Persistent Real Exchange Rates1

Daqing Luo provided excellent research assistance. Both authors would like to thank SSHRC for grants which facilitated this research. Three features of the international exchange rate data that are widely known are: (a) a high correlation between bilateral nominal and real exchange rates; (b) real exchange rate movements are highly persistent; and (c) real exchange rates are highly volatile. This paper attempts a joint, albeit partial, rationalization of these facts in an environment with no staggered contracts and where prices are preset for only one quarter. There are two key innovations in the paper. First, we augment a standard two-country open economy model with learning-by-doing in production at the firm level. This induces monopolistically competitive firms to endogeneize the productivity effect of their price setting behavior. Specifically, firms endogenously choose not to adjust prices by the full proportion of a positive monetary shock in order to take advantage of the productivity benefits of higher production. Second, we introduce habits in leisure. This makes the labor supply decision dynamic and adds an additonal source of propagation. We show that the calibrated model can quantitatively reproduce significant fractions of the aforementioned facts. Moreover, as in the data, the model also produces a positive correlation between the terms of trade and the nominal exchange rate