Sources of time-varying trade balance and real exchange rate dynamics in East Asia

A sticky-price model with minimal assumptions for identification is used to motivate a time-varying model that allows for state dependent innovations to explore the trade balance dynamics of a group of East Asian economies. This paper shows that the correlation between the trade balance and the real exchange has historically been highly conditional on the type of macroeconomic shock. Permanent (transitory) shocks have historically produced a positive (negative) correlation between the trade balance and real exchange rate over the last 20 years. Second, since the Asian financial crisis the real exchange rate dynamics of the East Asian countries have been dominated by persistent component(s), while the dynamics of the trade balance have been more influenced by transitory factors.     

贸易失衡的根源:汇率还是经济结构——基于美国案例的实证分析

本文基于协整理论、Granger因果检验、脉冲响应函数等时间序列处理技术对美国经济结构、财政赤字、汇率与其贸易收支之间的动态关系进行了实证检验。检验结果表明:长期内,实体经济占比的增加会改善贸易收支,虚拟经济占比、财政赤字增加会恶化贸易收支,而汇率水平对于贸易收支的影响不显著;短期内,实体经济占比、虚拟经济占比对贸易收支的影响与长期相一致,财政赤字则相反,而汇率水平的上升在短期内导致贸易盈余的增加,但弹性值有变小的趋势。其政策的含义在于:影响美国贸易收支的主要因素来自其财政赤字及其国内经济结构,即实体经济与虚拟经济创造GDP的比例关系,而非汇率因素。因此,只有通过协调其国内实体经济与虚拟经济的发展,减少财政赤字,收缩储蓄-投资缺口才可以有效地调节贸易失衡问题,而不能一味地强调汇率因素。     

Can Renminbi Appreciation Reduce the US Trade Deficit？

I. Introduction The trade relationship between the USA and China has been contentious during the past several decades since China’s economic reforms in 1978. The trade relationship between the two countries has been strongly constrained and highly politically influenced. Figure 1 depicts US–China trade from 1994 to 2004. US imports from China have been far greaterthan US exports to China over the past 10 years, and the corresponding US trade deficits with China have become increasingl…     

The exchange rate and the trade balance

Exchange rate flexibility is commonly justified as an efficient method for adjusting the trade balance to some desirable net international capital flow. In this orthodox view, fluctuations in a country's terms of trade or its saving-investment balance would continually upset its balance of payments equilibrium if the nominal exchange rate remained rigid.But this prevailing doctrine favoring exchange flexibility is only correct when economies are insular, ie. have limited trade and financial arbitrage with the outside world. With the spread of exchange controls and trade restrictions in the 1930s into the 1950s, the industrial countries became somewhat insulated from each other. A devaluation could then have the conventional effect of reducing a trade deficit because monetary and exchange rate policy were separable.Among the open industrial economies of the 1980s, however, financial arbitrage is uninhibited and trade is fairly free. Monetary policy, both current and prospective, now dominates what happens to the exchange rate. Because a devaluation today reflects an easier money policy in the present, or an expected easing in the future, it no longer has any predictable impact on the monetary value of the net trade balance. Exchange rate flexibility loses its usefulness in controlling net exports while becoming highly disruptive to the economy's macroeconomic stability.For example, the American dollar's downard float over the past three years should not be (have been) expected to improve the U.S. current account. However, allowing the dollar to depreciate below its purchasing power parity greatly increases the inflationary potential in the Americian economy.     

ESTIMATING EXCHANGE RATE AND BILATERAL TRADE BALANCE RELATIONSHIPS: THE EXPERIENCE OF SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

This paper examines the effects of exchange rate changes on the bilateral trade balance of ten African countries vis‐à‐vis the US using annual data over period 1977‐2002. Both the Johansen and panel cointegration tests find cointegration among the series. The country FMOLS results show that real exchange rate depreciation improves the trade balance in six of ten countries in contrast to Tanzania in which it worsens the trade balance, with no effect found in Ghana, Morocco and Senegal. Foreign real income improves the trade balance in two countries but worsens it in another three. Finally, domestic real income negatively affects the trade balance in four countries but improves it in another three. The three‐panel coefficients are correctly signed and significant at the 1% level.     

Testing the Marshall–Lerner Condition in Kenya

In this paper we examine the Marshall–Lerner (ML) condition for the Kenyan economy. In particular, we use quarterly data on the log of real exchange rates, export/import ratio and relative (US) income for the time period 1996q1‐2011q4, and employ techniques based on the concept of long memory or long‐range dependence. Specifically, we use fractional integration and cointegration methods, which are more general than standard approaches based exclusively on integer degrees of differentiation. The results indicate that there exists a well‐defined, cointegrating relationship linking the balance of payments to the real exchange rate and relative income, and that the ML condition is satisfied in the long run, although the convergence process is relatively slow. They also imply that a moderate depreciation of the Kenyan shilling may have a stabilising influence on the balance of trade through the current account without the need for high interest rates.     

