Financing investment in East Asia: Regional or global savings?

This paper investigates the extent to which domestic investment in East Asian countries is financed by domestic, (East Asian) regional and global savings in order to infer the relative importance of regional vs. global capital markets in East Asia. Panel regression results show that regional saving in East Asia plays a much more important role than global saving in financing investment in the region. The results suggest that global capital flows, despite its huge volume in East Asia, does not contribute to proper investment financing. The results also show that Japanese saving has significant effects on regional investment but Chinese saving does not.     

Determinants of bond market development in Asia

One of the major reasons behind the Asian financial crisis in 1997 was the excessive dependence of the Asian economies on commercial banks for domestic financing. The region failed to diversify its sources of corporate financing as it relied mainly on banks since its other types of financing, namely bond markets, were still underdeveloped and their sizes were quite small. On the other hand, the 2008 global financial crisis and the ongoing European debt crisis have led to constraints in acquiring local currency and foreign currency liquidity in the corporate sector in Asia as foreign banks withdrew investments from Asia. Furthermore, Asia needs large long term capital (US$ 750 billion per year for 2010–2020) for developing infrastructure connectivity within and across its economies. Local and regional capital can be channeled for long-term infrastructure projects and other productive investment through bond markets. Having a well-developed local currency bond markets can enhance the resilience of domestic financial sector to external shocks and it can facilitate better intermediation of savings into productive investments in Asia. To enhance corporate bond financing, it is important to examine factors that affect the effective development of bond markets in Asia. The study attempts to identify the determinants of bond market development in Asian economies through examining the relationship of bond issuance with selected key financial and economic factors. It also intends to provide policy recommendations for the further development of the Asian bond market. Major determinants for bond market development in Asia include the size of an economy, the stage of economic development, the openness of an economy, the exchange rate variability, the size of the banking system, and interest rate variability.     

Achieving greater financial independence for Latin America: A proposal

Financial intermediation development in Latin America illustrates the various ways in which the financial system may influence growth, efficiency, and welfare. Though the financial repression of earlier years has begun to be alleviated, much of the resulting growth of finance in Latin America has been concentrated within the countries or between them and the now-developed regions. Intraregional financial flows have been largely overlooked as an avenue for the increase of financial savings and of regional control over the mobilization and allocation of financial resources. This paper proposes the creation of new instruments designed to further the development of financial intermediation on a regional basis. A Latin American Development Bond programme is suggested which would increase the level of voluntary financial savings for regional development purposes and would reduce the present triangulation of credit flows through financial intermediaries outside of Latin America.     

Intranational Consumption Risk Sharing in South Korea: 2000–2016

This paper examines consumption risk sharing among 16 regions in South Korea over the 2000–2016 period. The empirical results show that 91.8 percent of shocks to gross regional domestic product are smoothed in South Korea. Capital markets, the tax‐transfer system and credit markets absorb 29.9, 28.9 and 33.0 percent of shocks to gross regional domestic product, respectively. Most notably, South Korea relies more on credit markets for risk sharing than capital markets, an opposite pattern to advanced countries like the USA, Canada and Australia. Furthermore, the patterns of consumption risk sharing are different before and after the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, and differences in regional industrial structure and local development can influence these patterns. This paper attempts to infer the connection between these findings and both the rapid economic growth of South Korea and the Asian and global financial crises.     

东亚金融一体化的动态及其收益

近年来，东亚一系列区域金融合作引起了学术界对地区金融一体化现状和收益的极大兴趣。文章基于价格和数量的测度考察了东亚地区金融一体化的程度：抛补利差和股权溢价的β收敛结果表明，危机之前东亚金融市场的全球和区域一体化并行，但在近几年，区域一体化趋势更强劲，超过了全球一体化；金融引力模型的结果表明，东亚主要的跨境金融投资者的区域内金融资产持有量比金融引力模型预测的水平更大。此外，面板回归确定了较高的金融一体化作为更广泛的金融发展的关键组成部分，会显著降低东亚国家对发达国家的经常账户失衡，因此，区域层面的金融一体化可以作为加强东亚国家的增长来源和提高经济弹性的重要政策路径。     

区域金融发展对企业投资效率的影响

基于中国情境探讨区域金融发展水平对企业投资效率的影响及其作用机制意义重大。基于2005—2021年我国A股上市公司年度数据和区域金融发展水平数据,分析地区金融发展水平对企业投资效率的影响,得到以下结论：①区域金融发展水平能够通过缓解企业融资约束显著促进企业投资效率提升,且这一结论具有稳健性;②区域金融发展水平对“投资不足”企业和“投资过度”企业的投资效率均具有显著促进作用,但这种促进作用具有明显的异质性,对东部和中部地区、行业竞争能力越强以及股权较为集中企业的促进作用更大;③经济政策不确定性在区域金融发展促进企业投资效率过程中起到负向调节作用。     

Three stokvel clubs in the urban black township of KwaNdangezi,Natal

Academic studies have neglected the financial aspect of the informal economy. This article examines saving among the poor and their savings institutions (stokvels). The black community is disadvantaged in the financial market by having limited access to formal sources of finance. Stokvels are important in filling this gap. A planning priority for South Africa is adequate financial provision for all its people. In financing the reconstruction of the economy, policies for enhancing savings and redirecting them into investment will prove crucial.     

