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.     

In search of an optimal strategy for yuan’s real revaluation

International commentators seem to have a consensus view that the Chinese yuan is substantially undervalued and the Chinese monetary authority must take speedy actions to redress the currency misalignment by rapid nominal revaluation. This paper argues for a gradualist but comprehensive strategy for adjusting the renminbi’s exchange rate. Taking into consideration the facts that the yuan’s undervaluation is caused by an array of domestic and international factors and that the Chinese central bank cannot effectively invest its growing holdings of foreign reserves, we develop a framework to provide a theoretical underpinning for the optimal strategy for the renminbi’s gradual revaluation. With this strategy, the renminbi undervaluation problem is gradually redressed through a combination of nominal appreciation and higher inflation plus some other structural and macroeconomic policies. This strategy can also allow absorption of external imbalances, hence strengthening the foundation of China’s long-term growth.     

人民币升值压力分析及政策建议

2005年7月人民币汇率形成机制改革以来,人民币汇率振荡走高。进入2008年,人民币升值趋势不减,已先后45余次创出汇改以来新高。本文结合汇率改革以来的人民币汇率变动情况,对未来人民币汇率的变动趋势做一些粗浅的分析并提出相应的政策建议。     

人民币均衡实际汇率研究:1978—2009

文章在总结了国内已有的关于人民币均衡汇率水平研究的基础上,以均衡实际汇率理论为依据,考虑中国实际国情和已有相关文献研究的结论,对均衡实际汇率模型进行了部分修正,筛选出人民币实际有效汇率的最优解释变量,并采用协整方法和H-P滤波技术,实证测算人民币均衡汇率水平,在此基础上,对改革开放以来尤其是2005年汇改之后人民币汇率失调情况进行深入分析,并对2005年汇改后央行出台的人民币汇率政策进行简单评估。     

Hot Money Inflows and Renminbi Revaluation Pressure

Despite a series of revaluations, which started in July 2005, hot money has been sporadically sneaking into China in anticipation of further revaluations of the renminbi. In this paper we build a monetary model to show how anticipated revaluations lead to the instability of a pegged exchange rate regime. This model assumes current account convertibility and some degree of capital control, and fundamentally sound domestic policies and economy, as is the case in China. The model demonstrates that market-oriented interest rates can act as an automatic stabilizer to ease revaluation pressures, but cannot resolve them completely because the nominal interest rate has a zero nominal bound. Therefore, the official parity is difficult to defend and the revaluation expectations can be self-fulfilling, in the absence of external intervention. The empirical results of Granger causality tests are consistent with the main findings of our theoretical model. There are a number of policy intervention measures that can extend the life of a pegged exchange rate regime.     

Directional accuracy tests of Chinese renminbi forecasts

This study investigates the directional accuracy of Chinese renminbi exchange rate forecasts by professional forecasters. The forecast with a horizon of one year is useful, whereas the forecasts with forecast horizons of one and three months are not useful in predicting the direction of the exchange rate change. The results for the long-term forecasts suggest that forecasters believe that the government maintains its foreign exchange rate policy of renminbi appreciation. In contrast, short-term forecasts show consistent evidence of exchange rate unpredictability.     

Renminbi exchange rate exposure: evidence from Chinese industries

This paper investigates sensitivity of stock returns of industry-sorted Chinese firms with respect to renminbi exchange rate movements. Strong evidence of significant exposure is documented for 7 out of 16 Chinese industries. Evidence is also found of the size asymmetry effects. In addition, we explore the characteristics of the exposure, and detect evidence of significant exposure among non-exporters in some of the industries. Special attention is given to examining the time-varying exposure under the impact of the new Chinese exchange rate regime in place since 2005, in which even stronger exchange rate exposure is reported. The conditional exposure estimated in this paper also reveals the close relation between stock returns and changes of the renminbi exchange rate.     

