External Imbalances and Fiscal Fragility in the Euro Area

This paper presents two views of the European sovereign debt crisis. The first is that countries in the South of the Eurozone were fiscally irresponsible and failed to implement pro-competitive supply side policies. The second view holds that the crisis reflects a deep divide between the external surpluses of the North and external deficits of the South. Basic stylized facts cast doubt on the explanation based on the first thesis alone. A relatively simple model shows how poor fundamentals can create a debt problem independently of fiscal responsibility. The empirical analysis of the determinants of government bond yield spreads relative to Germany suggests that both views in fact provide useful insights into the roots of the current sovereign crisis. However, differences in growth and competitiveness and capital flows between North and South have assumed a much more dominant role since the onset of the global crisis.     

揭露美国次贷危机所引发的全球金融危机真相

美国次贷危机爆发两年来,国内外经济学界以及政界都对此进行了深入研究,观点主要集中在市场主体和监管主体的"有限理性"、内外部经济结构失衡和货币政策环境的影响、全球金融货币体系制度设计的缺陷、以及资本主义制度基本矛盾等几个方面,试图勾画组合出一幅危机的完整图象。但因缺少一条逻辑主线将这些正确的归因与少数为了转移矛头故意歪曲事实真相的借口有机串连,致使图象主题不够立体、清晰。为了更好地认清危机的实质,本文运用中华文明辨证逻辑思维这条主线,深度透视危机的本源,还原危机背后的真相,揭露真正的幕后元凶及其支配主体行为的片面思维逻辑,以便呈现出一幅更为清晰、立体的美国次贷危机全景图。     

Was the Asian crisis a wake-up call?: Foreign reserves as self-protection

Digging deeper into the self-protection rationale for holding reserves, this paper examines the empirical link between reserve holding patterns and crisis vulnerability, comparing the pre- and post-Asian crisis periods, and across different groups of developing countries. Analyzing data for 51 developing countries during the period 1982–2004, this paper finds evidence that the elasticity of developing country reserves with respect to certain crisis vulnerability indicators like foreign debt service and total external liabilities seems to be higher in the post-Asian crisis period, suggesting that policymakers’ precautionary responsiveness by holding more reserves has increased. Grouping countries according to their type of vulnerability (commodity, debt or sudden stop related), countries prone to sudden stops in capital inflows also seem to have adjusted their policies the most towards higher precautionary reserve holding. Furthermore, from the point of view of self-protection, China's reserve holding patterns appear consistent with what developing countries more generally seem to be undertaking.     

超越市场失灵:产业政策理论前沿与中国启示

自国际金融危机爆发以来,西方发达国家普遍地出现了"重新思考产业政策"的热潮。在这种"产业政策的回潮"中,人们对"市场失灵"理论作为产业政策的理论基础所存在的缺陷提出了批评,进一步发展了系统失灵理论和能力理论等产业政策的新理论,并提出了企业家型政府理论,该理论认为,产业政策最重要的作用在于塑造市场和创造市场,而非修补市场失灵。文章认为,国外产业政策理论的这些新发展是以发达国家特别是以美国的产业政策实践为基础的,它不仅对产业政策只适合于追赶型经济的传统看法提出了挑战,而且也提出了如何认识发达国家产业政策的新类型或新工具的问题。产业政策理论及其实践的这些前沿问题对推进我国产业政策研究和改进我国产业政策实践都具有重要借鉴意义,文章从四个方面较深入地探讨了它对我国的相关启示。     

The Social Impact of the Asian Crisis: What Do We Know Two Years On?

Following the dramatic economic crisis of 1997–98, governments felt compelled to act even though it was far from clear who, and where, the worst affected people were, and what, if anything, could or should be done to alleviate their plight. This paper summarises what is known about the social impact of the crisis, and examines the policy debates up to the latter part of 1999.     

The causes of the Asian currency crisis: empirical observations

This paper examines statistically and systematically the five causes of the Asian currency crisis exposed by the IMF, using a probit model. The paper shows that the two causes of the IMF are persuasive. The Asian currency crisis tends to occur when the ratio of foreign reserve to total debt is low and the progress of financial deregulation without regularity is great. The paper also shows that the general causes found by previous researches never fit the case of this crisis, but that the trade linkage of each country to the first victim country helps explain the causes of this crisis.     

