This paper empirically evaluates the potentially non-linear nexus between financial indicators and the distribution of future GDP growth, using a rich set of macroeconomic and financial variables covering 13 advanced economies. We evaluate the out-of-sample forecast performance of financial variables for GDP growth, including a fully real-time exercise based on a flexible non-parametric model. We also use a parametric model to estimate the moments of the time-varying distribution of GDP and evaluate their in-sample estimation uncertainty. Our overall conclusion is pessimistic: Moments other than the conditional mean are poorly estimated, and no predictors we consider provide robust and precise advance warnings of tail risks or indeed about any features of the GDP growth distribution other than the mean. In particular, financial variables contribute little to such distributional forecasts, beyond the information contained in real indicators.
Working paper (July 2, 2020)
Online supplement (July 2, 2020)
We propose a 'dominant currency paradigm' with three key features: dominant currency pricing, pricing complementarities, and imported inputs in production. We test this paradigm using a new data set of bilateral price and volume indices for more than 2,500 country pairs that covers 91% of world trade, as well as detailed firm-product-country data for Colombian exports and imports. In strong support of the paradigm we find that: (1) Non-commodities terms of trade are uncorrelated with exchange rates. (2) The dollar exchange rate quantitatively dominates the bilateral exchange rate in price pass-through and trade elasticity regressions, and this effect is increasing in the share of imports invoiced in dollars. (3) U.S. import volumes are significantly less sensitive to bilateral exchange rates, compared to other countries' imports. (4) A 1% U.S. dollar appreciation against all other currencies predicts a 0.6% decline within a year in the volume of total trade between countries in the rest of the world, controlling for the global business cycle. We characterize the transmission of, and spillovers from, monetary policy shocks in this environment.
Working paper (November 10, 2019)
Online appendix (November 10, 2019)
"Global Trade and the Dollar" working paper (April 13, 2018)Based on merging "Global Trade and the Dollar" with a pre-existing paper called "Dominant Currency Paradigm" by Casas, Diez, Gopinath & Gourinchas.