International Interest-Rate and Price-Level Linkages Under Flexible Exchange Rates

In an open economy, the scope for activist stabilization policy depends on the nature of the linkages between domestic and international markets for goods and assets. Two important relationships--purchasing power parity and uncovered interest-rate parity--have received extensive empirical attention in recent years and are fundamental building blocks of several empirical ex- change rate models. This paper reviews and extends recent econometric findings on these two classical parity relationships and on their corollary, the international equality of expected real interest rates. Econometric tests assuming rationality of expectations are on the whole unfavorable to the classical parity relationships: with few exceptions, they are strongly rejected. A central theme in the review of empirical work is the conditional heteroskedasticity of inflation and exchange rate forecast errors and the bias this statistical problem may impart to tests of inter- national parity relationships. The paper proposes and implements a test for conditional heteroskedasticity which in many cases produces strong evidence that the problem is indeed important.