Optimal Currency Area: A twentieth Century Idea for the twenty-first Century?

We take stock of the history of the European Monetary Union and pegged exchange-rate regimes in recent decades. The post-Bretton Woods greater financial integration and under-regulated financial intermediation have increased the cost of sustaining a currency area and other forms of fixed exchange-rate regimes. Financial crises illustrated that fast-moving asymmetric financial shocks interacting with real distortions pose a grave threat to the stability of currency areas and fixed exchange-rate regimes. Members of a currency union with closer financial links may accumulate asymmetric balance-sheet exposure over time, becoming more susceptible to sudden-stop crises. In a phase of deepening financial ties, countries may end up with more correlated business cycles. Down the road, debtor countries that rely on financial inflows to fund structural imbalances may be exposed to devastating sudden-stop crises, subsequently reducing the correlation of business cycles between currency area’s members, possibly ceasing the gains from membership in a currency union. A currency union of developing countries anchored to a leading global currency stabilizes inflation at a cost of inhibiting the use of monetary policy to deal with real and financial shocks. Currency unions with low financial depth and low financial integration of its members may be more stable at a cost of inhibiting the growth of sectors depending on bank funding.     

Why are currency crises contagious? A comparison of the Latin American Crisis of 1994–1995 and the Asian Crisis of 1997–1998

Why Are Currency Crises Contagious? A Comparison of the Latin American Crisis of 1994–1995 and the Asian Crisis of 1997–1998.—This paper analyzes three channels through which currency crises are transmitted between countries: contagion based on unsustainable economic fundamentals; contagion resulting from herding behaviour in financial markets; contagion induced by close trade integration. The presented model that links currency crises with these three types of contagion is employed to analyze the transmission of the Mexican crisis in 1994–1995 and the Thai crisis in 1997 to other emerging economies. The empirical results show that, first, the most important contagion channels were based on close financial and trade integration rather than on the weakness of macroeconomic fundamentals. Second, the vulnerability to capital flow reversals and weak financial sectors made countries particularly prone to a currency crisis, while external imbalances and currency misalignments were much less important. JEL no. F30, E60, E65, E44     

Currency crisis and contagion: evidence from exchange rates and sectoral stock indices of the Philippines and Thailand

This paper analyzes empirically the recent Asian financial crisis by using high-frequency data of exchange rates and stock indices of the Philippines and Thailand. With time-series techniques, this study confirms that benchmark stock indices often fail to provide valuable insights into currency crises, but there is evidence that developments in some sectoral indices—including those of banking and financial sectors—seem to have caused upward pressure on exchange rates. Our evidence therefore confirms the importance of financial markets as a transmission channel during the currency crisis period.     

One country,two currencies: The adoption of the Hong Kong currency board, 1983

Currency boards have had an enduring attraction as a solution to exchange rate and monetary credibility for small open economies, despite few successful examples. In this context, the case of Hong Kong stands out for its longevity; it survived the handover to China, the Asian financial crises in 1997, and the global crises in 2007–8 and 2020. The 1983 currency crisis and the decision to link the exchange rate to the US$ is usually treated as an outcome of local political uncertainty due to the Sino-British negotiations which set the framework for how Hong Kong would fit with the rest of China after 1997. We present fresh archival evidence from Hong Kong and London to reveal the year-long debates over Hong Kong's monetary system after a drop in the exchange rate in September 1982 and to demonstrate how most of the protagonists in Hong Kong and London came only reluctantly to accept the idea of re-pegging the dollar once public expectations had been raised. We also show how the mixture of currency and banking instability affected the terms of the negotiations in 1982 and 1983 and set the framework for the one country, two currencies system that prevails today.     

Foreign direct investment by Japanese firms and corporate governance: in relation to the monetary policies of China, Korea and Japan

Reflecting upon the lessons from the Asian currency crises, more attention is being paid to the importance of consolidation for the domestic financial and capital markets, as well as international cooperation to avoid disturbing factors from abroad, such as massive inflows of speculative capital. The aim of financial reforms being executed in the East Asian countries, such as Japan, Korea, and China, is to improve the managerial efficiency of the business corporations and financial institutions.Recently, foreign direct investment by Japanese firms in the rest of the East Asia has been recovering. However, the existence of a financial system to realize optimal corporate governance is indispensable for the enhancement of direct investment. Namely, it is necessary to improve corporate profitability, and to distribute the increment of such profits between the host and the investor countries, in order to boost the welfare of the respective citizens, notwithstanding the type of foreign direct investment.     

