages 405-418, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Kenneth Rogoff, 1996. "The Purchasing Power Parity Puzzle," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 647-668, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Maurice Obstfeld., 1993. "Model Trending Real Exchange Rates," Center for International and Development Economics Research (CIDER) Working Papers C93-011, University of California at Berkeley.
  13. Charles Engel & John H. Rogers, 1996. "Regional patterns in the law of one price: the roles of geography vs. currencies," International Finance Discussion Papers 533, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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  14. Jorion, Philippe & Sweeney, Richard J., 1996. "Mean reversion in real exchange rates: evidence and implications for forecasting," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 535-550, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Lothian, James R., 1997. "Multi-country evidence on the behavior of purchasing power parity under the current float," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 19-35, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Alan M. Taylor, 1996. "International Capital Mobility in History: Purchasing-Power Parity in the Long Run," NBER Working Papers 5742, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Nurhan Davutyan & John pippenger, 1990. "Testing purchasing power parity: some evidence of the effects of transaction costs," Econometric Reviews, Taylor and Francis Journals, vol. 9(2), pages 211-240. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Frankel, Jeffrey A. & Rose, Andrew K., 1996. "A panel project on purchasing power parity: Mean reversion within and between countries," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-2), pages 209-224, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Dumas, Bernard, 1992. "Dynamic Equilibrium and the Real Exchange Rate in a Spatially Separated World," Review of Financial Studies, Oxford University Press for Society for Financial Studies, vol. 5(2), pages 153-80. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Davidson, Russell & MacKinnon, James G, 1981. "Several Tests for Model Specification in the Presence of Alternative Hypotheses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 781-93, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  21. Matthew B. Canzoneri & Robert E. Cumby & Behzad Diba, 1996. "Relative Labor Productivity and the Real Exchange Rate in the Long Run: Evidence for a Panel of OECD Countries," NBER Working Papers 5676, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Maurice Obstfeld, 1997. "Open-Economy Macroeconomics: Developments in Theory and Policy," Working Papers 958, Queen's University, Department of Economics.
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  23. Froot, Kenneth A. & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1995. "Perspectives on PPP and long-run real exchange rates," Handbook of International Economics, in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 32, pages 1647-1688 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  24. Jong-Wha Lee & Phillip Swagel, 1994. "Trade barriers and trade flows across countries and industries," International Finance Discussion Papers 476, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.). [Downloadable!]
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  25. Engel, C., 1996. "Accounting for U.S. Real Exchange Rate Changes," Working Papers 96-02, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    Other versions:
  26. Asea, Patrick K & Mendoza, Enrique G, 1994. "The Balassa-Samuelson Model: A General-Equilibrium Appraisal," Review of International Economics, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 2(3), pages 244-67, October.
  27. repec:cup:cbooks:9780521326162 is not listed on IDEAS
  28. Evans, G B A & Savin, N E, 1981. "Testing for Unit Roots: 1," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 753-79, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  29. Lothian, James R & Taylor, Mark P, 1996. "Real Exchange Rate Behavior: The Recent Float from the Perspective of the Past Two Centuries," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(3), pages 488-509, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  30. Lapham, Beverly J., 1995. "A dynamic general equilibrium analysis of deviations from the laws of one price," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1355-1389, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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