NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH
NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH

The Long-Run U.S./U.K. Real Exchange Rate

Charles Engel, Chang-Jin Kim

NBER Working Paper No. 5777*
Issued in September 1996
NBER Program(s):   IFM

We investigate the behavior of the long-run U.S./U.K. real exchange rate from 1885 to 1995. Our long-run real exchange rate series is derived from an unobserved components model which divides the real exchange rate into permanent and transitory components. The transitory component is modeled as having variances which switch, according to a Markov-switching process, among low, medium and high variance states. The underlying assumptions of our time-series model are based on an economic theory in which the permanent component represents real influences, while the transitory component represents primarily short-run movements due to nominal exchange rate fluctuations. Because the model is difficult to estimate by standard methods, we describe how the method of Gibbs sampling can handle this model. We find that our long-run real exchange rate series moves similarly to other measures proposed in the literature based on economic models.

*Published: Investigation", Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 32, no. 1 (1993):35-50. Published as "The Trade Balance and Real Exchange Rate Under Currency Substitution", Journal of International Money and Finance, Vol. 8, no. 1(1989): 47-58. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 31 (1999): 335-355. Published as "Accounting for U.S. Real Exchange Rate Changes", Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, no. 3 (June 1999): 507-538. Published as "Real Exchange Rates and Relative Prices: An Empirical

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