The Tragedy of the Commons and Inflation Bias in the Euro Area

Central bank credit has expanded dramatically in some of the Euro Area member countries since the beginning of the financial crisis. This paper makes two contributions to understand this stylized fact. First, we discuss a simple model of monetary policy that includes (i) a credit channel and (ii) a common pool problem in a monetary union. We illustrate that the interaction of the two elements leads to an inflation bias that is independent of the standard time-inconsistency bias. Secondly, we present an institutional analysis that is consistent with the view of fragmented monetary policy and empirical evidence that illustrates the heterogeneity of central bank credit expansion.     

全球金融危机下的贸易保护主义——理论与实证分析

本文分析了全球金融危机下贸易保护主义的未来发展趋势以及实施的影响因素。通过运用非期望效用的进化博弈理论,指出全球金融危机下,国家是有限理性的,从世界整体看,合作和自由是最终的趋势;从具体各国来看,贸易保护主义的实施不仅仅由实施政策的收益和损失决定,与各国对政策决策权重的判断和程度也有密切的关系。通过美国对中国反倾销的实证分析证明了上述观点,并发现各因素与贸易保护主义实施的可能性均有正的相关性,其中收支函数的影响最大,两国之间的交互作用影响最小。在此基础上,本文提出了中国应对贸易保护主义的对策。     

A search for robust East Asian development models after the financial crisis: mutual learning from East Asian experiences

The purpose of this paper is to search for new robust East Asian economic development models following the financial crisis. Specifically, this paper addresses both robustness and sustainability of Korea’s Chaebol-led model, Taiwan’s SMEs-led model, and Malaysia’s FDI-led model, respectively. East Asia’s new development paradigm can be reformulated not only by adopting and learning advanced financial innovations of global standards in the framework of Gershenkron’s “advantages of backwardness,” but also in the concept of “mutual learning” from both strengths and weaknesses of development models of the three countries. East Asia has neglected too long some inherent wisdoms that are contained in its “miracle models,” yet it shows that their different paths to development may lead to a positive policy convergence.     

What we know,what we still need to know: the Asian currency crisis revisited

From the literature on currency crises, it is widely understood that weak economic fundamentals increase tremendously the probability of currency crises, especially in emerging markets. However, what was not known is that an accumulation of small problems interacting with each other can be equally damaging. Using a new technique, a combination of Classification and Regression Tree (CART) and Logit regression, this paper re‐examines the causes of the Asian currency crisis in 1997–98. The results indicate that although weak fundamentals were at the root of the crisis, only self‐fulfilling panic and herd behaviour can explain the severity of the crisis. Contrary to previous empirical research, our results indicate that the Asian crisis was caused by the accumulation of small fragilities rather than large deficiencies in the macroeconomic fundamentals. An important policy implication of such findings is the need for governments not to underestimate small problems, which, when they interact, can create chaos. Another novelty of this paper is the interpretation of the crisis in terms of the concepts of trigger and vulnerability, using an empirical model that captures the magnitude of the self‐fulfilling panic and its contribution to capital reversal and eventually to the collapse of the currencies.     

Governance and Growth: Lessons from the Asian Economic Crisis

The East Asian financial crisis of 1997-98 has provoked yet another round of controversy on the institutional foundations of the region's growth. This article provides some flavour of this new work by examining three factors that impinge on economic policy and performance: the role of political regime type; the structure of business-government relations; and the design of government agencies. Institutional weaknesses contributed to the onset of the Asian financial crisis.     

The evolving renminbi regime and implications for Asian currency stability

The Chinese authorities described the management of the renminbi after its 2005 unpegging from the US dollar as involving a basket of trading partner currencies. Outside analysts have detected few signs of such management. We find that, in the 2 years from mid-2006 to mid-2008, the renminbi strengthened gradually against trading partners’ currencies within a narrow band. In mid-2008, the financial crisis interrupted this experiment and the bilateral renminbi/dollar exchange rate stabilised at 6.8. The 2006-2008 experience suggests that a shared policy of gradual nominal effective appreciation renders East Asian currencies quite stable against one another. Such a shared policy would create favourable conditions for regional monetary cooperation.     