Obstacles in attracting increased portfolio investment into southern Africa

Measured in terms of foreign participation in its domestic financial markets, the major part of southern Africa has to date been largely isolated from international financial markets and the process of financial globalisation. With the exception of South Africa and, to a lesser extent, Mauritius, the region receives negligible amounts of foreign portfolio investment. For the majority of countries, the main types of foreign capital inflows consist of development assistance and foreign direct investment. Foreign portfolio investment, which has hitherto remained largely untapped, may become important in future, especially in view of the dwindling international development assistance to the region. However, portfolio investment is volatile and can be relatively easily withdrawn, posing some financial risk to an economy that has to be managed. This article identifies and assesses possible obstacles to foreign portfolio investment in the region, which could be addressed over time in order to improve the region's competitiveness for foreign investment.     

Capital Markets and Capital Formation in Australia, 1945–1990

This survey article continues the author's examination of the interaction between domestic capital markets and capital formation by studying the 45 years after the end of World War II. (Part 1 appeared in AEHR 37 (3) 1997.) The significant rise and the sustained increase in the ratio of gross domestic capital formation to gross domestic product (GDP) posed challenges to local deposit taking institutions and capital markets to mobilize savings. The changing balance between public and private investment, and between investment by businesses and households, was reflected in the relative importance of government and private debt, and equity. The capital markets and financial institutions proved themselves to be adaptable enough to finance more than 90 per cent of postwar capital formation. However, the increasing inward and outward flows of foreign direct investment have weakened the nexus between the supply of domestic savings and capital formation.     

Savings and early economic growth in the United States and Japan

The period of early economic growth in both the United States (the antebellum period) and Japan (the Meiji period) was marked by a pronounced rise in the rates of domestic saving and investment. This paper decomposes the observed changes in saving/investment rates and shows that substantial components – about two-thirds in US and more than one-third in Japan – were due to unexplained shifts in the saving function. In turn we argue that an important factor behind the exogenous shift in savings and hence behind the rise in the net investment rate was the increased degree of financial intermediation in each country.     

U.S. current account debate with Japan then,with China now

This paper examines two U.S. current account deficit episodes, one in the 1980s and the other in the current 2000s, in which Japan and China, respectively, are the current account surplus countries that are criticized for contributing to the deficits. In both periods, U.S. policy makers pointed out the underdeveloped and closed financial markets of the current account surplus countries and advocated for these countries to fix the deficiencies, a position akin to the current “saving glut” argument. In both episodes, the current account surplus countries have criticized the United States for its low saving, especially public saving (the “Twin Deficit” argument). This paper presents empirical findings that are consistent with the Twin Deficit hypothesis; A one percentage point increase in the budget balance raises the current account balance by 0.10–0.49 percentage point for industrialized countries. The saving glut argument seems to be applicable only for countries with highly developed legal systems and open financial markets. While the United States has been experiencing a savings drought in both episodes, the Japanese current account surplus was driven by underinvestment in the 1980s and by over-saving during the 2000s. Furthermore, although the current Chinese current account surplus is driven by its over-saving, there is no evidence of excess domestic saving in the Asian emerging market countries; rather, they seem to have suffered from depressed investment in the wake of the 1997 financial crises.     

我国高储蓄率的成因及其对策探析

本文从储蓄结构深化研究我国高储蓄率的成因,提出降低我国储蓄率的思路主要是降低企业储蓄率和政府储蓄率。具体对策是尽快出台调整企业储蓄率政策;进一步完善社会保障体系;改革金融市场、健全金融机构及完善金融体制,还有合理调节收入分配差距。     

International effects of China's rise and transition: Neoclassical and Keynesian perspectives

Opinion over the global implications of China's rise is divided between critics and proponents. Critics see it as having developed at the expense of both investment and employment in the US, Europe and Japan. Proponents emphasise improvements in the terms of trade and reductions to the cost of financing that stem from China's supply of light manufactures, its demand for Western capital and luxury goods and its high saving. The criticism implies Keynesian assumptions while proponents take a neoclassical perspective. In this paper, both are embodied in a global macro-model that emphasises bilateral linkages via trade and investment, with monetary spill-overs represented by globally integrated bond markets. Net gains are suggested for the US and Europe from China's successful export-oriented growth, though there are partially offsetting Keynesian effects. China's recent slower, more consumption focussed, growth appears also to be beneficial in those regions and in Japan notwithstanding terms of trade losses.     