全球性货币错配与国际货币体系改革

全球性货币错配是全球经济失衡的货币表现,而以"美元本位制"为核心的现行国际货币体系是全球性货币错配的重要根源。国际货币体系改革的方向是加强国际间货币金融合作,最大限度地降低各国货币错配程度,以防止金融风险的扩大和货币危机的频繁发生。     

Crisis Vulnerability

Earlier attempts to explain the East Asian crisis of 1997 have overemphasised the importance of contagion, missing the central role of vulnerability. According to conventional accounts, Thailand experienced a financial panic due to such factors as corrupt government and corporate practices, inadequately supervised banks and venal currency speculators. Confidence in the Thai currency and banking system collapsed, provoking capital flight, a float of the Thai currency and a drastic decline in its value. This undermined confidence in the prospects of other East Asian countries, also provoking crises there. This article clarifies the concept of vulnerability and demonstrates its relevance by showing the long-term development of vulnerability in each of the three 'IMF bail-out' countries: Thailand, Indonesia and Korea. By 1996 all three were vulnerable to a currency crisis. Contagion provided the short-term trigger for the crisis but was not its underlying cause. The policy lesson is to avoid vulnerability, not to attempt to avoid contagion.     

Foreign devaluation as a coordinating device of heterogeneous investors: A game‐theoretic analysis of financial contagion

This paper investigates financial contagion by extending the Morris–Shin (1998) model of financial crises. It is assumed that before a devaluation in a foreign country, home investors have only private information on the state of the home country. It is demonstrated that the occurrence of a currency crisis in the foreign country may trigger a similar crisis in the home country by coordinating heterogeneous beliefs of home investors. The model is designed to describe the Asian currency crisis of 1997.     

Unique Equilibrium in a Dynamic Model of Speculative Attacks

A main challenge of understanding currency crises is explaining their puzzling timing. Most “second generation” currency crisis models are static models with multiple equilibria, and exogenous shifts between equilibria are interpreted as shifts of sentiments on financial markets leading to crises. This article develops a dynamic, continuous time model with a payoff structure similar to second generation models. We derive endogenous conditions under which shifts in sentiment occur over time, characterise them in terms the strategic risk associated with speculation, and provide comparative statics. Moreover, we show that the findings correspond almost exactly to the implications of global game currency crisis models, which are often used for equilibrium selection in the static context.     

国际金融合作的理论与实践

在经济全球化的今天,金融合作成为各国谋求经济发展,共同应对危机的必然选择。本文首先对国际金融合作的理论进行了论述,然后分别对欧洲、东亚、拉美和中亚等地区的金融合作实践进行了分析。     

Migrant Remittances Provide Resilience Against Disasters in Africa

How responsive are migrant remittances to various disasters, both natural and human-made? Would remittances be affected by systemic financial crises, such as the 2008–09 financial crisis, or more recent crises affecting the Eurozone? Using panel data on 23 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries from 1980 to 2007, we find that remittances are slow to respond to natural disasters, unresponsive to outbreaks of conflict, and will slowly decline following a systemic financial crisis. This suggests that, given its stability, remittances are sources of resilience in SSA.     

Twin Banking and Currency Crises and Monetary Policy

Currency crises are found to be strongly associated with banking crises. This paper constructs a twin banking and currency crisis model by introducing the banking sector into the currency crisis model and examining the case in which the exchange rate risk is located in the banking system. The model shows that an unanticipated shock caused by the shift of investors’ expectations and/or a negative productivity shock can trigger a twin banking and currency crisis. To achieve both financial stability and economic stability, the central bank uses multiple monetary policy instruments. In contrast to the conventional policy recommendation in response to a currency crisis, i.e., interest rate hike, we find that when the exchange rate risk is located in the banking sector, the monetary policy option to prevent a twin crisis is to lower the policy interest rate and the reserve requirement ratio and raise the interest rate on reserves. Our results show that the location of the exchange rate risk matters for the choice of an appropriate monetary policy response during a crisis.     

Internal versus external convertibility and emerging-market crises: lessons from Argentine history

Argentina’s money and banking system was hit hard by the Great Depression. Banks were awash with bad assets when gold convertibility was suspended in December 1929. We argue for an explanation of the crisis that focuses on the inside-outside money relationship in a system of fractional-reserve banking and gold-standard rules with a tension between internal and external convertibility. After financial fragility appeared in the 1914-1927 suspension, resumption in 1928 was probably unsustainable due to the problems of the financial system and a dynamic model illustrates the point well. When the state bank became insolvent, the currency board started bailing out the system using high-powered money. Thus, came about the demise of the currency board and the creation of a central bank in 1935. As one of its first substantive actions, the central bank engineered a bailout of the banking system at a massive social cost. The parallels with recent developing-country crises are remarkable and the implications for the institutional design of monetary and banking systems are considered.     

