The role of international reserves holding in buffering external shocks

An extended literature analyses the accumulation foreign exchange holding observed in many developing and emerging countries since the 2000s. Empirical studies on the self-insurance motive suggest that high-reserves economies are more resilient to financial crises and to international capital inflows volatility. They show also that pre-crisis foreign reserve accumulation explains post-crisis growth. However, some papers suggest that the relationship between international reserves holding and reduced vulnerability is nonlinear, meaning that reserve holding is subject to diminishing returns. This article devotes more attention to the potential nonlinear relationship between the foreign reserves holding and macroeconomic resilience to shocks. For a sample of nine emerging economies, we assess to what extent the accumulation of international reserves allows to mitigate negative impacts of external shocks on the output gap. While a major part of the literature focuses on the global financial crisis, we investigate this question by considering two sub-periods: 1995–2003 and 2004–2013. We implement threshold VAR model in which the structure is allow to change if the threshold variable crosses a certain estimated threshold. We find that the effectiveness of reserve holding to improve the resilience of domestic economies to shocks has increased over time. Hence, the diminishing returns of foreign reserve holding stressed in the previous literature must be qualified.     

Optimal versus adequate level of international reserves: evidence for Turkey

The determination of international reserve balance for emerging economies is part of the efforts to strengthen the immunity of these economies to crises. However, there is still evidence on crises even for the countries with large foreign reserves. It has usually been experienced that the countries with greatest need for reserves economize more than others on their holdings since they might underestimate the cost of crisis. In this study, the official international reserves of Turkey are tested against optimality and adequacy. During 1988–2002, the actual reserves fell short of both the optimal and the adequate levels. They are only optimal when the expected cumulative contraction is about 5.2% of real GDP under crisis. However, early evidence from emerging economies and Turkey show that crises hit more heavily. Hence, it is found that the current financial structure in Turkey such as the absence of capital controls and a highly dollarized banking system necessitates more foreign reserves for preventing any future economic and/or financial shocks.     

Hoarding of international reserves: It's a neighbourly day in Asia

To explain why Asian countries seem to have been hoarding international reserves, especially since the 1997 crisis, we consider various regional neighbourhood effects. One such effect is that of “catching up with the Joneses”. We revisit that effect by analysing several refinements of it. We also consider the fear of the kind of contagion that the crisis‐hit countries saw in 1997. Finally, we look at the possibility of a regional financial cycle, in which the conditions that led to the crisis might have been correlated across countries. We find that refining the Joneses effect to take account of trade links strengthens its power to explain the build‐up of reserves. We also observe that a country that finds itself more vulnerable than its regional neighbours would tend to accumulate more reserves. Finally, we find that a common regional factor related to current‐account balances spurs further reserve accumulation. Contrary to previous analyses, our results suggest that only a couple of Asian countries have been holding excessive reserves. Some were actually holding less reserves than would be optimal in the presence of neighbourhood effects.     

Foreign exchange reserve adequacy and exogenous shocks

One of the traditional benchmarks in international macroeconomics is that a country should maintain reserves that can cover at least 12 weeks of imports. The notion of reserve adequacy, however, is not static and is intimately associated with the occurrence of financial crises as well as exogenous shocks, with many observers using the reduction in reserves below this benchmark as a sign of fragility. This article provides a benefit-cost type approach to evaluating reserve adequacy. The benefits of holding reserves are evaluated using a dynamic random effects probit model of financial crises while the cost of reserve holdings (output loss due to an over-investment in reserves) is obtained from a panel growth equation. Using the methodology outlined above, the study finds that in small states, the optimal holding of foreign exchange reserves is approximately 25 weeks of imports, approximately 13 weeks higher than the international rule-of-thumb. This estimate of optimal reserve holdings is interrelated with the economic characteristics of the country, particularly its fiscal stance. Indeed, this article finds that countries with a prudent public expenditure management framework in place are able to hold a smaller stock of reserves without necessarily impacting the expected growth for the country.     

