Working Papers
2004
February 1, 2004
Inflation Dynamics in the Dominican Republic
Description: This paper investigates the determinants of inflation in the Dominican Republic during 1991-2002, a period characterized by remarkable macroeconomic stability and growth. By developing a parsimonious and empirically stable error-correction model using quarterly observations, the paper finds that inflation is explained by changes in monetary aggregates, real output, foreign inflation, and the exchange rate.
February 1, 2004
Trade Patterns Among Industrial Countries: Their Relationship to Technology Differences and Capital Mobility
Description: This paper compares two alternative measures of technology differences across industrial countries during 1970-92: one measures differences in labor productivity (the Ricardian measure), and the other differences in total factor productivity (the Hicksian measure). The distinction between the two measures is important to the extent that trade patterns are inconsistent with comparative advantage revealed by the Hicksian measure, but not necessarily with that by the Ricardian measure. The distinction becomes more important in the period with high capital mobility across countries.
February 1, 2004
Does Spousal Labor Smooth Fluctuations in Husbands’ Earnings? The Role of Liquidity Constraints
Description: This paper theoretically and empirically investigates the role of spousal labor in buffering transitory shocks to husbands' earnings. To measure the amount of the shock that spousal labor absorbs, an instrumented cross-sectional variance decomposition is developed. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the paper finds that the smoothing resulting from the wives' labor response (both labor force participation and hours of work) is larger for households with limited access to credit. This finding, which is consistent with the model's prediction, indicates that because of the presence of liquidity constraints, the temporal change in family income (exclusive of wives' earnings) reinforces the substitution effect in explaining the effect of shocks to the husbands' earnings on spousal labor.
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2004
January 1, 2004
Singapore's Unique Monetary Policy: How Does it Work?
Description: The Monetary Authority of Singapore, instead of relying on short-term interest rates or monetary aggregates as its monetary policy instrument, conducts policy by managing the trade-weighted exchange rate index (TWI). This paper investigates how this operating procedure actually works. For empirical purposes, it assumes the authorities follow a reaction function that aims the TWI at stabilizing expected inflation and maintaining output at potential. A partial adjustment mechanism is included to dampen the actual changes in the exchange rate. The estimates confirm that the major focus of monetary policy in Singapore is controlling inflation. The estimated changes in the TWI track the actual change relatively well, and the estimated parameters are as expected. Accordingly, they support the hypothesis that monetary policy in Singapore can be described by a forward-looking policy rule that reacts to both inflation and output volatility. The results suggest that Singapore's monetary policy has mainly reacted to large deviations in the target variables, which is consistent with monetary policy's medium-term orientation.