Reconsidering the Structural Stability of the Real Exchange Rates

The properties of the historical real exchange rate series constructed in Taylor have been re-examined in this paper. Focusing on two significant sources of bias (structural change and small sample bias), our results do not support for Taylor’s claim that the abrupt changes which occurred throughout the twentieth century (political, economic, institutional, and so on) do not have any effect on the persistence of the real exchange rates. Our results indicate that both the assumption of structural stability and the hypothesis of nominal exchange rate neutrality are violated. The degree of shock persistence shows remarkable heterogeneity between and within monetary regimes. As a consequence, the monetary policymakers’ decisions seem to have a substantial impact on the different reverting dynamics.