Managing Financial Integration and Capital Mobility—Policy Lessons from the Past Two Decades

Emerging market experience over the past two decades has revealed the tenuous links between external financial integration and faster growth, and the proclivity of such integration to fuel costly crises. Emerging markets learned, converging to the middle ground of the macroeconomic trilemma. Following their crises of 1997–2001, emerging markets added financial stability as a goal, self‐insured by building up international reserves, and adopted a public finance approach to financial integration. The global crisis of 2008–09 illustrated that the advanced economies “overshot” the optimal degree of financial deregulation, while the resilience of the emerging markets validated their public finance approach to financial integration.     

Heterogeneity risks and negative externality

Diversified institutions coexist in financial markets with different degrees of exposure and contribution to the systemic risk. Therefore, the identification and regulation of systemically important institutions are of great significance. This paper investigates the negative externality in a model where the heterogeneity risks of institutions interact and alienate the value of each other, with the bankruptcy risk acting as the kernel factor. The market negative externality increases when the bankruptcy risk is high. Furthermore, as an institution with a minimum tail index, the “first domino” dominates the bankruptcy risk of the market. The first domino accumulation and phantasm are prone to cause systemic crises. The market bankruptcy index decreases as the non-first domino participates in the risk sharing. Finally, we empirically study implications of the above findings for adjusting the market structure and managing risks, in the Chinese financial markets.     

The 2014–15 Financial Crisis in Russia and the Foundations of Weak Monetary Power Autonomy in the International Political Economy

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to international political economy debates about the monetary power autonomy (MPA) of emerging market and developing countries (EMDs). The 2014–15 Russian financial crisis is used as a case study to explore why an accumulation of large international reserves does not provide protection against currency crises and macroeconomic adjustments in EMDs. The analysis centres on the interplay between two dimensions of MPA: the Power to Delay and the Power to Deflect adjustment costs. Two structural factors condition Russia’s low MPA. First, the country’s subordinated integration in global financial markets increases its financial vulnerability. The composition of external assets and liabilities, combined with cross-border capital flows, restrict the use of international reserves to delay currency crises. Second, the choice of a particular macroeconomic policy regime embraced the financialisation of the – mainly state-owned – Russian banking sector, thus making it difficult to transform liquidity inflows into credits for enterprises. Russia’s main comparative advantage, hydrocarbon export revenues, is not exploited. The type of economy created due to the post-Communist transition means that provided ‘excessive’ liquidity remains in the financial system and is channelled into currency arbitrage. This factor increases exchange rate vulnerability and undermines Russia’s MPA.     

International Reserves and the Composition of Foreign Equity Investment

This paper studies the effect of central banks' international reserve hoardings on the composition of foreign equity investment. Specifically, it examines whether reserves affect the share of foreign portfolio equity investment (PEI) in total foreign equity investment, which includes both PEI and foreign direct investment (FDI). Foreign investors' decisions regarding the location and the type of equity capital investment might be influenced by a country's level of international reserves. In a simple theoretical model, it is shown that higher reserves, thanks to their ability to lower exchange rate risk, reduce the risk premium of PEI. Hence, higher reserves are expected to increase the inflow of PEI relative to FDI. This hypothesis is tested for a sample of 76 developing countries during the period 1980–2010 using different estimation methods, model specifications and data samples. The results suggest that higher levels of reserves are associated with a larger share of PEI relative to FDI. This result points to a collateral benefit of reserves that has been neglected so far. Reserves may contribute to develop domestic financial markets and facilitate domestic firms' access to foreign portfolio equity financing. In addition, this paper finds a strong negative effect of the global financial crisis beginning in 2008 on the share of PEI, which confirms the hypothesis that PEI is more crisis‐dependent than FDI.     

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.     

