Policy Measures to Alleviate Foreign Currency Liquidity Shortages under Aggregate Risk with Moral Hazard

During the recent global financial crisis, certain central banks introduced two innovative cross‐border operations to deal with the problems of foreign currency liquidity shortages: domestic liquidity operations using cross‐border collateral and operations that supply foreign currency among central banks based on standing swap lines. We show theoretically that central banks improve the efficiency of equilibrium under foreign currency liquidity shortages using these two innovative temporary policy measures.     

我国外汇存款准备金问题研究

2007年美国次贷危机爆发后,全球性的流动性过剩被流动性不足所替代,美国政府采取了扩张性的政策组合,即以降息和提供紧急流动性援助方式为代表的扩张性货币政策、以减税为代表的扩张性财政政策以及纵容美元贬值的汇率政策,以对中国经济政策的调整空间形成制约.我国中央银行上调外汇存款准备金率以及要求用外汇缴存新增人民币存款准备金的做法,并不能从根本上缓解人民币汇率的升值压力,相关的外汇存款准备金制度设计还有待改进.     

Optimal fiscal policy in a world liquidity trap

We construct a model of the international transmission of ‘liquidity trap’ shocks, and examine the case for international coordination of fiscal policy to respond to the liquidity trap. Integrated financial markets tend to propagate liquidity traps. In a global environment, fiscal policy may be effective in raising GDP when the economy is stuck in a liquidity trap, but it does so in a ‘beggar thy neighbor’ fashion; when one economy is in a liquidity trap, the cross country spillover effect of fiscal policy is negative. We examine the welfare optimizing policy response to a liquidity trap when countries coordinate on fiscal policy. Fiscal policy may be an effective tool in responding to a liquidity trap, although it is never optimal to use fiscal expansion sufficiently to fully eliminate a downturn. Moreover, there is little case for coordinated global fiscal expansion. For the most part, the country worst hit by a liquidity trap shock should use its own policies to respond, without much help from foreign policies.     

Liquidity management of foreign exchange reserves in continuous time

In order to cope with daily foreign currency exchange payments or trades and avoid liquidity crisis, central banks need to maintain the liquidity of foreign exchange reserves. In this paper, we develop a Foreign Exchange Reserves Liquidity Management (FERLM) model based on stochastic process by introducing a foreign exchange factor. We also generate a feasible target proportion of the liquidity reserve to total foreign exchange reserves, by seeking the balance between capital gains of holding foreign exchange reserves and losses of liquidity insufficiency.     

Bank liquidity risk and monetary policy. Empirical evidence on the impact of Basel III liquidity standards

We extend the literature on the bank lending channel in two aspects. First, rather than following the literature by analyzing the impact of banks’ liquidity (measured via their asset portfolio) on monetary policy transmission, we study the role of banks’ actual liquidity risk, as measured by the Basel III liquidity regulations. Second, we investigate the effect of complying with the Basel III liquidity standards on monetary policy transmission. We use highly detailed bank-level data from Luxembourg for the period 2003q1--2010q4. Our findings are that monetary policy transmission works its way through small banks that also have a large maturity mismatch, as measured by the Net Stable Funding Ratio. In contrast, large banks with a small maturity mismatch increase their lending following a monetary policy shock, which confirms existing results that Luxembourg’s banks are liquidity providers to the European market. Based upon in-sample predictions and upon simulated data from an optimization model that takes the banks’ business models into account, we conclude that the bank lending channel will no longer be effective once banks adhere to the new Basel III liquidity regulations.     

INTERNATIONAL ASYMMETRY IN BUSINESS ACTIVITY AND APPRECIATION OF A STAGNANT COUNTRY'S CURRENCY*

This paper develops a two‐country, two‐commodity continuous‐time dynamic optimization model that accommodates a liquidity trap and persistent unemployment. It investigates a theoretical possibility of international asymmetry in business activity and a stagnant country's currency appreciation, which has been the common experience of Japan and the USA after Japan's total capital liberalization. It is found that if the marginal utility of consumption relative to that of liquidity exogenously declines in a country, its current account improves and the home currency appreciates. Consequently, home products lose competitiveness, causing home employment to decrease and foreign employment to increase.     

Transmission of monetary policy and exchange rate shocks under foreign currency lending

This paper analyses the differences in reaction of domestic and foreign currency lending to monetary and exchange rate shocks, using a panel VAR model estimated for the three biggest Central and Eastern European countries (Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary). Our results point toward a drop in domestic currency loans and an increase of foreign currency credit in reaction to monetary policy tightening in Poland and Hungary, suggesting that the presence of foreign currency debt weakens the transmission of monetary policy. A currency depreciation shock leads to an initial decline in foreign currency lending, but also in loans denominated in domestic currency as central banks react to a weaker exchange rate by increasing the interest rates. However, after several quarters, credit in foreign currency accelerates, indicating that borrowers start using it to substitute for depressed domestic currency lending.     

