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This paper seeks to argue that any competitive advantage realized by a firm that produces domestically and exports to a foreign market due to a real depreciation (appreciation) of the domestic (foreign) currency is purely transitory and thus not sustainable. Diversification of manufacturing operations across a number of countries and appropriate production rescheduling in light of real exchange rate changes are required to transform the character of this competitive advantage from merely transitory to sustainable.

Analytic proof is provided of the dependence of an exporting firm's real profit margin on the real exchange rate. A simple contemporaneous and one‐period lagged model of the current account balance is then posited to argue that real exchange rates exhibit mean‐reversionary behavior.

The Marshall‐Lerner condition, which is a mainstay of balance‐of‐payments models is shown to imply that real exchange rates exhibit mean‐reversionary behavior. Extensive empirical evidence is cited that accords with this theoretical conclusion. Thus, any gain in competitive advantage due to a change in real exchange rates that accrues to a firm with a single manufacturing operation is merely transitory and not sustainable.

To position itself to achieve sustainable competitive advantage from changes in real exchange rates, a firm must maintain a global supply chain diversified across many countries. With the flexibility provided by such disparate plant locations, production schedules can be adjusted in response to real exchange rate changes, to wit, increased (reduced) manufacturing should be programmed in countries whose currencies have experienced real depreciations (appreciations). Owing to oscillating real exchange rates, these requisite production schedule adjustments are expected to be perpetual.

The algebraic formulation of the firm's inflation‐adjusted profit margin's dependency on the real exchange rate and the analytical proof that the Marshall‐Lerner condition implies mean‐reversionary behavior in real exchange rates are both novel. The implications with regard to competitive advantage are likewise original.

The purpose of this paper is to examine movements of the Singapore dollar exchange rate against the US dollar.

An extended open macroeconomic model with the IS, LM, and AS functions and comparative static analysis are employed and applied. The Newey‐West method is employed to estimate consistent estimates for the standard error and covariance when the forms of both autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity are unknown.

The real exchange rate in Singapore is negatively associated with real M1, country risk, the real US treasury bill rate, and a binary variable for the period since the Asian financial crisis, and positively influenced by the real stock price, world output, and the amount of foreign exchange reserves. Real government deficit spending is statistically insignificant.

Other exchange rate models may be considered and compared.

The Reserve Bank of Singapore may use the outcomes of this paper as a reference in monitoring exchange rate movements. Among others, changes in country risk, stock values, foreign exchange, the world interest rate, and world output are expected to influence the exchange rate.

Several important variables such as country risk, the Asian financial crisis, stock values, and the amount of foreign exchange are included to find their impacts on the exchange rate.

The role of money and monetary policy of the central bank in pursuing macroeconomic stability has significantly changed over the period since the end of World War II. Globalization, liberalization, integration, and transition processes generally shaped the crucial milestones of the macroeconomic development and substantial features of economic policy and its framework in Europe. Policy-driven changes together with variety of exogenous shocks significantly affected the key features of macroeconomic environment on the European continent that fashioned the framework and design of monetary policies.

This chapter examines the key basis of the central bank’s monetary policy on its way to pursue and preserve the internal and external stability of the purchasing power of money. Substantial elements of the monetary policy like objectives and strategies are not only generally introduced but also critically discussed according to their accuracy, suitability, and reliability in the changing macroeconomic conditions. Brief overview of the Eurozone common monetary policy milestones and the past Eastern bloc countries’ experience with a variety of exchange rate regimes provides interesting empirical evidence on origins and implications of vital changes in the monetary policy conduction in Europe and the Eurozone.

Relying on a new dataset, this paper examines the genesis of current account fluctuations and the investment cycle in Italy. We perform a Granger causality test that shows that the persistent current account deficits in the years from unification to World War I were generated by variations in capital inflows, as hypothesized by Fenoaltea, and not by the dynamics of GDP, as in the Bonelli–Cafagna model. Finally, we show that these capital inflows prompted an industrial investment cycle in equipment and machinery but not – as claimed by Fenoaltea (1988) – a general investment cycle which included also construction and more volatile components of investment. These patterns held under both fixed and floating exchange rate regimes.

