期刊名称：Discussion Papers / University of Leicester, Department of Economics
出版年度：2009
卷号：2009
出版社：Leicester
摘要：A recent contribution to the literature argues that the present international monetary
system in many ways operates like the Bretton-Woods system. Asia is the new periphery
of the system and pursues an export-led development strategy. The members of the new
periphery peg their currencies to the U.S. dollar at undervalued exchange rates and
accumulate foreign reserves. In contrast, the old periphery - - consisting of Western
Europe, Canada and parts of Latin America - - interacts with the centre with flexible
exchange rates; its aggregate current account has been roughly in balance. As under the
older system, the United States remains the centre country, pursuing a monetary-policy
strategy that overlooks the exchange rate. An implication of this argument is the following
asymmetry hypothesis: under both regimes the United States does not take external factors
into account in conducting monetary policy while the periphery does take external factors
into account. We provide results of a test of the asymmetry hypothesis. Then, we present a
new method for decomposition of the business cycle using a time-varying-coefficient
technique that allows us to test the relationship between the cycle and macroeconomic
policies. We apply this technique to five countries for three sub-periods over the 1959 to
2007 period.