不改善金融结构 中国经济将没有出路

中国经济结构严重失衡有着深刻的社会、文化和经济政治体制背景,原因之一是要素市场未能充分发挥其在资源配置中的基础性作用,只有深化改革,打破劳动力、土地、资本等要素市场长期存在的体制性障碍,才能显著提高资源配置的效率。金融服务业体系迫切需要健全和完善。直接金融具有推动产业结构调整升级的天然优势。推进资本市场的科学发展需要下苦工夫:要坚定不移地深化发行和退市制度改革,加快发展多层次、多产品的资本市场体系,狠抓上市公司治理结构完善,以更大决心和更细致的服务培育机构投资者,不断提高市场效率,坚决守住不发生区域性系统性风险的底线。     

The limited role of small stock exchanges in economic development: A case study of Mozambique and Swaziland

The establishment of a successful stock market in a developing economy can provide a major source of development finance, both channelling domestic savings and attracting foreign investment. But small markets generally fail. Two micro-markets, Mozambique and Swaziland, provide an interesting case study to examine the features of new markets in sub-Saharan Africa that differ in a number of ways, including colonial legacy, membership of the Common Monetary Area and the dynamics of the political economy that defines the links between the citizens, the local elite and the state. In both countries, the operational aspects of the stock exchange are clearly inadequate as a means of promoting international investment. Thus, gains from regional integration initiatives or foreign investment are unlikely, as the market's small size and incomplete institutions currently offer limited potential for either domestic or international risk diversification. However, the political economy in both countries is the real barrier to growth.     

Resource mobilization in developing countries: Financial institutions and policies

Discussion in this paper of the areas and scope for domestic policy action aimed at improving the process of domestic resource mobilization, allocation and use is developed in several stages. First, the authors assess the progress made by LDCs in raising their rates of saving and investment over the past 25 years. Next, government policies — government tax expenditure and pricing policies, in particular — and their effect on public savings are discussed. This is followed by treatment of the issues of private saving performance and allocation, i.e. how to stimulate and make better use of household savings. Institutional and policy measures are suggested as means of promoting a more active role of the banking system. Brief reference is made to the role of development banks in project preparation and in tapping the capital market.     

Saving,investment and international capital mobility in East Asia

This paper estimates the degree of international capital mobility in East Asia using the saving–investment correlation originated in Feldstein and Horioka [Feldstein, M., Horioka, C., 1980. Domestic saving and international capital flows. Economic Journal 90, 314–329]. We apply the empirical method used in Kim [Kim, S.H., 2001. The saving–investment correlation puzzle is still a puzzle. Journal of International Money and Finance 20, 1017–1034] to control for cyclical effects in estimating a time-series saving–investment correlation of 10 Asian countries from 1980 to 2002. Our conclusion is that the saving–investment correlation in East Asia steadily decreases over time but is still higher than that of the OECD countries over all studied periods. These results are consistent with the fact that capital mobility in East Asia is lower than that in the OECD countries. In addition, regional saving and investment data demonstrate that investment in East Asia is largely financed by regional savings.     

Asia's contribution to global rebalancing

Developing Asia remains at the core of global payment imbalances. While the geographical concentration of current account imbalances is significant—with the People's Republic of China accounting for the lion's share of the region's current account surplus—how Asia contributes to global rebalancing also depends critically on the newly industrialising economies and larger Association of Southeast Asian Nations economies. Given the region's huge diversity, the necessary national macroeconomic and structural policies will vary significantly across Asia's emerging economies. Whereas near‐term rebalancing efforts will be driven primarily by macroeconomic and exchange rate policies, structural reforms are essential for boosting domestic and regional demand as sources of economic growth over medium to long‐term. We argue that regional rebalancing will depend critically on the adoption of deeper and more comprehensive structural reforms and further trade liberalisation to unlock the potential of strong domestic and regional spending—thus reducing Asia's high dependence on extra‐regional demand. Priority policies should include infrastructure spending, competition, trade, financial development, investment, immigration, and other social policies to reduce national savings.     

Savings and Investment: Some International Perspectives

Consistent with neoclassical growth models, recent estimates of the close association between domestic saving and investment rates may allow policy makers the opportunity to alter investment through the introduction of polices that alter domestic savings. However, such an interpretation presumes an endogenous investment response. Equally likely, at least theoretically, is that the close association is maintained by movements in domestic savings. The present paper explicitly examines the endogeneity of domestic saving and investment rates. For a subset of countries, including the United States, the results suggest that saving adjustments make up only a small portion of investment behavior.     

Empirical study on intra-regional bond investment: an application to East Asia

Since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, bond market development has been one of the central pillars of financial cooperation in East Asia, with concerted efforts made by the East Asian economies to integrate regional bond markets. As a result, aggregate intra-regional bond investment expanded from US$49.56 billion in 2003 to US$352.18 billion in 2017. This paper examines the pattern and determinants of intra-regional bond investment in East Asia. We analyse regional foreign holdings of long-term and short-term bonds in eight East Asian economies. Bond market size turns out to be the main concern of regional foreign investors participating in East Asian long-term bond markets. This analysis also highlights the importance of bond issuance and bond yield volatility in attracting regional foreign short-term bond investment. Therefore, initiatives to improve regional bond market development may be crucial to stimulating intra-regional bond investment and in turn enhance East Asian financial stability.