Managing the renminbi: should China peg to a trade‐weighted basket?

Pegging the renminbi (RMB) to the US dollar since 1994 has characterised China's exchange rate policy under a fixed peg or appreciating crawling peg. The current policy, announced in June 2010, of ‘floating with reference to a basket’ made the RMB 25 per cent stronger against a trade‐weighted basket by early August 2015, while it was 10 per cent stronger against the US dollar. Thus, 14 percentage points arose from changes in the cross rates of the other currencies, notably from the fall of the euro since December 2014. Devaluation of the RMB by 3 per cent in August 2015 just covered the effective appreciation since December 2014. Effects of the cross rates of other currencies could be eliminated by managing the external value of the RMB with reference to a genuine trade‐weighted basket. This could be a suitable intermediary exchange rate regime for China, as the risks associated with free floating are still great. Diversifying further the currency composition of the foreign exchange reserves and other foreign assets of the Chinese government, from US dollars towards euro and yen assets, would be a natural parallel shift. The euro–US dollar–yen exchange rates in late summer 2015 may offer a good opportunity to carry out this move.     

Should East Asia’s currencies be pegged to the yen? The role of invoice currency

Growing concern that a dollar peg exposes East Asian economies to fluctuations in the dollar–yen exchange rate has stimulated research on currency basket regimes as alternatives for these economies. However, existing studies have mostly ignored an important characteristic of East Asia, i.e., most of its international trade is invoiced in the U.S. dollars. This paper investigates how the preponderance of dollar invoicing affects optimal currency basket regimes for East Asian economies. I develop a three-country center-periphery sticky-price dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for the analysis. The model is solved numerically by taking second-order approximations to the policy functions with the expected lifetime utility of households chosen as the welfare criterion. Contrary to the conjecture of existing literature, I show that predominance of dollar invoicing implies that the dollar should receive a smaller weight than suggested by bilateral trade shares between emerging markets in East Asia and the United States. The results hinge on the interaction of different degrees of pass-through implied by the choice of invoice currency and endogenous responses of monetary policies in the center countries.     

Was it really a dollar peg?: The exchange rate policies of East Asian countries, 1980–1997

This paper examines the exchange rate policies of East Asian countries during the period preceding the currency crisis of 1997, in an attempt to ascertain the extent to which they could be considered, as they frequently are, as a dollar peg. We do so by estimating the implicit weights of foreign currencies in the nominal exchange rate determination of East Asian currencies by means of a time-varying parameter model. The crucial element of our approach concerns how the weight of the Japanese yen was altered in response to the movement of the yen–dollar exchange rate. It is found that, while the weight of the U.S. dollar was large and the weight of the Japanese yen was small for the period as a whole, the weight of the yen was raised in some of the countries in the early 1990s. In particular, the Korean and Malaysian authorities raised the weight of the yen when the yen depreciated against the U.S. dollar, while the Singaporean authorities raised the weight of the yen when the yen appreciated against the dollar.     

Stabilization of effective exchange rates under common currency basket systems

We investigate the extent to which a common currency basket peg would stabilize effective exchange rates of East Asian currencies. We use an AMU (Asian Monetary Unit), which is a weighted average of ASEAN10 plus 3 (Japan, China, and Korea) currencies, as a common currency basket to investigate the stabilization effects. We compare our results with another result on stabilization effects of the common G3 currency (the US dollar, the Japanese yen, and the euro) basket in the East Asian countries [Williamson, J., 2005, A currency basket for East Asia, not just China. In: Policy Briefs in International Economics, No. PB05-1. Institute for International Economics]. We obtained the following results: first, the AMU peg system would be more effective in reducing fluctuations of the effective exchange rates of East Asian currencies as a number of countries applied the AMU peg system increases in East Asia. Second, the AMU peg system would more effectively stabilize the effective exchange rates than a common G3 currency basket peg system for four (Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand) of the seven countries. The results suggest that the AMU peg system would be useful for the East Asian countries whose trade weights on Japan are relatively higher than others. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (4) (2006) 590–611.     

