The term Purchasing Power Parity may date from the early twentieth century, when it was coined by the Swedish economist Gustav Cassel, but the underlying concept had been enjoying varying degrees of success since its development in sixteenth century Spain. Even towards the end of the twentieth century, and especially since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates, PPP and the stability of real exchange rates continued to be the subject of academic debate. This volume brings together essays covering aspects of current thinking on Purchasing Power Parity, from the various ways in which to test for its existence, to its appearance in different economies around the world, to examinations of the explanations given when PPP does not appear to hold This book was published as a special issue of Applied Financial Economics. The academic editor of this journal is Mark P. Taylor.

Table of contents

We examine the mean-reverting properties of real exchange rates, by comparing the unit root properties of a group of international real exchange rates with two groups of intra-national real exchange rates. Strikingly, we find that while the international real rates taken as a group appear mean-reverting, the intra-national rates are not. This is consistent with the view that while monetary shocks may be mean-reverting over the medium term, underlying real factors do generate long-term trends in real exchange rates.

Discusses economic issues associated with exchange rates, commodity prices, the economic size of countries and alternatives to PPP exchange rates.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject Business economics - Investment and Finance, grade: 1,3, University of Hull, language: English, abstract: The Swedish economist Gustav Cassel developed his theory of Purchasing Power Parity (henceforth PPP) more than 80 years. Ago, and today it is still an essential part of the framework for forecasting exchange rates, which includes parity conditions in international finance. International parity conditions imply purchasing power parity, the Fisher effect, the interest rate parity theory and the expectations theory. “They are the set of equilibrium relationships which should hold between product prices, interest rates, and spot and forward exchange rates assuming a freely floating exchange system.” (Demirag and Goddard, 1994, 70) Unfortunately, these theories do not always work out in reality, especially in times of financial crisis. However, they give us a central understanding of how and why multinational business is related in the world. Sometimes, “the mistake is not always in the theory itself, but in the way it is interpreted or applied in practice” (Eitemann et.al., 2004, 133). This essay will take a detailed look at PPP, its theoretical perspective, and the empirical evidence for it. [...]

This book presents an extensive survey of the theory and empirics of international parity conditions which are critical to our understanding of the linkages between world markets and the movement of interest and exchange rates across countries. The book falls into three parts dealing with the theory, methods of econometric testing and existing empirical evidence. Although it is intended to provide a consensus view on the subject, the authors also make some controversial propositions, particularly on the purchasing power parity conditions.