The foreign exchange exposure of Chinese banks

Using the capital market approach and the equity price data of 14 listed Chinese banks, this empirical study finds that there is a positive relationship between bank size and foreign exchange exposure. This relationship may reflect the larger foreign exchange operations and trading positions of larger Chinese banks and their significant indirect foreign exchange exposure arising from impacts of the renminbi exchange rate movements on their customers. Empirical evidence also suggests that the average foreign exchange exposures of state-owned and joint-stock commercial banks in China are higher than those of banks in Hong Kong, notwithstanding their limited participation in international banking businesses compared with their Hong Kong counterparts. It is also found that negative foreign exchange exposure is prevalent for larger Chinese banks, suggesting that an appreciation of the renminbi tends to reduce their equity value. It is therefore likely that the banking sector's performance will be hampered. Together with the fact that decreases in equity values generally imply a higher default risk, the effects of different scenarios of renminbi appreciation on the default risk of Chinese banks should therefore be closely monitored.     

How would Capital Account Liberalization Affect China＇s Capital Flows and the Renminbi Real Exchange Rates？

In this paper we study the determinants of gross capital flows, project the size of China's international investment position in 2020, and analyze the implications for the renminbi real exchange rate if China liberalizes the capital account. We assume in this exercise that the renminbi will have largely achieved capital account convertibility by the end of the current decade, a timetable consistent with recent proposals by the People's Bank of China. Our analysis shows that if the capital account were liberalized, China's gross international investment position would grow significantly, and inflows and outflows would become much more balanced. The private sector would turn its net liability position into a balanced position, and the official sector would reduce its net asset position significantly, relative to the country's GDP. Because of the increasing importance of private sector foreign claims and the decreasing importance of official foreign reserves, China would be able to earn higher net investment income from abroad. Overall, China would continue to be a net creditor, with the net foreign asset position as a share of GDP remaining largely stable through this decade. These findings suggest that the renminbi real exchange rate would not be particularly sensitive to capital account liberalization as capital flows are expected to be two‐sided. The renminbi real exchange rate would likely be on a path of moderate appreciation as China is expected to maintain a sizeable growth differential with its trading partners.     

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.     

中国对外金融的政策排序——基于国家对外资产负债表的分析

文章立足于中国国际投资头寸表,以提高中国对外净资产为目标,讨论了中国对外金融开放的政策排序。增加对外负债的前提是提高对外资产的投资收益,这一逻辑决定了人民币汇率形成机制改革、外汇储备管理体系改革、资本流出管理改革是当前最迫切的改革内容,人民币国际化与资本流入管理改革应该在上述改革的基础上推进。     

A New Keynesian model for analysing monetary policy in Mainland China

This paper adopts a four-equation New Keynesian model to evaluate the appropriateness of China's monetary policy framework. Our simulation results show that a hybrid rule that uses both interest rate and quantity of money as instruments outperforms the rules using one instrument alone at the current stage of economic and financial market development. Our analysis also shows that a sharp appreciation of the renminbi exchange rate, though effective in containing inflation pressures, would be quite disruptive to growth.     

The RMB/US Dollar Exchange Rate——An International Political Economy Perspective

I. IntroductionOn July 21, 2005, China unexpectedly appreciated the RMB by 2 percent, and declared themoving of the RMB exchang rate regime into a managed floating regime, with reference toa basket of currencies. This brought respite to the long, ongoing debate over RMB’sappreciation. Due to the fact that the exchange rate is always considered a technical matter,best left to economists to handle, the mainstream approach of the RMB discussion is theeconomic approach. Although reviewing d…     

Fear of appreciation in East and Southeast Asia: The role of the Chinese renminbi

Our study brings into light evidence of the important role of the Chinese renminbi in shaping the exchange rate behavior of a select group of East Asian currencies. Results obtained suggest that there is an additional dimension to the ‘fear of appreciation’ or ‘fear of floating-in-reverse’ behavior, initially coined by Levy-Yeyati and Sturzengger (2007) with regard to the experiences of this group of East Asian currencies. In particular, we find that there is a greater degree of aversion to appreciation of these East Asian currencies—specifically, the Philippine peso and the Thailand baht—against the Chinese renminbi than against the US dollar. This heightened fear of appreciation against the Chinese currency confirms that trade competition matters in this part of the world and that this fear to appreciate plays a central role in the exchange rate management of major East Asian currencies. As envisaged, the increasing role of China as a major trading hub in the region as well as globally, implies that the Chinese renminbi would exert a growing significant influence on other currencies in the region.     