流动性过剩影响因素的实证分析

通过货币的供求对比测度出流动性过剩,采用主成分分析方法研究了流动性过剩的影响因素。实证结果表明,货币存量的持续高位、经济增长、持续低利率与人民币升值、物价指数的高涨、外汇储备和净出口增加导致流动性过剩,资产价格与流动性过剩之间存在反向关系,各因素之间存在着交互影响。实证结果与理论分析结论高度吻合。     

Capital Inflows,Exchange Rate Flexibility and Credit Booms

Historically, capital flow bonanzas have often fueled sharp credit expansions in advanced and emerging market economies alike. Focusing primarily on emerging markets, this paper analyzes the impact of exchange rate flexibility on credit markets during periods of large capital inflows. It is shown that bank credit is larger and its composition tilts to foreign currency in economies with less flexible exchange rate regimes, and that these results are not explained entirely by the fact that the latter attract more capital inflows than economies with more flexible regimes. The findings thus suggest countries with less flexible exchange rate regimes may stand to benefit the most from regulatory policies that reduce banks' incentives to tap external markets and to lend/borrow in foreign currency; these policies include marginal reserve requirements on foreign lending, currency‐dependent liquidity requirements and higher capital requirement and/or dynamic provisioning on foreign exchange loans.     

Liquidity shocks: A new solution to the forward premium puzzle

The frequent empirical failure of uncovered interest rate parity raises a question that has not been definitively answered: why do predictable excess returns on currencies persist in competitive currency markets? Supported by data from nine major currencies for 1978:08–2019:09, I provide a novel resolution to this enduring forward premium puzzle by building on the financial economics literature that explores the economic implications of limited access to capital markets. A liquidity shock, or the urgent demand for liquidity by credit-constrained arbitragers liquidating bond holdings, causes losses from sudden drops in bond prices. Arbitragers require a liquidity premium to compensate for potential losses that vary directly with the interest rate. It is this liquidity premium that explains persistent excess returns on currencies. I argue for policies favoring a low interest rate environment and macroprudential controls that ease liquidity constraints to increase the efficiency of international capital markets by reducing the liquidity premium.     

Currency interdependence and dollarization

This paper constructs a search model of currency interdependence, and uses it to examine how in dollarized economies the foreign currency reacts to various shocks to the domestic currency. Currency interdependence is generated by allowing sellers to take into account their outside option of trading with the domestic currency while bargaining with buyers holding the foreign currency. The shocks consist in movements in the domestic interest rate, domestic inflation and the domestic currency’s market power. We show that if the purchasing power of the domestic currency is low, any shock that increases its value, such as a higher domestic interest rate, translates into a depreciation of the foreign currency. However, the result is opposite when the purchasing power of the domestic currency is high. We show that when money is indivisible these shocks can drive in or out the foreign currency. When money is divisible, this currency substitution effect is more limited. We use our results to discuss the opportunity of various de-dollarization policies and show that some can be counterproductive.     

Price and liquidity puzzles of a monetary shock: Evidence from indebted African economies

Price and liquidity puzzles have been identified as two major counterintuitive findings arising from monetary shocks. We investigate their presence in eleven African countries, using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model designed for indebted small open-economies. Our simulations reveal that the majority of African countries report a price puzzle whereas only three countries exhibit liquidity effect. In many of the sampled countries, a positive money growth shock drives interest rates up, but consumption and output fall in contrast to the conventional view. External debt increases in response to money growth shock, exchange rate appreciates and inflation falls. Money growth shocks are transmitted to the economy through the exchange rate channel when uncovered interest rate parity condition holds. Our findings therefore appear to suggest that monetary policy in Africa should prioritize foreign debt stabilization by reacting more to output gap than to inflation.     

关于货币危机后经济衰退的经验分析

文章以1990年以来的近200次货币危机为样本,对货币危机后的经济衰退进行了经验分析.研究发现,危机前的经常账户状况、外债余额占GDP比例、国际流动性指标等经济变量以及危机后的汇率制度都不会显著影响到危机后的经济衰退.另外,危机后的经济衰退与危机国政府在危机中是否抛售外汇储备、是否采取汇率贬值都没有明显关系.但是经济分析的结果表明,危机前的失业率和汇率制度以及危机中是否提高利率等因素对危机后的经济衰退有显著作用.     

