Productivity growth, fixed exchange rates, and export-led growth

Rui Mao, Yang Yao and Jingxian Zou

China Economic Review, 2019, vol. 56, issue C, -

Abstract: This paper studies how the fixed exchange rate regime (FERR) may promote growth when a country experiences faster rates of productivity growth in its tradable sector than its nontradable sector. In a simple two-sector model with money, we show that the FERR can reduce the Balassa-Samuelson effect if wage adjustment is subject to nominal rigidities. The undervaluation thus created suppresses real wage growth but increases the size of the tradable sector and leads to higher growth rates of the entire economy. Using cross-country panel data, our econometric exercises provide robust evidence that supports the results. Meanwhile, other fundamentals, including the external balance position, export share in the tradable sector, and the stage of development, play roles in determining the effects of FERR. Last, we apply the empirical results to run simulations on China from 1994 to 2007 to highlight the role of FERR in the country's export-led growth.

Keywords: Fixed exchange rate regimes; Real undervaluation; Export-led growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F31 F43 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043951X19300720
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:56:y:2019:i:c:7

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2019.101311

Access Statistics for this article

China Economic Review is currently edited by B.M. Fleisher, K. X. D. Huang, M.E. Lovely, Y. Wen, X. Zhang and X. Zhu

More articles in China Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().