Effective exchange rates and the classical gold standard adjustment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Catao, LAV; Solomou, SN
• 署名单位: International Monetary Fund; University of Cambridge
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/0002828054825565
• 发表日期: 2005
• 页码: 1259-1275
• 关键词: DYNAMIC HETEROGENEOUS PANELS; Purchasing power parity; HISTORY

摘要

Using a new international dataset of trade-weighed exchange, rates, this paper highlights a neglected adjustment mechanism in the classical gold standard literature. Since gold-pegged countries traded extensively with economies operating more flexible monetary regimes and where parity change was a common adjustment device to systemic shocks, we show that such parity adjustments induced worldwide swings in nominal effective exchange rates. These translated into real exchange rate variations to which trade balances responded with an average elasticity of unity and in the direction of restoring external disequilibria. We conclude that some nominal exchange rate flexibility thus present in the pre-1914 system was instrumental to international payments adjustment.