金融危机对劳务经济的影响——基于河南省信阳籍农民工的调查

本文基于河南省信阳籍农民工的调查数据,分析金融危机对劳务经济的影响,以期为新形势下解决农民就业、增加农民现金收入的政策制定提供建议。研究发现,金融危机对劳务收入、回归创业、农民工权益维护以及输出地经济发展都有很大影响。最后,本文提出了应对危机,解决返乡农民就业问题的政策建议。     

Monetary analysis and the global financial cycle: An Asian central bank perspective

Emerging Asia has seen a transformation of its monetary policy environment over the past two decades. By far, the most relevant change has been the maturing of its financial systems and the growing relevance of the global financial cycle: financial inclusion has spread, financial markets have deepened and financial globalisation has linked domestic markets closer to international markets. One consequence of the maturing of the financial systems has been the weakening of the traditional case for the monetarist view of the roles of monetary aggregates in the conduct of monetary policy. In addition, the maturing of the financial systems has elevated concerns of financial stability, as both a source of shocks and a responsibility of central banks. These developments have been further complicated by monetary policy spillovers from the advanced economies. All this points to the need to consider alternatives to conventional inflation targeting frameworks. This paper lays out a policy framework based on a multi-pillar monetary policy approach as a potentially attractive alternative for EM Asia. The three pillars are based on economic, financial and exchange rate stability, respectively. This framework not only offers an alternative conceptual framework but also implies institutional reforms to ensure central banks take a longer term perspective when setting policy.     

What caused the Asian currency and financial crisis?

The paper explores the view that the Asian currency and financial crises in 1997 and 1998 reflected structural and policy distortions in the countries of the region, even if market overreaction and herding caused the plunge of exchange rates, asset prices and economic activity to be more severe than warranted by the initial weak economic conditions. The first part of the paper provides an overview of economic fundamentals in Asia on the eve of the crisis, with emphasis on current account imbalances, quantity and quality of financial ‘overlending’, banking problems, and composition, maturity and size of capital inflows. The second part of the paper presents a reconstruction of the Asian crisis from the antecedents in 1995–1996 to the recent developments in early 1999 in parallel with a survey of the debate on the strategies to recover from the crisis, the role of international intervention, and the costs and benefits of capital controls.     

An East Asian paradigm?

The World Bank's 1993 East Asian Miracle report proposed two models of East Asian Development, one based on the Japanese economy, the other on the more recent miracle economies of Southeast Asia. The latter pursued open-market and investment policies compatible with Anglo-American economic norms, while Japan and its coterie (South Korea and Taiwan) forged industrial policy regimes with high levels of government intervention and protection. Japan takes a different view of Southeast Asian success—as a combination of conscious emulation of Japan and concentrated Japanese foreign direct investment, aid, and regional industrial strategy. This article explores the tension between the World Bank thesis and the Japanese view, embodied in a growth metaphor called flying geese. The author concludes that Japan has been far more reactive and opportunistic than the flying geese metaphor suggests, but that this paradigm has a profound influence on Japanese government and corporate strategy in Asia.     

The risks in the foreign loan sphere and problems of modernizing the debt policy of Russia

The paper systematizes and considers the risks in the foreign loan sphere that have manifested themselves under the conditions of today’s financial and economic crisis, and determines the main directions of improving Russia’s foreign loan policy with a view to increasing its role in modernizing the national economy.     

农民工返乡创业对新农村建设的影响——从产业发展角度

由于金融危机等原因造成大量农民工返乡,能否妥善解决返乡农民工就业,直接关系到我国社会经济稳定的大局。本文从新农村建设的产业发展角度,论证了农民工返乡创业为新农村建设提供了新的产业支撑,并从政策鼓励、利益驱动、创业培训方面给出可行性建议。     

金融危机对中国出口企业的影响及对策研究

始于美国的次贷危机现肆虐于全球各地,演变成60年以来最大规模的全球金融危机,不仅虚拟经济伤痕累累,实体经济也颇受拖累。我国改革开放30年以来,国内企业和经济已经与世界经济融为一体,那么在这场金融危机下,我国目前的出口企业状况如何,以及应该采取如何措施应对呢?本文从这一角度出发,初步提出了5个方面的建议:调整出口对象国,扩大国内市场营销,订单地区转移以及政府政策调整、企业战略规划。     

Risk and Asian Exchange Rate Regimes

Abstract

A panel regression gives evidence that more flexibility in Asian exchange rates reduces risk associated with bank borrowing abroad, but deviations from mean exchange rates, and from the renminbi, increase risk. Since the exchange rate regime affects bank behavior and the incentives to hedge, the results broadly support the bank run over the moral hazard view of twin banking and currency crisis. The results suggest that flexibility in exchange rates is required for Asian EMEs, but the flexibility has to be limited, and it depends on more flexibility in the renminbi. This has implications for current global imbalances in reserves and feasible adjustment paths.