Apertura, productividad y gasto agregado: un modelo de fundamentos del tipo de cambio real

The Uruguayan economy has undergone over the past two decades an important growth process, together with a real appreciation of the domestic currency. This implied that the Real Exchange Rate (RER), calculated as TP/NTP, experienced important changes. From this phenomenon, this paper examines the evolution of the price competitiveness of the economy in light of the possible presence of "Balassa-Smuelson Effect" and a change in the economy's pattern of international integration, in a context of income growth and aggregate expenditure, through the methodology proposed by Johansen. Thus, we found a long-term relationship between the RER, the differential in labor productivity between the Uruguayan and U.S. economies, goods extra-regional exports and the economy's consumption. Furthermore, we found that the elasticities of RER to its long-term fundamentals lie in line with the theory and concludes that the equilibrium real exchange rate has fallen in the last two decades due to the movement of its fundamentals.