Kalman filter approach to estimate the demand for international reserves

A few studies have provided empirical support for the fact that the demand for international reserves experienced structural instability in 1973 and 1979 due to a change in exchange rate system and oil price shocks. Thus, under the current managed float due to exchange rate and oil price fluctuations, coefficient estimates could be time dependent. After showing that indeed, estimated coefficients are time dependent, the Kalman filter estimation method is employed and the reserve demand function for 19 industrial countries estimated. The Kalman filter approach incorporates the time-varying properties of coefficients estimates.     

Asset arbitrage and the price of oil

It is commonly understood that macroeconomic shocks influence commodity prices and that one channel for this is the link between interest rates, expected future asset returns and stock-holding. In this paper the link is extended to the petroleum market with the recognition that recorded stocks of oil comprise a small share of annual demand and that the parallel with storable commodities is the decision to produce the oil in the first place, as opposed to holding it in the ground as reserve. Oil reserves are then a key asset in producing countries, which is arbitraged against financial assets. Thus, when the yield on financial assets falls, retaining oil reserves becomes more attractive to producing countries, which then have less incentive to accommodate demand rises, and so the oil price rises. This perspective on oil pricing is modeled in a dynamic multi-region general equilibrium framework in which regional households manage portfolios of assets that include oil reserves. When the model is calibrated to match observed data over two decades, simulation results indicate that asset arbitrage made a large contribution to the high pre-GFC oil price.     

Monopoly power,barriers to competition and the pattern of price differentials in international trade

Numerous studies have attempted to assess the influence of market structure on performance in domestic markets of industrial countries. With few exceptions, these investigations have shown that prices and profits are higher, and a less efficient allocation of resources prevails, in markets where agressive competition is absent. Using techniques similar to there applied in the industrial market studies, this analysis examines the pattern of iron steel prices in international trade. The findings parallel those for the industrial organization investigations. Typically, international markets which are more concentrated, or which rely on a smaller number of trade contacts, bear higher prices. Also, the magnitudes of these excess price margins are such as to have important policy implications since they constitute a serious drain on the foreign exchange reserves of some developing countries.     

Oil price shocks and stock market activities: Evidence from oil-importing and oil-exporting countries

While the relationship between oil prices and stock markets is of great interest to economists, previous studies do not differentiate oil-exporting countries from oil-importing countries when they investigate the effects of oil price shocks on stock market returns. In this paper, we address this limitation using a structural VAR analysis. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: First, the magnitude, duration, and even direction of response by stock market in a country to oil price shocks highly depend on whether the country is a net importer or exporter in the world oil market, and whether changes in oil price are driven by supply or aggregate demand. Second, the relative contribution of each type of oil price shocks depends on the level of importance of oil to national economy, as well as the net position in oil market and the driving forces of oil price changes. Third, the effects of aggregate demand uncertainty on stock markets in oil-exporting countries are much stronger and more persistent than in oil-importing countries. Finally, positive aggregate and precautionary demand shocks are shown to result in a higher degree of co-movement among the stock markets in oil-exporting countries, but not among those in oil-importing countries.     

INTERNATIONAL DEVIATIONS FROM THE LAW OF ONE PRICE: THE ROLE OF SEARCH FRICTIONS AND MARKET SHARE*

This article examines the size and persistence of international deviations from the law of one price in an industry with search frictions. Cost differences lead foreign and domestic firms to price differently within countries. When local firms are more common in each country, there are large and persistent price differences across countries. Large and persistent changes in international relative costs lead to large and persistent changes in international relative prices. Dynamic considerations imply that the amount of a cost shock firms pass through to prices is U‐shaped in the market share of firms receiving the shock.     

Does inflation cause gold market price changes? evidence on the G7 countries from the tests of nonparametric quantile causality in mean and variance

This article utilizes the newly proposed nonparametric causality-in-quantiles test to examine the predictability of mean and variance of changes in gold prices based on inflation for G7 countries. The causality-in-quantiles approach permits us to test for not only causality in mean but also causality in variance. We start our investigation by utilizing tests for nonlinearity. These tests identify nonlinearity, showing that the linear Granger causality tests are subject to misspecification error. Unlike tests of misspecified linear models, our nonparametric causality-in-quantiles tests find causality in mean and variance from inflation to gold market price changes between the 0.20 quantile and the 0.70 quantile, implying that very low- and high-price changes in gold markets are not related to inflation. These changes should be related to other sources, such as financial shocks and exchange market shocks. We find support that gold serves as a hedge against inflation, but only in the mid-quantile ranges, i.e. quantiles from 0.20 to 0.70. Our results show that gold does not serve as a hedge against inflation during periods when gold market price changes are very low or very high, which are respectively quiet and highly volatile periods.     

