Spillover Effects Of Exchange Rates PDF Download

We study spillover of monetary policy uncertainty shock from the US to other economies with different exchange rate regimes. A surge of monetary policy uncertainty in the US incurs contractionary consequences in other economies and decreases output, consumption, and stock market prices. Such effect is prevalent in fixed exchange rate regimes while flexible exchange rate regimes do not undergo the economic downturn. This is coupled with elevated uncertainty in fixed exchange rate regimes, while floating exchange rate regimes do not exhibit any change in uncertainty. We attribute this to the nature of flexible exchange rate regime and interpret that monetary autonomy in flexible regimes prevents direct spillover of foreign uncertainty shocks, especially those associated with interest rates. Unlike previous studies which point out the shock-absorbing role of flexible exchange rates via exchange rate depreciation, which we call the “exchange rate channel,” we focus on how monetary autonomy of flexible rate regime shuts down the transmission of monetary policy uncertainty from the US to local economy, the “uncertainty channel.” We show that shutting down the “uncertainty channel” dominates the “exchange rate channel” in flexible exchange rate regimes in terms of mitigating the spillover effects of foreign uncertainty shock.