服务贸易、非对称开放与全球失衡:一项跨国的经验研究

文章从贸易内部结构出发，分析非对称开放条件下，服务贸易兴起与全球失衡之间的关系。并利用全球59个主要贸易国家2000-2014年双边贸易数据对两者之间的关系进行计量分析，实证结果显示：第一，服务贸易净值与经常账户余额之间存在显著的负向关系，服务贸易净值提高100万美元，经常账户余额减少98.7万美元。在引入交互项之后这种关系依然显著成立。因此，服务贸易的非对称开放是造成全球失衡的重要原因。第二，技术进步和利率上调可以扭转服务贸易对经常账户的抑制作用。第三，金融危机之后，服务贸易和经常账户的负向关系进一步强化。后危机时代，全球失衡现象有可能继续恶化。第四，分位数回归发现，在低点位处服务贸易净值对经常账户的影响更为强烈。文章的研究为理解中国的服务贸易逆差提供了新的视角，并为扭转服务贸易逆差奠定了理论基础。     

Do exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects on the trade balance? Evidence from U.S.–Korea commodity trade

Previous studies of the effects of exchange rate changes on Korea’s trade balance have assumed symmetry between currency depreciation and appreciation. In this paper, we distinguish between the two to show that the effects at the industry level are in fact asymmetrical in most industries for Korea’s bilateral trade with the U.S. We employ an auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach using quarterly data for the period 1989–2014 for the 79 3-digit industries in which trade between Korea and the U.S. took place. Overall, our model incorporating differentiated responses for appreciation versus depreciation reveals a more significant impact of the exchange rate on commodity trade between Korea and the U.S. than a more standard model that imposes symmetry.     

Bilateral Trade Balances of Malaysia with Her 11 Largest Trading Partners: New Evidence from Asymmetry Cointegration

Research on the effects of exchange rate changes on the trade balance is now moving in a new direction, by investigating whether exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects. The approach that relies upon separating depreciations from appreciations introduces nonlinearity into the adjustment process and relies upon the nonlinear ARDL approach of Shin et al. [2014. Modelling asymmetric cointegration and dynamic multipliers in a nonlinear ARDL framework, in: R. Sickels and W. Horrace (Eds), Festschrift in Honor of Peter Schmidt: Econometric Methods and Applications, 281–314 (Springer)]. When we applied this new method to the bilateral trade balances of Malaysia with each of her 11 largest partners, we found adjustment asymmetry in all models, short-run impact asymmetry effects and long-run asymmetry effects in the trade balance models between Malaysia and Asian countries.     

升值压力、汇率预期与中美贸易余额

汇率升值对贸易收支的影响效果会因相应的升值预期变化而抵消,所以在升值预期持续存在的条件下,单纯的升值并不能平衡贸易收支。汇率预期受升值压力影响,而中美贸易顺差的扩大是升值压力的重要来源,从而形成一种经济循环:中美贸易顺差增加升值压力,升值压力加强升值预期,升值预期进一步扩大贸易顺差。     

Exchange Rate Volatility and Trade: An Empirical Investigation from Cross‐country Comparison

Abstract: This paper investigates empirically the impact of exchange rate volatility on the trade flows of six countries over the quarterly period of 1980–2005. The impact of a volatility term on trade is examined by using an Engle‐Granger residual‐based cointegrating technique. The major results show that increases in the volatility of the real exchange rate, approximating exchange‐rate uncertainty, exert a significant negative effect on trade for South Korea, Pakistan, Poland and South Africa and a positive effect for Turkey and Hungary in the long run.     

The Effect of Exchange Rate on Bilateral Trade Balance: New Evidence from Malaysia and Thailand

This paper attempts to identify the major economic factors that influence the bilateral trade balances of Malaysia and Thailand with the US and Japan. To this end, an unrestricted VAR model was estimated using quarterly frequency data from 1980: I to 1996: IV. The Johansen results indicate a stable long-run relation between trade and three macro variables: exchange rate, domestic income and foreign income. The main findings of this paper are: (i) the real effective exchange rate is an important variable in the trade balance equation and devaluation improves the trade balances of both economies in the long-run; (ii) the other important variables that determine trade balance include domestic and foreign incomes; (iii) the results indicate no J-curve effect and causal run from exchange rate to trade balance, (iv) the real effects of devaluation are distributed over a period of eight to nine quarters.     

Rules for Correcting External Imbalances

Three aspects to adjustment are sufficiently distinct to be treated separately. The first is the balance of payments concept that is to be adjusted. The candidates are the overall balance of payments, the “basic balance”, and the current account balance. The latter is the preferred concept; specifically, all countries should aim to keep their current balances within a range of +/− 3% of GDP. The second are the instruments to be used to adjust a payments imbalance. The basic analyses are due to Hume and Meade, for the cases in which the country respectively does not and does use variations in the exchange rate as an instrument to facilitate the adjustment process. The third relates to the question of whether the international community should build some mechanism, besides the threat of reserve depletion, that will encourage its members to pursue adjustment. Most deficit countries already have an incentive to adjust. In contrast, the incentives for surplus countries to adjust are weak and need strengthening, perhaps by permitting trade retaliation for an undervalued exchange rate through the WTO or perhaps by taxation. The United States are the most difficult case because the construction of a suitable incentive for this country would probably be dependent on reform of the reserve supply mechanism.     

