A Cointegration Analysis of Purchasing Power Parity and Country Risk

Abstract

This paper examines purchasing power parity (PPP) for 61 countries using the panel cointegration method developed by Westerlund (2007). After controlling for cross-sectional dependence, the results show that weak PPP is stronger for Latin American countries and for countries with moderate country risk, defined in terms of political, economic, and financial components, with direct or indirect implications for the validity of PPP. Compared with a single country characteristic that might affect PPP as suggested in the literature, country risk captures more information for explaining the validity of the PPP hypothesis.