IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v71y2004i2p441-458.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why Are Real Interest Rates Not Equalized Internationally?

Author

Listed:
  • S. Young Chung
  • William J. Crowder

Abstract

In this study, we specify a set of sufficient parity conditions for real interest rates to be equalized internationally, what we call real interest parity (RIP). Using multivariate unit root tests, which have significantly greater power than univariate alternatives, we demonstrate that these sufficient conditions are not satisfied for five industrialized nations over the period of 1960‐1996. We then examine each parity condition individually to shed some light on the source of the rejection of RIP. Our results suggest that no single violation can explain the failure of RIP in all cases. It does appear, however, that the Fisher relation is the least likely to violate the RIP equilibrium, whereas uncovered interest parity (UIP) appears to be the most commonly violated. This result is consistent with a nonstationary risk premium in the foreign exchange market.

Suggested Citation

  • S. Young Chung & William J. Crowder, 2004. "Why Are Real Interest Rates Not Equalized Internationally?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 71(2), pages 441-458, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:71:y:2004:i:2:p:441-458
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2004.tb00649.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2004.tb00649.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2004.tb00649.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark, Nelson C., 1985. "Some evidence on the international inequality of real interest rates," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 4(2), pages 189-208, June.
    2. Kremers, Jeroen J M & Ericsson, Neil R & Dolado, Juan J, 1992. "The Power of Cointegration Tests," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 54(3), pages 325-348, August.
    3. Newbold, Paul & Wohar, Mark E. & Rayner, Tony & Kellard, Neil & Ennew, Christine, 1998. "Two puzzles in the analysis of foreign exchange market efficiency," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 95-111.
    4. Malliaropulos, Dimitrios, 2000. "A note on nonstationarity, structural breaks, and the Fisher effect," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 695-707, May.
    5. Zivot, Eric & Andrews, Donald W K, 2002. "Further Evidence on the Great Crash, the Oil-Price Shock, and the Unit-Root Hypothesis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 25-44, January.
    6. Crowder, William J & Hoffman, Dennis L, 1996. "The Long-Run Relationship between Nominal Interest Rates and Inflation: The Fisher Equation Revisited," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 28(1), pages 102-118, February.
    7. Elliott, Graham & Rothenberg, Thomas J & Stock, James H, 1996. "Efficient Tests for an Autoregressive Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 813-836, July.
    8. Mishkin, Frederic S., 1992. "Is the Fisher effect for real? : A reexamination of the relationship between inflation and interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 195-215, November.
    9. Hansen, Bruce E., 1995. "Rethinking the Univariate Approach to Unit Root Testing: Using Covariates to Increase Power," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(5), pages 1148-1171, October.
    10. Taylor, Mark P. & Sarno, Lucio, 1998. "The behavior of real exchange rates during the post-Bretton Woods period," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 281-312, December.
    11. Kugler, Peter & Neusser, K, 1993. "International Real Interest Rate Equalization: A Multivariate Time-Series Approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(2), pages 163-174, April-Jun.
    12. Crowder, William J., 1996. "The international convergence of inflation rates during fixed and floating exchange rate regimes," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 551-575, August.
    13. Serena Ng & Pierre Perron, 2001. "LAG Length Selection and the Construction of Unit Root Tests with Good Size and Power," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1519-1554, November.
    14. Koustas, Zisimos & Serletis, Apostolos, 1999. "On the Fisher effect," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1), pages 105-130, August.
    15. Marston, Richard C., 1997. "Tests of three parity conditions: Distinguishing risk premia and systematic forecast errors," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 285-303, April.
    16. Dutton, Marilyn Miller, 1993. "Real interest rate parity new measures and tests," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 62-77, February.
    17. Jorion, Philippe, 1996. "Does real interest parity hold at longer maturities?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(1-2), pages 105-126, February.
    18. William J. Crowder & Mark E. Wohar, 1999. "Are Tax Effects Important in the Long‐Run Fisher Relationship? Evidence from the Municipal Bond Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(1), pages 307-317, February.