关于国际市场变化对国内企业影响的思考

随着世界政治经济形势的发展,国际市场发生了较大变化,中国作为最大的发展中国家,外向型经济发展使之与世界市场的联系越发紧密。国际市场大宗商品价格上涨对国内企业生产成本具有直接的传导效应;国际市场需求减少,影响了国内企业产品出口增量、产品价格、利润空间,导致国内出口企业经营困难;国际经济环境变化也进一步给国内企业带来困难。     

国际油价在向谁叫板

2000年国际油价的剧烈变动并非是由供求关系变化引起。国际油价暴涨对发达国家和国际大资本有利。考虑到后备资源严重不足的现状，中国将可能是国际油价大幅波动的最主要受害国。中国石油进口的增长速度要远比前期估计快得多。我们需要有一支采用金融化操作方式、介入投机性运作、从事风险贸易的强大力量，一方面从市场的价格波动中博取更多国际比较收益，另一方面保证对国内需求的均衡供给。     

Who upholds the surging gold price? The role of the central bank worldwide

Who upholds the surging gold price? Conventional wisdom suggests that the depreciation of the exchange rate, inflation and economic turmoil are the suspects. Nonetheless, while these factors cease, why does the gold price still stay around hikes? The gold market belongs to a global arena. Different from other commodities, its participants include the national central banks worldwide. However, surprisingly, the role played by these tremendous market participants’ gold holdings on the gold price has been ignored in past empirical works. This research focuses on central banks’ gold holdings to explore who upholds the surging gold price. Several interesting outcomes are derived. First, our empirical evidence shows an inverse phenomenon relative to news reports from the mass media that the gold holdings of central banks worldwide in fact continuously descend. Second, the mainstream countries of the world have not played a main role in the rising trend of the gold price in the recent decade; instead, newly emerging industrialized countries’ central banks’ gold holdings show their significant power in explaining causality to gold price fluctuations. Third, the reason for the persistent gold buying behaviour of emerging economies may be because the increase in the gold price delivers a kind of short squeeze effect to the central banks of emerging countries.     

International Reserves and Fiscal Policy in Developing Countries

This paper investigates empirically the relationship between the pattern of fiscal policy and the demand for international reserves in developing countries, and how this relationship is associated with political risk and conditional access to global capital markets. It finds evidence that for developing countries with low political risk, countercyclical (procyclical) fiscal policies are associated with higher (lower) international reserve holdings in economic downturns. The relationship is stronger when the countries with low political risk rely heavily on external financing. For developing countries with high political risk, the link between reserves holdings and fiscal policy pattern is not clear-cut.     

Exchange rate sensitivity of the demand for money in developing countries

There is consensus among researches that under the present floating exchange rate system although developing countries peg their exchange rate to a major currency, they cannot avoid fluctuation in their effective exchange rates as long as major currencies fluctuate against one another. Few authors have investigated the effects of changes in effective exchange rates of developing countries on their imports, exports, trade balance, demand for international reserves, inflation etc. In this paper we try to inestigate the effects of effective exchange rates of developing countries on their demand for money. Previous authors who have estimated a money demand function, inclusive of an exchange rate variable (bilateral or effective), have restricted themselves to industrial countries only. By using quarterly data over the 1973–85 period, it is shown that in most developing countries, while the short-run effcts of depreciation could be in either direction, its long-run effects are negative indicating that depreciation causes a decline in the demand for domestic currency.     

烟草产业规制——基于需求面的分析框架

烟草是对健康有害的嗜好品,它有特殊的市场形态,其价格弹性和收入弹性都不同于普通产品.对这类产业的规制也不同于普通产业,其规制目标是产业促退而不是产业促进.中国的烟草产品又有区别于发达国家和其他发展中国家的独特市场形态,规制政策选择既要考虑国际通例,也要结合中国的市场特性.烟草产业规制要在规制效率、规制成本和社会公正之间寻求平衡.     

Reserve accumulation and financial crises: From individual protection to systemic risk

This paper provides a new perspective on the relationship between countries׳ international reserve holdings and financial crises: while the “local” view holds that reserves may prevent domestic crises, it overlooks that the accumulation of reserves relaxes the financing constraint of the reserve currency country and may cause a financial crisis in the centre, which is transmitted globally. According to this “global” view reserve accumulation might destabilize the international financial system. Since the crisis affects all countries alike, the accumulation of reserves imposes a negative externality on non-accumulating countries.We integrate this idea in a theoretical model of the optimal amount of reserves and illustrate the gap between local and global optimality: the consideration of systemic risk lowers the demand for reserves. Moreover, if a supranational authority determines the optimal level of reserves, it internalizes the negative externality and accumulates fewer reserves. A macroprudential tax on reserve hoardings might implement the socially optimal solution. Our calibration analysis shows that these considerations are economically significant: they lower the optimal amount of reserves in the benchmark case by 45%.     

