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This paper adopts a flexible framework to assess both short- and long-run business cycle linkages between the Latin American (LA) bloc and the four largest economies in the world (namely the US, the Euro area, Japan and China) over the period 1980:I-2011:IV. The result indicates that the LA region is largely dependent on external developments, especially in the years after the great recession of 2008 and 2009. The trade channel appears to be the most important source of business cycle co-movement, whilst capital flows are found to have a limited role, especially in the very short run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates some of the common features of the exchange rate dynamics as an indicator of monetary policy coordination in selected Latin American countries-Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela. The empirical results indicate that these countries have long term common trends and do share short term common cycles in their exchange rates. While the results demonstrate a comovement in trend components, all seven countries do not exhibit synchronous comovement in cyclical components. In this direction, we find two groups-a group of five countries (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru) that demonstrate a strong comovement and a group of two countries (Argentine and Venezuela) that show just an opposite movement than that of the former group. Our results do not suggest any qualitative differences in the trajectory of common trend and common cycles when considering for different sub-periods. Taking both trend and cyclical behaviors into account our analysis does support for monetary policy coordination between Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico and Peru. Relinquishing exchange rate independence might be costly for Argentina and Venezuela. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Official reserves have increased to unprecedented levels since the mid-1990s, particularly in developing economies. One of the reasons ascribed for accumulating official reserves is the so-called mercantilist motive. This motive is seen as a part of an active industrial policy in the sense that these resources allow the monetary authorities to maintain a stable and undervalued real exchange rate, promoting economic growth and development via the tradable goods sector. In this paper we attempt to assess this motive using data for ten selected Latin American economies during the period 1996–2011. Unlike most previous work done on this topic, we consider official reserves as one of the determinants of the real exchange rate. Our econometric findings indicate that international reserves in the region appreciate the real exchange rate. This result suggests that the strategy of hoarding reserves in Latin America has not promoted economic growth and development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past two decades, Latin American currencies have faced not only pressure to devalue but also periods of uncomfortable appreciation. Domestic macroeconomic factors, as well as global events and contagion, might bear part of the responsibility. This study constructs a monthly index of exchange market pressure (EMP) for four Latin American countries before using vector autoregressive methods to test the influence of commodity prices, macroeconomic variables, and external factors on each country's index. While inflation is an important determinant of EMP, we conclude that Chile and Peru are more likely than Mexico and Brazil to face pressure when commodity prices fall. This supports the idea that these two countries have “commodity currencies” and that their exchange markets are most vulnerable to international contagion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study applies the Sequential Panel Selection Method (SPSM), proposed by Chortareas and Kapetanios (2009) to test the validity of long-run purchasing power parity (PPP) in a sample of 15 Latin American countries using monthly data spanning from December 1994 to February 2010. SPSM classifies the whole panel into a group of stationary and nonstationary series. In doing so, we can clearly identify how many and which series in the panel are stationary processes. Empirical results from the SPSM using the Panel KSS unit root test (Ucar and Omay, 2009) with a Fourier function which accounts for any structural break in the data indicate that PPP holds in many of the Latin American countries studied. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Exchange rates forecasting performance is tested by a model which incorporates endogenous monetary policy through a Taylor rule reaction function. Other usual monetary and equilibrium empirical exchange rate models are also evaluated for comparison purposes. Predictability is tested by comparing the models to a benchmark random walk specification. We contribute to the recent literature in many ways. First, we include models of forward-looking endogenous monetary policy to the exchange rate forecasting exercise, the Taylor model. Second, our data, set across countries, is uniform in terms of economies adopting both inflation targeting and a flexible exchange rate. Third, our study sheds light on exchange rate determinants for emerging economies: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Mexico. Our results show strong predictability evidence for the Taylor model and indicate that assuming models of endogenous monetary policy and the present value of expected fundamentals is a rewarding strategy to model exchange rate determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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