    19. Johansen, Soren, 1991. "Estimation and Hypothesis Testing of Cointegration Vectors in Gaussian Vector Autoregressive Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(6), pages 1551-1580, November.
    20. Horvath, Michael T.K. & Watson, Mark W., 1995. "Testing for Cointegration When Some of the Cointegrating Vectors are Prespecified," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(5), pages 984-1014, October.
    21. Johansen, Soren, 1988. "Statistical analysis of cointegration vectors," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 12(2-3), pages 231-254.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2023. "Drivers of inflation convergence across countries: the role of standard gravity variables," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(6), pages 1664-1686, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher J. Neely & David E. Rapach, 2008. "Real interest rate persistence: evidence and implications," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 90(Nov), pages 609-642.
    2. Christou, Christina & Gupta, Rangan & Nyakabawo, Wendy & Wohar, Mark E., 2018. "Do house prices hedge inflation in the US? A quantile cointegration approach," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 15-26.
    3. Rapach, David E. & Wohar, Mark E., 2002. "Testing the monetary model of exchange rate determination: new evidence from a century of data," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 359-385, December.
    4. Giorgio Canarella & Luis A. Gil‐Alana & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2022. "The behaviour of real interest rates: New evidence from a 'suprasecular' perspective," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 46-64, April.
    5. Erik Hjalmarsson & Pär Österholm, 2010. "Testing for cointegration using the Johansen methodology when variables are near-integrated: size distortions and partial remedies," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 51-76, August.
    6. Rapach, David E. & Weber, Christian E., 2004. "Are real interest rates really nonstationary? New evidence from tests with good size and power," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 409-430, September.
    7. Chowdhury, Khorshed, 2012. "Modelling the dynamics, structural breaks and the determinants of the real exchange rate of Australia," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 343-358.
    8. R. Santos Alimi, 2014. "ARDL Bounds Testing Approach to Cointegration: A Re-Examination of Augmented Fisher Hypothesis in an Open Economy," Asian Journal of Economic Modelling, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 2(2), pages 103-114, June.
    9. Ekaterini Panopoulou, 2005. "A Resolution of the Fisher Effect Puzzle: A Comparison of Estimators," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2005 18, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    10. Neil R. Ericsson & James G. MacKinnon, 2002. "Distributions of error correction tests for cointegration," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 5(2), pages 285-318, June.
    11. Arghyrou, Michael G. & Gregoriou, Andros & Kontonikas, Alexandros, 2009. "Do real interest rates converge? Evidence from the European union," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 447-460, July.
    12. Jesús Clemente & María Dolores Gadea & Antonio Montañés & Marcelo Reyes, 2017. "Structural Breaks, Inflation and Interest Rates: Evidence from the G7 Countries," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-17, February.
    13. Ching-Chuan Tsong & Cheng-Feng Lee, 2013. "Further Evidence On Real Interest Rate Equalization: Panel Information, Non-Linearities And Structural Changes," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65, pages 85-105, May.
    14. Zixiong Xie & Shyh-Wei Chen & An-Chi Wu, 2023. "Real interest rate parity in the Pacific Rim countries: new empirical evidence," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(3), pages 1471-1515, March.
    15. Erik Hjalmarsson & Pär Österholm, 2007. "A residual-based cointegration test for near unit root variables," International Finance Discussion Papers 907, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    16. Booth, G. Geoffrey & Ciner, Cetin, 2001. "The relationship between nominal interest rates and inflation: international evidence," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 269-280, July.
    17. Kühl, Michael, 2010. "Bivariate cointegration of major exchange rates, cross-market efficiency and the introduction of the Euro," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-19, January.
    18. Balcilar, Mehmet & Gupta, Rangan & Miller, Stephen M., 2015. "Regime switching model of US crude oil and stock market prices: 1859 to 2013," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 317-327.
    19. Sonora, Robert J., 2008. "Bivariate relative city price convergence in the United States: 1918-1997," Review of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 92-111.
    20. Aviral Tiwari & Muhammad Shahbaz, 2014. "Revisiting Purchasing Power Parity for India using threshold cointegration and nonlinear unit root test," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 117-133, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:71:y:2004:i:2:p:441-458. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.