弱势美元背景下的中国资本账户开放

2006年以来,美元对国际主要货币的大幅贬值导致全球金融市场动荡,国际短期资本大量流向中国,威胁中国的金融安全,使中国有步骤推进人民币资本账户可兑换、促进跨境资金双向流动的计划受到挑战。中国需要继续完善市场经济体制,按照市场化原则稳步推进资本账户开放;采取盯住货币汇率制度、完善外汇市场等手段,促进人民币汇率的稳定和灵活;提升人民币的国际影响力,增强中国经济抵抗外部冲击的能力。     

Asset Market and Balance of Payments Characteristics: An Eclectic Exchange Rate Model for the Dollar,Mark and Yen

In this paper we use an exchange rate model, which combines asset market characteristics with balance of payments interactions, to examine the nominal effective exchange rates of the German mark, Japanese yen and US dollar for the recent experience with floating exchange rates. Our approach may be interpreted as one which attempts to flesh out the missing links that arise in conditioning an exchange rate solely on relative prices, as occurs in a standard PPP analysis. Amongst the results reported in this paper are: significant, and sensible, long-run relationships for the currencies studied; complex short-run dynamics; a variance decomposition analysis which apportions nominal exchange rate error variances into real and nominal elements.     

Exchange Rate Regime,Financial Market Bubbles and Long‐term Growth in China: Lessons from Japan

Since 2014, capital inflows into China have turned into capital outflows, reversing the gradual appreciation path of the renminbi against the US dollar into an erratic depreciation path. The paper explains the current capital outflows by comparing China and Japan with respect to the impact of exchange rate expectations on speculative capital flows. It is argued that both in China and Japan, given benign liquidity conditions in the USA, policy‐induced appreciation expectations have generated capital inflows that have contributed to overinvestment and financial market bubbles. The current reversal of capital flows is seen as a signal that the bubble in China has burst. To stabilize growth in China and to discourage speculative capital outflows a fixed exchange rate to the dollar is recommended. Given Japan's experience and given that China's foreign assets remain high, the depreciation pressure on the Chinese renminbi can be expected to abate.     

Renminbi internationalization as a response to the global imbalance

The build-up of huge foreign exchange reserve makes China a net creditor and also brings in significant challenges to the Chinese economy. Considering the internationalization of the renminbi as China’s response to the global imbalance, this paper analyzes the effect of renminbi internationalization on the formation of reserves and compares its benefits and costs in rebalancing China’s external position with those of outward direct investment. It assesses the current progress in the practice of using the renminbi in cross-border trade settlement and in the development of the offshore renminbi market. It further examines the possibility of the renminbi serving as a global reserve currency in the future.     

The implications of monetary expansion in China for the US dollar

We examine the influence of rapid growth in China's money supply on the US dollar within a framework of monetary models of exchange rates. We develop out-of-sample forecasts of the US dollar exchange rate using US and global data on price level, output, and interest rates, and money supply data for the US, China, and the rest of the world for the period 1996–2013. Monetary model forecasts significantly outperform a random walk forecast in terms of mean squared forecast error in the long run. A monetary error correction model with sticky prices performs best. Rolling sample analysis indicates changes over time in the influence of Chinese money supply in forecasting the US dollar. The expectation is that rapid money growth in China would increase the demand for dollars thus raising the value of the dollar, yet our forecasts are to the contrary for the mid 2000s. This is consistent with anticipation of renminbi appreciation under China’s managed exchange rate, which made holding renminbi more attractive. With the break from a dollar peg in 2005 and subsequent currency appreciation, the distortion was alleviated and the forecast direction for the dollar became as expected.