Trade and Welfare Under Alternative Exchange Rate Regimes

Rajesh Singh ()

Staff General Research Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper compares the welfare under two standard alternative exchange rate regimes, fixed and flexible, in a stochastic dynamic general equilibrium two-country setting. Conventional wisdom holds that countries often prefer low exchange-rate variability to stabilize trade. This may explain the observed `fear of floating' in emerging markets -- although most of them claim to adopt a flexible system, in reality they often intervene to peg. We show that under incomplete capital markets a fixed exchange rate regime unambiguously increases trade and improves welfare. This provides a potential explanation for the observed exchange rate policies in emerging markets.

JEL-codes: F3 F4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-02-26
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.iastate.edu/research/webpapers/paper_11463_04008.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:11463

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff General Research Papers from Iowa State University, Department of Economics
Address: Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Stephanie Bridges ().