Is Asian Currency Unit Attractive to East Asian Economies？

Pegging the RMB exchange rate to the Asian currency unit (ACU) has not, at least in the short term, been proved a better solution than pegging to the US dollar or pegging to a G‐3 (US$, Japanese yen and euro) currency basket. Although the Asian currency unit can help Asian economies to keep the relative price of regional currencies stable, the cost of joining a formal regional monetary cooperation is the relinquishment of the autonomy of their domestic policies. Asian monetary cooperation needs to provide more potential benefits if it is to attract Asian economies. We argue that Asian monetary cooperation should be designed to solve the problem of regional trade imbalance, and regional exchange rate policy coordination should be adopted as the first step towards exchange rate cooperation. (Edited by Zhinan Zhang)     

Exchange-rate policy in East Asia after the fall: how much have things changed?

This paper evaluates the changes in the exchange-rate policies of East Asian economies in the aftermath of the currency crisis and the process in which the exchange-market stability was re-established. The empirical analysis evaluates the changing roles of the yen and the US dollar in the currency baskets, the shifts in the volatility of the underlying macroeconomic fundamentals and their implications on exchange-rate management, the exchange-market perception of credibility and risk of the postcrisis exchange-rate regimes, and the process of reversion to fundamental values after the massive currency depreciation.The analysis shows that after the abandonment of the quasi-dollar peg, the yen had gained a greater weight in the currency baskets and the greater flexibility in which the exchange rates are being managed serve to accommodate the greater volatility in the macroeconomic fundamentals. The improvement in the macroeconomic conditions and the greater credibility that has been acquired by the regional monetary authorities had allowed the exchange market to stabilize and enabled the exchange rates to revert back to their fundamental values.     

Optimal Pegs for East Asian Currencies

It has been evidenced that the U.S. dollar is prominent in the exchange rate regimes of Asian countries. This paper shows that the relative stability of Asian exchange rates against the U.S. dollar until the 1997 crisis is not accounted for by the theory of optimum currency areas, in contradiction to the situation in Europe vis-à-vis the deutsche mark. An alternative framework is proposed where the absence of a yen bloc is explained by the mismatch between the country distribution of trade and the currency distribution of the debt. It is shown that the lack of cooperation makes Asian countries underweight the yen in their implicit basket pegs.J. Japan. Int. Econ., March 1999,13(1), pp. 44–60. University of Lille 2 (CADRE) and CEPII, 9 rue G. Pitard, 75015 Paris, France.Copyright 1999 Academic Press.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: F31, F33, F36.     

Asian Currency Crisis and the Generalized PPP: Evidence from the Far East

The present paper investigates the effects of the Asian currency crisis of 1997–1998 on the generalized PPP between several real exchange rates of the Far East countries. Monthly log of real exchange rates of the currencies of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and South Korea vis-à-vis the US dollar and the Japanese yen during 1990–2004 are applied in the investigation. Further tests are conducted between exchange rates vis-à-vis the Thai baht. Tests are conducted for periods before and after the crisis. Results from the Johansen method of multivariate cointegration show a substantial change in the relationship between these real exchange rates before and after the Asian currency crisis. This result is found using rates based on three currencies: US dollar, yen and baht.     

Causes of the financial crisis and the need of monetary cooperation in East Asia

The Main causes of the East Asian financial crisis in 1997–98 can be divided into domestic and foreign ones. The domestic cause stems from structural and liquidity problems, with growing share of non‐performing loans in the financial sector, posing as the most visible manifestation of such problems. On the other side, there is the foreign cause, the sudden fall of the yen against the dollar under the region's unstable foreign exchange system and also its over‐dependency on the dollar. Unfortunately, these causes have not yet disappeared. In order to prevent another financial economic crisis from recurring and to secure the regional currency stability in the long run, an external safety device is indispensable. The purpose of the East Asian monetary cooperation device is not only to absorb the external shocks caused by abrupt changes in the dollar/yen rate and sudden flow of capital, but also to settle international liquidity problems among the regional countries. If a device for the East Asian monetary cooperation is established, transparency in both financial and physical markets will be augmented and in the process, so will be the stability of financial and physical transactions.     

