This paper revisits the contentious relationship between real exchange rate (RER) movements and long-run economic growth through a novel focus on sustained misalignments. Using a large panel dataset covering 124 countries from 1950 to 2019, we establish formal criteria to identify episodes of sustained RER undervaluation and overvaluation. Employing semiparametric estimation methods, event-study approaches, and robustness checks, we find consistent evidence that sustained undervaluations are associated with significant long-run expansions in real GDP per capita, particularly in developing economies. These effects are transmitted mainly through increases in the capital stock and shifts in the composition of spending towards investment. Conversely, overvaluation episodes tend to have weaker and more heterogeneous negative effects, although they tend to contribute to de-industrialisation through declines in the share of low-tech manufacturing exports. Our findings highlight the critical role of relative price dynamics in shaping structural transformation and challenge conventional views that undervaluations are merely distortive. By emphasising the historical and expectation-driven dimensions of RER movements, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the effect of exchange rate levels on economic growth in general and the trajectories of developing economies in particular.

An important body of literature explores the political economy reasons underlying delays in macroeconomic stabilization. This paper develops a framework to analyze the conflict between two risk-averse groups of economic actors, one that has an endowment of internationally tradable goods and another that is endowed with nontradable goods: both endowments require imported inputs to consume. The focus is on the exchange rate policy in a developing country setup, where the government employs seigniorage revenue to finance prestabilization spending, and faces fiscal and balance of payments problems that necessitate stabilization with a step devaluation. Trade misinvoicing, the presence of exchange rate uncertainty and its interaction with import costs, the role of forward-looking expectations, and the possibility of foreign/IMF aid influence the likelihood, timing, and terms of a consensus on stabilization in interesting ways. Crucially, given instrument uncertainty, delays may occur even if both sets of agents have perfect foresight and nontradable endowment-holders realize that their relative position deteriorates over time.

Whether or not the money supply is endogenously determined in response to demand variations has been the subject of recent debates. Regardless of the answer to this question, central banks can and do react to cyclical fluctuations, and their responses, in turn, affect the balance of payments and the foreign asset position. We explore the feasibility of a counter-cyclical monetary policy rule in a small open-economy portfolio balance set-up where assets are imperfect substitutes, capacity utilization endogenously adjusts in a neo-Kaleckian manner to clear the goods market, the exchange rate is flexible, and prices are fixed. This set-up, under some non-restrictive conditions, generates a stable steady-state solution, suggesting that a monetary policy based on a counter-cyclical interest-rate rule is a viable option for macroeconomic stabilization.

Developing country inflation is in the headlines again. Mainstream macroeconomics typically ignores the role of conflict while non-mainstream work tends to ignore macroeconomic constraints. This paper revisits the issue employing a dependent economy framework with eclectic characteristics. Specifically, I explore the mechanisms that propagate both real and monetary sources of inflation in the presence of real wage resistance and distributional conflict. The analysis shows that the inability to pay for subsidies with taxes or bond issuance in a stylized developing economy could create a situation where a relatively small shock leads to sustained and accelerating inflation and a wage-price spiral, thanks to conflicting claims on income. Subsidies to protect consumers from external price shocks could, similarly, leave a country vulnerable to accelerating wage-price spirals as the stabilizing relative price effects of a declining foreign asset position are dampened. Distributional conflict thus plays the role of sustainer rather than the primum mobile. Price controls could, in theory, better enable inflation management if these do not result in redistribution toward spenders. Such controls, however, create other trade-offs for countries facing balance-of-payments fragility.

