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April 27, 2005
Declining pass-through and the widening trade deficit
Catharine L. Mann and Katharina Pluck have an interesting op-ed in the NY Times which concludes as follows:
Several factors help explain America's lower pass-through rate. Reduced inflation around the world has made prices less volatile, enabling exporters to ride out currency fluctuations without changing prices. As the United States imports more consumer goods (which have a lower pass-through rate compared with commodities), the overall pass-through rate for American imports has fallen. But perhaps most important, exporters don't want to risk losing market share in the large and competitive American market - even if that means decreasing their own profit margins to keep prices stable in the United States.
Low pass-through means that Americans have not yet lost their purchasing power abroad despite the dollar depreciation, and therefore we can continue to enjoy living beyond our means. Over the long run, though, the enormous trade imbalance is not sustainable. Low pass-through means that it will take a much bigger drop in the dollar to change prices enough to induce switching and correct the trade deficit. In fact, our colleague Ted Truman calculates that between the depreciation of the dollar and the loss in spending power, this adjustment could end up costing every American $2,350. The larger the eventual depreciation, and the longer we wait, the greater our postponed pain promises to be.
I can't find Truman's study on the IIE website, but I wonder if that $2350 is spread out over time (higher prices, etc.). Also, you have to admit that we are benefitting in the current situation. What goes around comes around, right? But it is instructive to remember that things will not stay this way forever. We should be increasing national savings to smooth these fluctuations more than we are. To the extent that they make that point, I agree. But we could use more research on the effects of globalization on pass-through and the prevalence of pricing to market.
Posted by William Polley at April 27, 2005 04:46 PM
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Comments
truman paper is still in draft, alas
Posted by: brad at April 28, 2005 11:53 AM
I watch the price index for consumer goods excluding oil and autos -- most other components of the import price index are goods where the dollar has very little impact on prices(like oil) -- and it has increased from a low of 97.9 to 99.7,not a very big impact. Moreover, there is no evidence that retailers have passed this price increase through as the deflator for department store type goods is still falling.
Posted by: spencer at April 30, 2005 01:10 PM