Exchange rate systems and linkages in the pacific basin

This paper analyzes the exchange rate systems of 10 Pacific Basin economies and linkages of their currencies with the major currencies. The recent advances in time series analysis, including unit root tests and cointegration tests, are utilized for this purpose. The results suggest that while many Pacific Basin developing economies are inclined to have a peg or crawling peg system and peg their currencies primarily to the U.S. dollar, the influence of the Japanese yen in this region is also strong, especially on the exchange rates of the Asian newly industrializing economies. For Australia and New Zealand, their exchange rates move in tandem.     

The Japanese–U.S. trade balance and the yen: Evidence from industry data

While it is often assumed that a country's trade balance will improve in the long-run if its currency is allowed to depreciate, this is not necessarily the case for specific goods. In the short run, the opposite might even take place, as fixed quantities and rising import prices cause the trade balance to deteriorate. In this paper, we apply cointegration methodology to assess the short- and long-run impact of fluctuations in the yen–dollar real exchange rate on Japan's trade balance with the U.S. for 117 industries. We find that depreciation causes the trade balance to improve in the long-run for about one-third of Japanese industries. Most short-run effects are in the same direction, indicating a quick improvement in these industries’ trade balance, rather than a period of deterioration such as a “J-curve.”     

On the identification of de facto currency pegs

We describe an exchange rate peg on a dollar/euro/yen basket as an orthogonality condition for bilateral exchange rates vis-à-vis these currencies. This approach avoids the choice of a numeraire and allows simple testing on the composition of the peg. GMM estimation is performed before and after the 1997–1998 crises for up to 139 currencies. We find that the number of pegs has not diminished after the crises. Intermediate regimes, defined as de facto pegs which are not reported as hard pegs to the IMF, have been replaced by hard pegs (primarily as a consequence of the launch of the euro) while the proportion of free floats has not increased. The dollar remains the main anchor currency. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (1) (2006) 112–127.     

Exchange rate policy and export performance in a landlocked developing country: The case of Nepal

This paper examines the implications of Nepal's exchange rate policy for its export performance over the period 1980–2010. We first document Nepal's long-standing currency peg against the Indian rupee and that Nepal's real exchange rate appreciated substantially from the late 1990s. We then employ a gravity modeling approach to confirm that this real exchange rate appreciation has adversely affected Nepal's exports, especially to third-country markets. Nepal's exchange rate-related export competitiveness trap provides a motivation to reconsider the current peg.     

THE YEN‐DOLLAR EXCHANGE RATE AND MALAYSIAN MACROECONOMIC DYNAMICS

This paper empirically assesses the effect of the yen‐dollar exchange rate on selected macroeconomic variables, namely, real output, price level, and money supply, for Malaysia. The results, which are based on a vector autoregressive framework, suggest that variations in the yen‐dollar rate can have significant influences on Malaysia's macroeconomic variables. More specifically, the yen‐dollar depreciation leads to contraction in real GDP and money supply. These results are fairly robust to alternative model specifications. We believe that, apart from providing important insights into the interactions between the yen‐dollar rate and domestic macroeconomic variables, our results contribute to the debate on choice of exchange rate regimes for Malaysia.     

Exchange rate pass-through in Korea and Thailand: Trends and determinants

An important but age-old transmission channel of global factors into domestic prices is via exchange rate movements. This paper examines the extent and evolution of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) into Korea's and Thailand's consumer and import prices at the aggregate level for the period over the last two decades. We find that ERPT appears to be consistently higher for Thailand compared to Korea; while for both nations ERPT of their respective bilateral rates with respect to the US dollar is higher than with respect to the Japanese yen. The paper also investigates if and how ERPT has changed over time, especially during and after the currency crisis period of 1997–1998, as well as its macroeconomic determinants.     