Voluminous theoretical and empirical research shows that real exchange rate (RER) undervaluation could be conducive to economic development. Why do countries then often avoid the pursuit of policies that facilitate undervaluation or even intentionally pursue RER overvaluation? We address this question by investigating economic, institutional, and policy factors that help explain the within-country variation in RER undervaluation in a baseline panel of 68 developing and 39 developed countries between 1989–2013 using OLS and GMM estimators. Our results indicate that increases in the share of non-tradable sector output, imported input intensity of exports, and capital account openness is systematically associated with less undervalued RERs. We also provide evidence that independent central banks and democratic institutions are linked to RER overvaluation. Our key findings are robust to using alternative specifications, measures, estimation techniques, samples, and additional control variables. A preliminary comparison of Latin America and East Asia suggests interesting support for our key findings.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has recently received significant attention in academic and policy circles. Critics question the sustainability of MMT-prescribed approaches to fiscal and monetary policy, especially over extended periods of time, in the presence of international financial markets, and for developing country governments that borrow in foreign currency. I formalize some of these arguments using a dynamic, open economy, Tobin-Markowitz portfolio balance environment that takes into account: (1) the role of expectations in the foreign exchange market and the feedback mechanisms between these and the exchange rate and inflation, and (2) interactions between the current account, debt accumulation, and the goods market. I show that continuous monetary accommodation of fiscal policy by a consolidated authority that operates along MMT-prescribed lines is likely to generate instability and make it hard to maintain full employment with stable inflation. Importantly, this is true even in the absence of rational forward-looking expectations or sovereign foreign indebtedness.

Voluminous theoretical and empirical research shows that real exchange rate (RER) undervaluation could be conducive to economic development. Why do countries then often avoid the pursuit of policies that facilitate undervaluation or even intentionally pursue RER overvaluation? We address this question by investigating the economic/structural, institutional/political, and policy factors that explain the within-country variation in RER undervaluation in a baseline panel of 68 developing and 39 developed countries between 1988 and 2012 using OLS and GMM estimators. Our results indicate that the sectoral structure of the economy, functional distribution of income, the dependence of exports on imported inputs, the degree of central bank independence, balance sheet vulnerabilities, and technological sophistication are important determinants of RER levels. Our key results are robust to using alternative measures, estimation techniques, different samples, and additional control variables.

I develop the implications for capital accumulation, the trade balance, and real exchange rate cycles of different policy preferences, focusing in particular on broad stylized features of major Latin American and East Asian economies. Recent development literature has renewed interest in real exchange rate policy and the desirability of avoiding overvaluations. Political science literature, on the other hand, has emphasized the role of factors such as the influence of the manufacturing sector and the nature of the work force in shaping exchange rate policy. I formalize and relate some of these insights in a simple, dynamic, developing country framework with policy makers who intertemporally optimize and voters/audiences that are myopic. Given the choice between assigning greater weight to: (1) raising immediate worker purchasing power or (2) generating wage increases and manufacturing employment over time , I show that developing countries where policy makers choose the former are more likely to experience cycles with overvaluation, trade deficits, and abrupt (postponed) devaluations. Moreover, these cyclical differences may help explain differences in structural evolution over longer periods of time.

This paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on the effects of the real exchange rate (RER) on international trade, economic development and growth. We summarize the main conceptual issues, discuss the relevance of the RER as an instrument of development policy, provide an overview of the macroeconomic and microeconomic mechanisms that link the RER to trade and long run growth and development, analyze the challenges – especially the disconnect between theory and data -that often arise in empirical applications, and present new avenues for future research. In the process, we present some updated estimates and illustrative figures. The mechanisms through which the RER influences long-run growth and structural change outcomes remains a promising area of research and the relevance of individual channels in different contexts deserves much more careful investigation. Greater data availability should help fill some of these gaps in our understanding.

Unilateral euroization by developing economies is underexplored even in comparison to unilateral dollarization (taken to mean the adoption of the US dollar as legal tender). This paper attempts to help fill this gap in the literature by investigating the case of Montenegro, which is one of the two countries/regions that have unilaterally adopted the euro as the legal tender. Montenegro's limited monetary policy options make the nature of business cycles important. The evidence presented here suggests that Montenegro has a low degree of synchronization, limited structural similarity, and weak trade integration with the Eurozone. Moreover, there is little evidence for diversification or endogenous structural assimilation following euroization. The case for currency union is weak for Montenegro and appears to be defensible only on grounds of policy credibility. This has important implications for euroization, development policy, and structural change.

Abstract This paper discusses some of the intertemporal political economy issues that arise in the pursuit of real undervaluation to achieve more rapid development. Policy makers face a trade-off between achieving a capital stock target in a given amount of time on the one hand and boosting real wages in the short-run, on the other. This generates a trilemma whereby development-focused policy makers can choose to pursue two out of three desirables: (1) use the real exchange rate as an instrument of development policy, (2) meet the development target within a politically relevant time frame, and (3) maintain political stability. The optimal path under a policy with “unambitious” aims will resemble the typical electoral business cycle trajectory whereby policy makers maintain real overvaluation over much of the cycle. By contrast, achieving ambitious capital stock/development targets within a relatively short time requires the potentially unpopular strategy of choosing a highly undervalued real exchange rate at the beginning of the planning horizon and gradually increasing the degree of undervaluation thereafter as wages rise. Relevant structural differences between countries imply different initial levels of real undervaluation, distinct optimal trajectories over time, and hence, varying degrees of trade-offs.