Debt financing and sharp currency depreciations: wholly versus partially-owned multinational affiliates

This paper provides empirical evidence on two potential costs of shared ownership of German affiliates abroad. First, in periods of currency crises, wholly-owned affiliates, in contrast to partially-owned affiliates, seem to circumvent financial constraints by accessing capital from their parent companies. In terms of differences in performance regarding sales of both types of firms, wholly-owned affiliates have a significantly better sales performance than partially-owned affiliates in periods of crises. This finding contributes to the evidence that FDI helps in mitigating the negative consequences of sharp currency depreciation, and stresses that this effect works especially through capital inflows to wholly-owned affiliates. Second, the debt financing of partially-owned affiliates is less sensitive to the tax rate suggesting that partially-owned affiliates rely less on international debt shifting than wholly-owned affiliates. This indicates that partially-owned affiliates are less flexible to exploit tax efficient strategies.     

Why clashes between internal and external stability goals end in currency crises, 1797–1994

We argue that recent currency crises reflect clashes between fundamentals and pegged exchange rates, just as did crises in the past. We reject the view that crises reflect self-fulfilling prophecies that are not closely related to measured fundamentals. Doubts about the timing of a market attack on a currency are less important than the fact that it is bound to happen if a government's policies are inconsistent with pegged exchange rates. We base these conclusions on a review of currency crises in the historical record under metallic monetary regimes and of crises post-World War II under Bretton Woods, and since, in European and Latin American pegged exchange rate regimes.     

Banking Sector Fragility and the Transmission of Currency Crises

We assess whether, complementary to trade and financial linkages, banking sector fragility helps explain the transmission of currency crises. We attempt to strike a balance between the precision of measurement of banking sector fragility on the one hand and its consistent measurement across various crisis episodes on the other. We find that while the role of trade and financial linkages is robust over time, the independent role of banking sector fragility is rather weak and unstable across crisis episodes. Consequently it is difficult to extrapolate observed banking fragility transmission channels from one crisis to another. As a corollary we cannot conclude that during future crisis episodes economies characterized by fragile banking sectors are more prone to crisis transmission.     

日本金融危机长期化与复杂化的原因透析

素来以金融“立”国、金融“强”国著称的日本,在20世纪90年代却遭遇世界近现代金融史上持续时间较长、损失较为惨烈的“滑铁卢”,虽然看似偶然却又事发必然,所有这一切都是由于长期隐藏在日本政治、经济、历史和文化之间的潜在矛盾集体爆发综合所致。     

货币错配与经济金融稳定:来自亚太地区的经验

中国的汇率制度改革使得在钉住汇率制度下积聚的巨大货币错配风险逐渐暴露出来。货币错配是否会影响经济金融稳定,通过对亚洲金融危机、日本经济衰退以及本世纪以来亚洲新兴市场国家累积的新风险进行梳理、比较与分析,认为净外币负债型货币错配与净外币资产型货币错配在一定条件下都会影响经济金融稳定。     

TRADE PATTERNS AND EXCHANGE RATE REGIMES: TESTING THE ASIAN CURRENCY BASKET USING AN INTERNATIONAL INPUT‐OUTPUT SYSTEM

This paper aims at analyzing exchange rates and trade patterns of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, China, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan in relation to Japan and the United States, with reference to the Asian currency crises in 1997. In order to analyze these issues, we constructed an international input‐output model linked with macroeconometric models of the ten countries/regions. Analyses on the Asian exchange rates with a currency basket peg framework show that the Asian exchange rate policy was the de‐facto dollar peg policy. As for trade patterns in relation to the yen‐dollar rate; when a country/region's industrial structure is similar to that of Japan's and the yen is weak, the appropriate change of the yen's weight proves to hold its competitiveness. By contrast, the weak yen shows a decrease of its imports, regarding complementary structure. In either case, however, effects are limited.     

CURRENCY CRISES IN EMERGING MARKETS: THE CASE OF POST‐LIBERALIZATION TURKEY

This article investigates the determinants of currency crises in Turkey. It analyzes the two major currency crises of 1994 and 2000–2001 in the light of the existing theoretical models. The present study uses logit, probit, and limited dependent models to explain the currency crises in the post–capital account liberalization era. The results obtained from the three approaches are generally consistent and the coefficients obtained for the explanatory variables generally have the same sign. The findings suggest that the currency crises in Turkey are associated with global liquidity conditions, fiscal imbalances, capital outflows, and banking sector weaknesses.