Michele Cavallo

Exchange rate overshooting and the costs of floating

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 the develop an model of an open economy with monopolistic competition and short-run price stickiness 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 from a welfare perspective.

Measuring oil-price shocks using market-based information

We study the effects of oil-price shocks on the U.S. economy combining narrative and quantitative approaches. After examining daily oil-related events since 1984, we classify them into various event types. We then develop measures of exogenous shocks that avoid endogeneity and predictability concerns. Estimation results indicate that oil-price shocks have had substantial and statistically significant effects during the last 25 years. In contrast, traditional VAR approaches imply much weaker and insignificant effects for the same period. This discrepancy stems from the inability of VARs to separate exogenous oil-supply shocks from endogenous oil-price fluctuations driven by changes in oil demand.

Government consumption expenditures and the current account

This paper distinguishes between two components of government consumption, expenditure on final goods and expenditure on hours, and compares the effects of changes in these two on the current account. I find that changes in government expenditure on hours do not directly affect the current account and that their impact is considerably smaller than the impact produced by changes in government expenditure on final goods. These findings indicate that considering government consumption as entirely expenditure on final goods leads to overestimating its role in accounting for movements in the current account balance.

Oil Price Elasticities and Oil Price Fluctuations

We study the identification of oil shocks in a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model of the oil market. First, we show that the cross-equation restrictions of a SVAR impose a nonlinear relation between the short-run price elasticities of oil supply and oil demand. This relation implies that seemingly plausible restrictions on oil supply elasticity may map into implausible values of the oil demand elasticity, and vice versa. Second, we propose an identification scheme that restricts these elasticities by minimizing the distance between the elasticities allowed by the SVAR and target values that we construct from a survey of relevant studies. Third, we use the identified SVAR to analyze sources and consequences of movements in oil prices. We find that (1) oil supply shocks and global demand shocks explain 50 and 35 percent of oil price fluctuations, respectively; (2) a drop in oil prices driven by supply shocks boosts economic activity in advanced economies, whereas it depresses economic activity in emerging economies; and (3) the selection of oil market elasticities is essential for understanding the source of oil price movements and to measuring the multipliers of oil prices on economic activity.

Fiscal Implications of the Federal Reserve’s Balance Sheet Normalization

This Note summarizes analysis conducted in our recent FEDS working paper that seeks to understand the fiscal implications of the Federal Reserves balance sheet normalization program.

Fiscal Implications of the Federal Reserve's Balance Sheet Normalization

The paper surveys the recent literature on the fiscal implications of central bank balance sheets, with a special focus on political economy issues. It then presents the results of simulations that describe the effects of different scenarios for the Federal Reserves longer-run balance sheet on its earnings remittances to the U.S. Treasury and, more broadly, on the governments overall fiscal position. We find that reducing longer-run reserve balances from

Could Capital Gains Smooth a Current Account Rebalancing

2.3 trillion (roughly the current amount) to

The Quantitative Role of Capital Goods Imports in US Growth

1 trillion reduces the likelihood of posting a quarterly net loss in the future from 30 percent to under 5 percent. Further reducing longer-run reserve balances from

Current account adjustment with high financial integration: a scenario analysis

1 trillion to precrisis levels has little effect on the likelihood of net losses.