The social cost of foreign exchange reserves

Abstract

There has been a very rapid rise since the early 1990s in foreign reserves held by developing countries. These reserves have climbed to almost 30% of developing countries' GDP and 8 months of imports. Assuming reasonable spreads between the yield on reserve assets and the cost of foreign borrowing, the income loss to these countries amounts to close to 1% of GDP. Conditional on existing levels of short-term foreign borrowing, this does not seem too steep a price as an insurance premium against financial crises. But why developing countries have not tried harder to reduce short-term foreign liabilities in order to achieve the same level of liquidity (thereby paying a smaller cost in terms of reserve accumulation) remains an important puzzle.     

International reserves and swap lines: Substitutes or complements?

Developing Asia experienced a sharp surge in foreign currency reserves prior to the 2008–9 crisis. The global crisis has been associated with an unprecedented rise of swap agreements between central banks of larger economies and their counterparts in smaller economies. We explore whether such swap lines can reduce the need for reserve accumulation. The evidence suggests that there is only a limited scope for swaps to substitute for reserves. The selectivity of the swap lines indicates that only countries with significant trade and financial linkages can expect access to such ad hoc arrangements, on a case by case basis. Moral hazard concerns suggest that the applicability of these arrangements will remain limited. However, deepening swap agreements and regional reserve pooling arrangements may weaken the precautionary motive for reserve accumulation.     

Political booms and currency crises

This paper shows evidence that political booms, defined as the rise in governments’ popularity, are associated with a higher likelihood of currency crises. The reasoning behind this finding is that prudent economic policies to address underlying weaknesses in the economy may be political costly for incumbent governments in the short-term. Hence, popularity-concerned governments may not have enough incentives to take such corrective actions in a timely manner. This approach, in turn, can deteriorate economic fundamentals and increase related risks in the economy which can eventually lead to crises. This paper sheds light on this phenomenon in the case of currency crises, suggesting that currency crises can be viewed as “political booms gone bust” events. Moreover, it finds that higher international reserves, higher exports, and a higher degree of financial openness alleviate the effect of political booms on currency crises.     

ANALYSIS OF INTERNATIONAL RESERVE HOARDING IN KOREA

Since the Asian financial crisis, Korea's accumulation of international reserves has substantially exceeded benchmark levels. The present paper examines the interaction between international reserve hoarding and mercantilist motives, in the context of Korea's policy of maintaining export competitiveness through exchange rate management. An estimation of cointegration and error correction has found that in both the long term and the short term, Korea has stockpiled reserves as a result of heightened concerns regarding export competitiveness. The short‐run dynamics entail precautionary motives that have contributed to reserve accumulation. A variance decomposition test suggests that the mercantilist motive has been the main driver of reserve accumulation.     

A Comparative Study of Two Global Crises

This article identifies the differences and common features of two global crises: the Great Depression of 1929 and the international financial crisis of 2008. The circumstances of the two crises differ in terms of the demographic structure, the technological conditions, the economic and social systems in developed countries, the extent of globalization and other global economic situations. Among the common features, both crises were preceded by unprecedented economic booms, laisse-faire regulatory policies, easy monetary and credit policies, asset bubbles and yawning income gaps. Moreover, the crises had a strong redistribution effect, which would cause shifts of power among large countries and major changes in international economic order.     

Once Bitten: The Effect of IMF Programs on Subsequent Reserve Behavior

Traditional models have encountered problems in explaining the accumulation of international reserves, particularly in Asia, in the period since the late 1990s. One suggestion has been that countries have sought to self‐insure against future crises, either because of a perceived increase in the cost of crises or because of the perceived conditionality costs of using IMF credits. This paper offers an empirical investigation of these ideas, disaggregating across regions and across IMF facilities. We find that IMF programs have had a significant positive effect on subsequent reserve accumulation, allowing for other determinants, and that this effect endures over time. We also find that the effect differs between Latin America and Asia, and that it is not simply a phenomenon that is associated with the Asian crisis of 1997/98. The paper goes on to discuss the implications for the design of policy and for the reform of the IMF.     