We study the extent to which countries undergo structural change during and after episodes of sustained investment surges. In particular, we explore the evolution of trade flows, considering (i) exports sophistication or complexity, (ii) exports diversification, and (iii) capital goods imports. Using the episodes identified by Libman et al. (2019), we document the heterogeneous nature of these episodes and find that, while imports of capital goods increase, they are not systematically related to changes in sophistication, complexity and diversification of exports, at least for the available sample of 130 episodes over the period 1962-2014. High investment may often be a necessary but not sufficient condition for structural change.

Standard open economy macro models with unemployment predict a contractionary short-run effect of international capital inflows. Empirical evidence, moreover, often associates such inflows with short-term booms and developing country policy makers frequently go out of their way to welcome foreign capital. Employing a portfolio balance framework, this paper distinguishes between international financial (i.e., bond) and "real" (i.e., equity) flows to explore the different consequences for capital accumulation that may follow over the medium-run. The presence of external economies of scale generates multiple equilibria and different kinds of capital flows may push investment in one direction or the other for sustained periods of time.

This paper employs variants of a simple framework to discuss the determination of sectoral output and relative prices in a stylized small open developing economy which consists of a traditional sector that produces non-tradables and a modern sector that produces internationally traded goods. The baseline model has the flavor of the traditional two-good dependent economy framework with surplus labor. I then introduce a series of modifications in the structure of the framework to (briefly) explore aspects such as distributional conflict, external balance constraints, capital account considerations, natural resource discoveries, and supply-side bottlenecks. The analysis demonstrates that the basic structure of the framework provides flexible tool for investigating important aspects of the development process in a small open economy. JEL classification: F41 ; F43 ; O11 ; O14

Real exchange rate policy can potentially be utilized to target the trade balance and/or development through capital accumulation. However, the presence of distributional conflict and the tradeoff between current and future trade imbalances complicates matters. For example, steps that address development/external account issues may influence income distribution in socially unacceptable ways. Comparative studies of the East Asian and Latin American development experiences serve to highlight this issue. I show that policy assignment matters for dynamic stability, that is, the simultaneous achievability of multiple targets. Moreover, the relative saving behavior of different functional income groups influences dynamic behavior. The analysis sheds light on why real exchange rate policy may often be infeasible, even if desirable from a developmental perspective.

Open-economy considerations that create the possibility of ‘beggar-thy-neighbor’ effects offer one explanation for why the relationship between distribution, demand, and growth may be complicated in the short run. Several authors have argued recently, however, that even if demand and growth are profit-led in many individual countries, the global economy is likely to be wage-led since the planet as a whole runs balanced trade. This paper shows that this argument, while intuitively appealing, does not hold up to careful examination. Although the world economy as a whole is a closed system, it is not isomorphic to a closed economy, thanks to repercussion effects, relative price movements, and cross-country heterogeneity. Using asymmetries in consumption as a simple illustrative device I show that, in a two-country world, the effects of global redistribution depend on the nature of the constituent economies. This conclusion holds in spite of balanced trade at a planetary level, and regardless of whether one or both economies have excess capacity or whether zero-sum effects are present or not.

Existing empirical studies have mainly focused on determinants of average investment levels. Instead, we investigate episodes of accelerated capital stock growth having a duration of eight years or longer. We find that episodes are relatively common, even in low-growth regions, but more so in middle-income and Asian countries. After identifying 175 episodes between 1950 and 2014, we employ probit analysis to explore their characteristics. Turning points in investment tend to be preceded by macroeconomic stability, real exchange rate undervaluation, and net capital outflows (especially portfolio outflows). We also find a negative correlation with the capital to output ratio and per capita GDP, and a positive correlation with a human capital index. Investment surges tend to be associated with changes in the trade balance and, to a (statistically) weaker extent, with structural change.