Exchange rates and the trade balance: the case of Singapore 1970 to 1996

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the real trade balance and the real exchange rate for bilateral trade in merchandise goods between Singapore and the USA on a quarterly basis over the period 1970 to 1996 using the partial reduced form model of Rose and Yellen (1989). We also hope to shed further light on what has become known as the ‘Singapore export puzzle’: the observation that, despite periods of rapid nominal and real appreciation of the Singapore dollar, export growth in aggregate has remained buoyant.Our findings suggest that the real exchange rate does not have a significant impact on the real bilateral trade balance for Singapore and the USA, thus confirming previous work which finds a weak relationship between changes in the exchange rate and changes in export and import prices and volumes for Singapore. We also found little evidence of a J-curve effect. Although positive coefficients linking real exports with lagged values of the real exchange rate might be indicative of ‘small country’ pricing by exporters in U.S. dollars, it is not clear that this is masking J-curve effects from an initial rise in import values as the home currency depreciates.     

中日贸易逆差与汇率之间关系的实证分析

文章基于VAR模型的研究方法，应用季度数据，分析2001--2007年间汇率和需求等因素对中日两国双边贸易收支的影响。结果显示：长期中汇率与中日贸易收支不满足马歇尔-勒纳条件，短期内实际汇率对贸易逆差的调节作用很小。无论在短期还是长期，真正影响中日双边贸易收支的因素是日本的国内需求和政治因素。葛兰杰因果检验显示中国对日本的贸易逆差是日本经济复苏的原因。     

本币名义汇率低于真实汇率是保持国际竞争力的有效手段

本文表达了如下想法:①名义汇率围绕真实汇率上下波动的调整,会促使一国国际收支恶化或者改善;②美元对人民币贬值并不一定能够满足马歇尔———勒纳条件和解决中美国际收支失衡问题,因为失衡问题主要是美国的国内因素以及限制对华技术出口与中国商品进口所引起的;③我国作为一个发展中国家,应该适度控制名义汇率,使其低于真实汇率,才能支持劳动力优势,保持国际收支顺差;④国际收支长期盈余,是我国经济增长和经济安全的保证。     

The Japanese–U.S. trade balance and the yen: Evidence from industry data

While it is often assumed that a country's trade balance will improve in the long-run if its currency is allowed to depreciate, this is not necessarily the case for specific goods. In the short run, the opposite might even take place, as fixed quantities and rising import prices cause the trade balance to deteriorate. In this paper, we apply cointegration methodology to assess the short- and long-run impact of fluctuations in the yen–dollar real exchange rate on Japan's trade balance with the U.S. for 117 industries. We find that depreciation causes the trade balance to improve in the long-run for about one-third of Japanese industries. Most short-run effects are in the same direction, indicating a quick improvement in these industries’ trade balance, rather than a period of deterioration such as a “J-curve.”     

人民币实际有效汇率与中澳贸易收支的关系——基于向量误差修正模型(VEC)分析

文章利用向量误差修正模型（VEC）,对中澳贸易收支与人民币实际有效汇率、中国实际GDP、澳大利亚实际GDP之间的关系作了实证分析。研究结果表明：中澳两国GDP、人民币实际有效汇率与两国双边贸易收支这四者之间存在长期均衡的关系;人民币有效汇率与两国贸易收支之间没有因果关系;调整人民汇率不能解决澳大利亚对中国的贸易逆差问题;人民币汇率与双边贸易收支之间不存在理论上的J效应;澳大利亚经济的发展有益于中国经济的发展,中国经济目前还是一个外贸拉动型的经济发展模式。     

The South Africa-U.S. Trade and the Real Exchange Rate: Asymmetric Evidence from 25 Industries

Previous studies that assessed the effects of exchange rate changes on the trade balance of South Africa assumed that the effects are symmetric. In this paper we violate that assumption and assess the asymmetric effects of the real rand-dollar rate on the trade balance of 25 2-digit industries that trade between South Africa and the U.S. We find short-run asymmetric effects in a total of 19 industries but short-run cumulative or impact asymmetric effects only on five industries. Short-run asymmetric effects lasted into long-run asymmetric effects on 14 industries. Further analysis revealed industries that will benefit from rand depreciation and those that will be hurt from rand appreciation.     

中国贸易收支对汇率波动的敏感性分析——基于不同贸易模式的比较研究

本文在理论分析基础之上,通过构建计量模型,利用1994~2009年的季度数据,从实证角度比较分析了不同贸易模式下中国贸易收支对汇率波动敏感性的差异性,结果表明,其敏感性在产品内贸易模式下较之传统产业间和产业内贸易模式下更低。由于中国持续性贸易顺差正是中国融入产品内国际分工体系所致,所以人民币升值并不是解决中国贸易顺差的合理之道。本文研究同时发现,人民币汇率波动对内资企业冲击较之外资企业更大。据此本文认为,尽可能维持人民币汇率稳定,通过攀升产品内分工高端价值链、优化贸易结构、鼓励企业"走出去"等,对于缓解中国贸易顺差更为可行。