IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mib/wpaper/221.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unpuzzling the Purchasing Power Parity Puzzle

Author

Listed:
  • Matteo Pelagatti
  • Emilio Colombo

Abstract

The empirical validation of the purchasing power parity (PPP) theory is generally based on real exchange rates built using consumer price indexes (CPI). The empirical evidence does not generally support the theory and this fact goes under the name of purchasing power parity puzzle. In this paper we show by theoretical arguments that, even if the law of one price holds for all the goods traded in two countries, real exchange rates based on CPI are not mean-reverting and therefore statistical tests based on them should reject the PPP hypothesis. We prove that such real exchange rates are neither stationary nor integrated, and so both unit-root and stationarity tests should reject the null according to their power properties. The performance of the most common unit-root and stationarity tests in situations in which the law of one price holds is studied by means of a simulation experiment, based on real European CPI weights and price behaviours.

Suggested Citation

  • Matteo Pelagatti & Emilio Colombo, 2012. "Unpuzzling the Purchasing Power Parity Puzzle," Working Papers 221, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:mib:wpaper:221
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.dems.unimib.it/repec/pdf/mibwpaper221.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2012
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Crucini, Mario J. & Shintani, Mototsugu, 2008. "Persistence in law of one price deviations: Evidence from micro-data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 629-644, April.
    2. Jean Imbs & Haroon Mumtaz & Morten O. Ravn & Hélène Rey, 2005. "PPP Strikes Back: Aggregation And the Real Exchange Rate," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(1), pages 1-43.
    3. 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.
    4. Elliott, Graham & Pesavento, Elena, 2006. "On the Failure of Purchasing Power Parity for Bilateral Exchange Rates after 1973," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(6), pages 1405-1430, September.
    5. Ullah, Aman, 2004. "Finite Sample Econometrics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198774488.
    6. Huizinga, John, 1987. "An empirical investigation of the long-run behavior of real exchange rates," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 149-214, January.
    7. Caner, M. & Kilian, L., 2001. "Size distortions of tests of the null hypothesis of stationarity: evidence and implications for the PPP debate," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(5), pages 639-657, October.
    8. Taylor, Alan M, 2001. "Potential Pitfalls for the Purchasing-Power-Parity Puzzle? Sampling and Specification Biases in Mean-Reversion Tests of the Law of One Price," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(2), pages 473-498, March.
    9. Taylor, Mark P & Peel, David A & Sarno, Lucio, 2001. "Nonlinear Mean-Reversion in Real Exchange Rates: Toward a Solution to the Purchasing Power Parity Puzzles," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1015-1042, November.
    10. Kwiatkowski, Denis & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Schmidt, Peter & Shin, Yongcheol, 1992. "Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root : How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1-3), pages 159-178.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Sarno, Lucio & Taylor, Mark P. & Chowdhury, Ibrahim, 2004. "Nonlinear dynamics in deviations from the law of one price: a broad-based empirical study," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-25, February.
    14. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Lai, Kon S., 1994. "Mean reversion in real exchange rates," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 251-256, November.
    15. Meese, Richard A & Rogoff, Kenneth, 1988. " Was It Real? The Exchange Rate-Interest Differential Relation over the Modern Floating-Rate Period," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(4), pages 933-948, September.
    16. Taylor, Mark P. & Sarno, Lucio, 1998. "The behavior of real exchange rates during the post-Bretton Woods period," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 281-312, December.
    17. Abuaf, Niso & Jorion, Philippe, 1990. "Purchasing Power Parity in the Long Run," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 45(1), pages 157-174, March.
    18. Lopez, Claude & Murray, Christian J & Papell, David H, 2005. "State of the Art Unit Root Tests and Purchasing Power Parity," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 37(2), pages 361-369, April.
    19. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Lai, Kon S., 1998. "Parity reversion in real exchange rates during the post-Bretton Woods period," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 597-614, August.
    20. Adler, Michael & Lehmann, Bruce, 1983. "Deviations from Purchasing Power Parity in the Long Run," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 38(5), pages 1471-1487, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Matteo Pelagatti & Emilio Colombo, 2015. "On the Empirical Failure of Purchasing Power Parity Tests," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(6), pages 904-923, September.
    2. Alan M. Taylor & Mark P. Taylor, 2004. "The Purchasing Power Parity Debate," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(4), pages 135-158, Fall.
    3. Hai Long Vo & Duc Hong Vo, 2023. "The purchasing power parity and exchange‐rate economics half a century on," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 446-479, April.
    4. Sarno, Lucio & Valente, Giorgio, 2006. "Deviations from purchasing power parity under different exchange rate regimes: Do they revert and, if so, how?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(11), pages 3147-3169, November.
    5. Hwa-Taek Lee & Gawon Yoon, 2013. "Does purchasing power parity hold sometimes? Regime switching in real exchange rates," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(16), pages 2279-2294, June.
    6. Dimitrios Malliaropulos & Ekaterini Panopoulou & Nikitas Pittis & Theologos Pantelidis, 2006. "The Contribution of Growth and Interest Rate Differentials to the Persistence of Real Exchange Rates," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp135, IIIS.
    7. Dimitrios Malliaropulos & Ekaterini Panopoulou & Theologos Pantelidis & Nikitas Pittis, 2013. "Decomposing the persistence of real exchange rates," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 1217-1242, June.
    8. Lucio Sarno & Mark P. Taylor, 2002. "Purchasing Power Parity and the Real Exchange Rate," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 49(1), pages 1-5.
    9. Taylor Mark P. & Sarno Lucio, 2001. "Real Exchange Rate Dynamics in Transition Economies: A Nonlinear Analysis," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 1-26, October.
    10. JamesR. Lothian & MarkP. Taylor, 2008. "Real Exchange Rates Over the Past Two Centuries: How Important is the Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson Effect?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(532), pages 1742-1763, October.
    11. Lucio Sarno, 2003. "Nonlinear Exchange Rate Models: A Selective Overview," Rivista di Politica Economica, SIPI Spa, vol. 93(4), pages 3-46, July-Augu.
    12. Lucio Sarno, 2005. "Viewpoint: Towards a solution to the puzzles in exchange rate economics: where do we stand?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(3), pages 673-708, August.
    13. Kim, Soyoung & Lima, Luiz Renato, 2010. "Local persistence and the PPP hypothesis," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 555-569, April.
    14. Miguel Carvalho & Paulo Júlio, 2012. "Digging out the PPP hypothesis: an integrated empirical coverage," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 713-744, June.
    15. Choi, Jae Hoon & Song, Seongho, 2022. "Revisiting the PPP puzzle: Nominal exchange rate rigidity and region of inaction," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    16. Jón Steinsson, 2008. "The Dynamic Behavior of the Real Exchange Rate in Sticky Price Models," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 519-533, March.
    17. Franses, Ph.H.B.F. & van Dijk, D.J.C., 2002. "A simple test for PPP among traded goods," Econometric Institute Research Papers EI 2002-02, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Erasmus School of Economics (ESE), Econometric Institute.
    18. Rossi, Barbara, 2005. "Confidence Intervals for Half-Life Deviations From Purchasing Power Parity," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 23, pages 432-442, October.
    19. Claude Lopez & Christian J. Murray & David H. Papell, 2013. "Median-unbiased estimation in DF-GLS regressions and the PPP puzzle," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(4), pages 455-464, February.
    20. Ahmad, Yamin & Craighead, William D., 2011. "Temporal aggregation and purchasing power parity persistence," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 817-830, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Purchasing power parity; Law of one price; Stationarity; Unit root.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C30 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - General
    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mib:wpaper:221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Matteo Pelagatti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpmibit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.