Exchange Rate Pass-Through and Structural Macroeconomic Shocks in Developing Countries: An Empirical Investigation

This paper investigates the exchange rate pass-through in 12 developing countries during the period 1980-2001 by adopting a new formulation . Rather than considering the traditional approach based on the exogenous exchange rate movement through correlation between exchange rate and prices, we focus on fundamental macroeconomic shocks that a¤ect both exchange rate and prices. In order to do that, we employ long-run restrictions à la Blanchard and Quah (1989) to identify the di¤erent shocks through an open economic macroeconomic model (ISLM framework). We use two empirical methodology : Structural VECM methodology used by Jang and Ogaki (2004) and the common trends approach proposed by Warne et al (1992). This allows us to calculate the pass-through as the responses of the exchange rate, CPI and import prices to the supply, the relative demand, the nominal and the foreign prices shocks. We show that the pass-through ratio in developing countries is di¤erent when considering di¤erent structural shocks.