Suchergebnisse

We study the purchasing power parity (PPP) puzzle in a multisector, two-country, sticky-price model. Sectors differ in the extent of price stickiness, leading to heterogeneous sectoral real exchange rate dynamics. Deviations from PPP are more volatile and persistent than in an otherwise identical one-sector world economy with the same average frequency of price changes. Under the empirical distribution of price stickiness of the US economy, the model produces PPP deviations with a half-life of 39 months. We provide a structural interpretation of the approaches found in the empirical literature on aggregation and PPP, and reconcile its apparently conflicting findings. (JEL F31, G31)

This note examines labour market performance across countries through the lens of Okun's Law. We find that after the 1970s but prior to the global financial crisis of the 2000s, the Okun's Law relationship between output and unemployment became more homogenous across countries. These changes presumably reflected institutional and technological changes. But, at least in the short term, the global financial crisis undid much of this convergence, in part because the affected countries adopted different labour market policies in response to the global demand shock.