Monetary policy and exchange market pressure–evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of monetary policy on foreign exchange market pressure (EMP) in developing country contexts for some selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and to measure the ability of monetary policy to significantly address currency pressures that arise from trading on the global market. This study was motivated by the fact that most of the SSA countries are developing economies that have negative net export positions and stand to lose significantly from consistently deteriorating foreign exchange position. The study, therefore, employs a dynamic panel model to test the hypothesis that a tighter monetary policy stance lends strength to a currency and vice versa, using 20 SSA economies for the period from 1991 to 2010. This study finds a negative and significant relationship between monetary policy and EMP, implying an easing of EMP in the face of contractionary monetary policy. The findings also point to significant relations between aggregate output, levels of public debt, the current account balance, terms of trade and EMP. Findings of this study have important implications as regards the policy direction on exchange rate and currency management.     

Credit in Times of Stress: Lessons from Latin America during the Global Financial Crisis

The 2008–2009 global financial crisis disrupted the provision of credit in Latin America less than in previous crises. This paper tests whether specific characteristics at both the bank and country levels at the onset of the global crisis contributed to the behavior of real credit growth in this region during the crisis. As shown, financial soundness characteristics of Latin American banks, such as capitalization, liquidity, and bank efficiency in the pre‐crisis period, played a role in explaining the dynamics of real credit during the crisis. We also found that foreign banks and banks that had expanded credit growth more before the crisis were also those that cut credit the most. Among country‐specific characteristics, we found evidence that balance sheet measures such as the economy's overall currency mismatches and external debt ratios (measuring either total debt or short‐term debt) were key variables in explaining credit growth resilience.     

Accounting for global dispersion of current accounts

We develop a multi-country quantitative model of the global distribution of current account and external balances. Countries accumulate domestic capital and foreign assets to smooth consumption over time against exogenous productivity shocks in the presence of liquidity constraints. In equilibrium, optimal consumption and investment responses to persistent productivity shocks imply a degree of intertemporal substitution across countries that can explain up to one-third of the current account dispersion in the data.     

Gross substitution, Gresham's law, and Hayek's free currency system

Professor Hayek has advocated that citizens be free to use foreign currency as a means of payment in order to put a check on national governments' tendency to rely on the seigniorage for fiscal purposes. His proposed scheme is based on an intuitive reasoning that being able to use foreign currencies makes demand for domestic currency more elastic, thus reducing the monopoly power of national governments on currency issue. This paper demonstrates that this would be true if and only if the foreign currency were a gross substitute for the domestic currency. The paper also shows that the same condition holds for Gresham's law to be valid.     

Surplus liquidity,central bank losses and the use of reserve requirements in emerging markets

Since the turn of the millennium, stocks of foreign reserves held by central banks in many emerging markets and developing countries have exceeded currency in circulation. To steer money market rates, these central banks have been absorbing liquidity from, rather than providing it to, the banking sector in their regular monetary policy operations. When interest rates in countries with major reserve currencies are low, the yield on foreign reserves is low. A higher interest rate on liquidity‐absorbing operations may expose central banks to losses. Although a central bank is not a profit‐maximizing institution, central bank losses can undermine the independence of the central bank. Using data for a large panel of central banks, this paper provides some evidence that central banks tend to apply low‐remunerated reserve requirements when profitability is at stake.     

Macroprudential policy and the inward transmission of monetary policy: The case of Chile,Mexico, and Russia

This paper studies whether domestic macroprudential policy may attenuate the inward transmission of monetary policy shocks from the United States to domestic bank lending growth in three emerging market economies—Chile, Mexico, and Russia. Identification relies on banks’ heterogeneous exposure to prudential policies and the fact that foreign monetary policy shocks are exogenous from the perspective of these economies. After analyzing the effects of the aggregate domestic prudential policy stance, we focus on specific prudential policies targeting mortgage and consumer loans, as well as foreign‐currency deposits. Although our overall results are mixed, we find evidence that the strength of international monetary policy spillovers varies depending on the stance of domestic macroprudential policy. In particular, a tighter reserve requirement stance over foreign‐currency deposits in Chile dampens the effect of an international monetary policy shock on domestic local‐currency lending, but reinforces that on foreign‐currency lending, whereas in Russia, it dampens the effect on both local‐currency and foreign‐currency lending, although to different degrees. Prudential policies targeting the asset side of banks’ balance sheets, such as mortgage loans or consumer credit, are found to amplify international monetary policy spillovers in some cases and attenuate it in others, depending on the country context.     

结构性通货膨胀的一个基本理论分析框架——基于状态空间时变参数模型的实证

以实体经济的部门瓶颈制约模型、货币视角的资产市场均衡模型为基础构建了一个结构性通货膨胀理论分析框架,并利用状态空间时变参数模型计量方法进行了实证检验。结果显示,农业部门瓶颈制约明显,产品供给弹性低,当需求短期内增加,农业劳动力、农产品价格上涨的结构性通货膨胀特征明显;同时,当货币流动性出现过剩,充足的流动性会将结构性通货膨胀推向更高水平,国内货币流动性、外汇储备则起到推波助澜的作用。