Asynchronous current account trends between North and South of the Euro Area were accompanied by significant appreciations of real exchange rate originating in the strong shifts in consumer prices and unit labor costs in the periphery economies relative to the core countries of the Euro Area. The issue is whether the real exchange rate is a significant driver of persisting current account imbalances in the Euro Area considering that, according to some authors, differences in domestic demand are more important than is often realized. In the paper we examine relative importance of real exchange rate and demand shocks according to the current account adjustments in the Euro Area member countries. Our results indicate that while the prices and costs related determinants of external competitiveness affected current account adjustments primarily during the pre-crisis period, demand drivers shaped current account balances mainly during the crisis period.

Understanding which market to invest in for a well-diversified portfolio is fundamental in economies that are highly vulnerable to fluctuations in exchange rates. Extant literature that has considered phenomenon hardly juxtapose the markets. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of exchange rate volatility on the Stock and Real Estate market of South Africa. The essence is to determine whether the fluctuations in the exchange rate influence the markets prices differently.

The Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity [GARCH (1.1)] model was used in establishing the effect of exchange rate volatility on both markets. This study used monthly South African data between 2000 and 2020.

The results of this study showed that increased exchange rate volatility increases stock market volatility but decreases real-estate market volatility, both of which revealed weak influences from the exchange rates volatility.

This study has implication for policy in using the exchange rate as a policy tool to attract foreign portfolio investment. The weak volatility transmission from the exchange rate market to the stock and real estate market indicates that there is prospect for foreign investors to diversify their investments in these two markets.

This study investigated which of the assets market, stock or housing market do better in volatile exchange rate conditions in South Africa.

The aim of this study is to examine whether China’s exchange rate follows an equilibrium process and consequently to answer the question of whether or not China’s international competitiveness fluctuates in consistency with equilibrium.

The theoretical background of the paper relies on the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) hypothesis, while the econometric methodology is mainly based on a nonlinear two-regime Threshold Autoregressive (TAR) unit root test.

The main finding is that China’s price competitiveness was not constantly following a disequilibrium process. The two-regime threshold model shows that PPP equilibrium was confirmed in periods of relatively high – compared to the estimated threshold – rate of real yuan appreciation. Moreover, it is implied that the fixed exchange rate regime cannot ensure external balance since it can neither establish equilibrium in the foreign exchange market, nor confirm that China’s international competitiveness adjustment follows an equilibrium process.

The results do not imply that China acts as a currency manipulator. However, a main policy implication of the paper is that China should continue appreciating the yuan to establish external balance.

This paper is the first which accounts for a nonlinear two-regime process toward a threshold, which is defined to be the rate of change in China’s international competitiveness. Consequently, the paper draws attention to the role of China’s international competiveness in accepting the PPP hypothesis.

This paper aims to empirically investigate the sources of real exchange rate fluctuations in Egypt using structural vector autoregression (SVAR). The data covers the period between 1980 and 2016, where exchange regime has been changed more than once.

This paper investigates the source of real exchange rate fluctuations for the period between 1980 and 2016 using the SVAR method. The SVAR method will incorporate real gross domestic product (GDP), real effective exchange rate (REER) and price level in a multidimensional equations system. However, impulse response function (IRF) and error variance decompositions (EVDC) will be generated by the system to have a behavioral insight of real exchange rate in response to economic shocks.

The IRF and EVDC results indicate a significant impact of demand shocks over the real exchange rate relative to supply shocks and monetary shocks in the period between 1980 and 2016. On the other hand, monetary shocks will have a negligible effect on the real exchange rate in the short run and converging to its previous level in the covering period of the study.

In the best of the authors' knowledge, the topic of the source of the real exchange rate fluctuations in Egypt has not been discussed in a wide range due to the lack of time series data. However, this study provides constructed data for REER for Egypt with the published method in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Furthermore, the study involves theoretical and econometric modeling to ensure the reliability of the economic results.