我国建立开放性黄金交易市场的可行性分析

黄金交易是国际金融市场体系中的一个重要组成部分。我国已经建立起了货币、证券和外汇金融体系,开放了黄金饰品市场。随着经济的发展和改革开放的深入,我国建立开放的与国际接轨的黄金市场迫在眉睫。本文从世界黄金市场的发展规律、我国现阶段社会经济发展水平等方面分析了建立开放的黄金交易市场的必要性,从黄金供求关系等方面论述了建立开放性黄金交易市场的可行性,并提出了建立我国黄金市场的一些设想。     

宏观经济波动与人民币汇率政策的影响因素分析

本文通过对当前新一轮宏观经济波动特征的分析,发现随着中国经济对外开放度的日益提高,汇率政策对宏观经济的运行已具有越来越重要的影响.目前中国国际收支顺差过大、外汇储备增长过快已成为加剧宏观经济过热的重要因素之一.通过调整名义汇率来解决顺差过大的思路受制于价格总水平调整幅度的局限,因为在影响我国商品和劳务的价格因素中,劳动力价格水平与发达国家相比悬殊过大既是影响商品价格水平的一个主导性因素又是一个长期性因素,在短期内不可能大幅度的缩小这一差距.由此,决定了目前不可能采取对人民币汇率水平大幅升值的办法来解决国际收支失衡和外汇储备过快增长的问题.解决人民币汇率的市场化形成机制和汇率水平向真实汇率回归问题是一项相对长期的政策选择,因而,短期的汇率政策只能以外汇储备的结构调整为主导.     

黄金价格波动的决定因素探讨

黄金属于国际流通的特殊商品，市场的开放也为我国带来国家金价的机遇和风险，充分认识黄金价格的影响因素，科学根据这些影响因素分析和预测黄金价格走势，才能在黄金投资时做到有的放矢，把握好价格变化的趋势而进行操作。     

金融稳定性与经济增长的机制分析——基于新兴市场国家和发达国家的两组数据

文章通过比较新兴市场国家和发达国家1994-2008年间金融稳定性对经济增长的作用机制发现,对于新兴市场国家而言,外债占GNP的比重和国际储备与外债比例的上升不利于金融稳定状态的保持,导致经济增长率下降,但总储蓄占GDP比例的上升和贸易额占GDP比重的提高会促进金融稳定,带动经济增长;而对于发达国家而言,海外证券投资与债券投资的增加以及实际利率的上升会维护金融稳定性,促进经济增长。由于一国金融稳定还受国际宏观因素的影响,因此国际金融体系的重建是保证各成员国金融稳定的重要内容。     

Asymmetric stabilizing impact of international reserves

This article studies international reserves’ nominal exchange rate stabilizing impact in emerging markets and developing countries, with a particular focus on its nonlinearity and asymmetry across different states of the economy. Using the fixed-effects and dynamic panel threshold models, we find the reserves to short-term debt threshold ratio after which the marginal stabilizing effect of reserves begins to fall during tranquil times. Such diminishing returns, however, do not appear to exist even at the excessive level of reserves during the global financial crisis, partly justifying precautionary demand for international reserves. These results call for extending reserve pooling or swap arrangements to enhance efficiency of reserve management by holding adequate, rather than excess, international reserves with an access to emergency lending during the crisis.     

Demand for international telephone services between US and Africa

This paper uses a two-equation dynamic simultaneous equation model that accounts for call externality and arbitrage, and a dynamic panel estimator to investigate the demand for international telephone calls between the US and African countries. Using panel data from 45 African countries over the 1992–1996 period, we find that the demand for telephone calls from African countries to the US is price elastic while the demand for telephone calls from the US to African countries is price inelastic. We find telephone calls originating from African countries to the US are complementary to calls from the US to African countries while calls originating in the US to African countries are substitutes for calls to the US that originate in African countries, and calls between the two sets of countries exhibit reciprocal and arbitrage effects. We also find that the demand for telephone calls between the US and African countries show strong dynamic effects. Finally, we find that telephone demand between African countries and the US responds positively to income and trade. Our results have interesting research and policy implications.