Are microfinance institutions resilient to economic slowdown? Evidence from their capital ratio adjustment over the business cycle

Prior studies using pre-crisis data concluded that microfinance institutions are resilient to economic crises. However, some recent studies indicate that the microfinance sector is becoming part of the global financial system and microfinance lending activities are now vulnerable to economic and financial crises. Capital being a key resource to support lending, this paper analyzes the cyclical behaviour of capital ratio using an international sample of microfinance institutions from 2001 to 2014. We uncover a negative relationship between their capital-to-assets ratios and business cycle indicators. This relationship mainly concerns regulated institutions, comprised mostly of profit-oriented MFIs, and is driven by both asset-side and capital level adjustments. We identify the lending channel (loan-to-assets ratio) as the main mechanism to explain these cyclical variations. Our findings are consistent with the “procyclicality” of capital regulation documented extensively in the banking literature. Hence, macro-prudential regulation for MFIs should target regulated and profit-oriented MFIs.     

Do Exchange Rate Shocks Have Asymmetric Effects on Reserve Accumulation? Evidence from Emerging Markets*

It is generally argued that central banks in emerging market countries, motivated by a desire to defend export competitiveness, tend to intervene in foreign exchange markets to limit currency appreciations rather than depreciations. Using panel data from 13 emerging market countries for the period 1998:M1 to 2016:M12, we find that exchange rate shocks play an important role in determining the accumulation of international reserves. Moreover, we find evidence that central banks in emerging markets tend to follow a “leaning against the depreciation wind” policy, rather than the appreciation wind (i.e., we provide evidence of a “fear of depreciation”).     

The illusive quest: Do international capital controls contribute to currency stability?

We investigate the effectiveness of capital controls in insulating economies from currency crises, focusing in particular on both direct and indirect effects of capital controls and how these relationships may have changed over time in response to global financial liberalization and the greater mobility of international capital. We predict the likelihood of currency crises using standard macroeconomic variables and a probit equation estimation methodology with random effects. We employ a comprehensive panel data set comprised of 69 emerging market and developing economies over 1975–2004. Both standard and duration-adjusted measures of capital control intensity (allowing controls to “depreciate” over time) suggest that capital controls have not effectively insulated economies from currency crises at any time during our sample period. Maintaining real GDP growth and limiting real overvaluation are critical factors preventing currency crises, not capital controls. However, the presence of capital controls greatly increases the sensitivity of currency crises to changes in real GDP growth and real exchange rate overvaluation, making countries more vulnerable to changes in fundamentals. Our model suggests that emerging markets weathered the 2007–2008 crisis relatively well because of strong output growth and exchange rate flexibility that limited overvaluation of their currencies.     

Consumption externality and indeterminacy under increasing returns to scale and endogenous capital depreciation

This paper incorporates negative consumption externality embodying “jealousy” and “running away from the Joneses” into Guo and Lansing (2007)'s model with production externality and endogenous depreciation, and examines how consumption externality helps to generate equilibrium indeterminacy together with production externality. Specifically, the existence of consumption externality reduces the upper and lower bounds of production externality for local indeterminacy, and when the degree of consumption externality increases, the upper and lower bounds of production externalities for local indeterminacy are both reduced.     

Local versus International Crises and Bank Stability: does bank foreign expansion make a difference?

We investigate the impact of global and local crises on bank stability in the MENA region and examine the effect of owning bank subsidiaries in other countries. We consider banks that experienced both types of crises during our sample period. Our findings highlight a negative impact of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007–2008 on bank stability but, on the whole, no negative impact of the local crisis. A deeper investigation shows that owning bank subsidiaries outside the home country is a source of increased fragility during normal times, yet a source of higher stability during the local crisis but not during the international crisis. Moreover, owning foreign subsidiaries in one or two world regions is insufficient to neutralize both types of crises, while being present in three or more regions is more stabilizing during a local crisis but also more destabilizing during an international crisis. Our findings contribute to the literature examining bank stability and have several policy implications.