Optimal currency shares in international reserves: The impact of the euro and the prospects for the dollar

Foreign exchange reserve accumulation has risen dramatically in recent years. The introduction of the euro, greater liquidity in other major currencies, and the rising current account deficits and external debt of the United States have increased the pressure on central banks to diversify away from the US dollar. A major portfolio shift would significantly affect exchange rates and the status of the dollar as the dominant international currency. We develop a dynamic mean-variance optimization framework with portfolio rebalancing costs to estimate optimal portfolio weights among the main international currencies. Making various assumptions on expected currency returns and the variance–covariance structure, we assess how the euro has changed this allocation. We then perform simulations for the optimal currency allocations of four large emerging market countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), adding constraints that reflect a central bank's desire to hold a sizable portion of its portfolio in the currencies of its peg, its foreign debt and its international trade. Our main results are: (i) The optimizer can match the large share of the US dollar in reserves, when the dollar is the reference (risk-free) currency. (ii) The optimum portfolios show a much lower weight for the euro than is observed. This suggests that the euro may already enjoy an enhanced role as an international reserve currency (“punching above its weight”). (iii) Growth in issuance of euro-denominated securities, a rise in euro zone trade with key emerging markets, and increased use of the euro as a currency peg, would all work towards raising the optimal euro shares, with the last factor being quantitatively the most important. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (4) (2006) 508–547.     

How Did the Dollar Peg Fail in Asia?

In this paper, we have constructed a theoretical model in which the Asian firm maximizes its profit, competing with the Japanese and the U.S. firms in their markets. The duopoly model is used to determine export prices and volumes in response to the exchange rate fluctuations vis-à-vis the Japanese yen and the U.S. dollar. Then, the optimal basket weight that would minimize the fluctuation of the growth rate of trade balance was derived. These are the novel features of our model. The export price equation and export volume equation are estimated for several Asian countries for the sample period from 1981 to 1996. Results are generally reasonable. The optimal currency weights for the yen and the U.S. dollar are derived and compared with actual weights that had been adopted before the currency crisis of 1997. For all countries in the sample, it is shown that the optimal weight of the yen is significantly higher than the actual weight.J. Japan. Int. Econ.,Dec. 1998,12(4), pp. 256–304. Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University, Kunitachi, Tokyo 186, Japan; Department of Commerce, Hitotsubashi University, Kunitachi, Tokyo 186, Japan; Department of Commerce, Takachiho University, Suginami, Tokyo 168, Japan.Copyright 1998 Academic Press.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers F31, F33, O11.     

Exchange Rate Instability： Japan＇s Micro-Macro Experiences and Implications for China

Since 1985, the yen‐dollar exchange rates repeatedly fluctuated and climbed to a level that could not be justified by economic fundamentals. The impacts on the Japanese economy were serious and far‐reaching. Since 21 July 2005, China has been moving toward a more flexible exchange rate regime. Keeping RMB exchange rates basically stable and providing Chinese industries with means to hedge exchange rate risks are essential for China's sound economic development. Edited by Zhinan Zhang     

Robust Monetary Framework for China

I. Introduction China has made tremendous gains in terms of economic growth in the last 15 years, by inviting foreign direct investment and increasing manufacturing production and exports. The currency unification (devaluation of the official rate and unification of the official and market rates) in 1994 also contributed to the efficiency in the monetary and foreign exchange systems. China was not severely affected by the Asian currency crisis of 1997–1998, and instead China helped the regio…     

China＇s Exchange Rate and Financial Repression： The Conflicted Emergence of the RMB as an International Currency

Instability in the worm dollar standard, as most recently manifested in the US Federal Reserve＇s near-zero interest rate policy, has caused consternation in emerging markets with naturally higher interest rates. China has been provoked into speeding RMB ＂internationalization ＂; that is, opening up domestic financial markets to reduce its dependence on the US dollar for invoicing trade and making international payments. However, despite rapid percentage growth in offshore financial markets in RMB, the Chinese authorities are essentially trapped into maintaining exchange controls （reinforced by financial repression in domestic interest rates） to avoid an avalanche of foreign capital inflows that would threaten inflation and asset price bubbles by driving nominal interest rates on RMB assets down further. Because a floating （appreciating） exchange rate could attract even more hot money inflows, the People＇s Bank of China should focus on keeping the yuan/dollar rate stable so as to encourage naturally high wage increases to help balance China ＂s international competitiveness. However, further internationalization of the RMB, as with the proposed Shanghai pilot free trade zone, is best deferred until world interest rates rise to more normal levels.