Macroeconomic interdependence in East Asia

This paper analyzes macroeconomic interdependence among 10 Asian economies. In this connection, we decompose their macroeconomic activities (real GDP) into common and country-specific components using the Bai–Ng method (2004). Our results suggest first that both components are non-stationary and have permanent effects on their overall economy. Second, we find the relative importance of common factors in all countries in terms of their contribution to variations in real GDP. But evidence is also obtained for country-specific effects becoming increasingly important in countries like China in recent years. Therefore, if, for example, China is expected to grow at a fast pace in future, our findings imply that creation of a regional monetary union of these 10 countries needs to be held back until the Chinese economy has become more dominant in the region.     

The Small Open-Economy New Keynesian Phillips Curve: Empirical Evidence and Implied Inflation Dynamics

In this paper we apply GMM estimation to assess the relevance of domestic versus external determinants of CPI inflation dynamics in a sample of OECD countries typically classified as open economies. The analysis is based on a variant of the small open-economy New Keynesian Phillips Curve derived in Galí and Monacelli (Rev Econ Stud 72:707–734, 2005), where the novel feature is that expectations about fluctuations in the terms of trade enter explicitly. For most countries in our sample the expected relative change in the terms of trade emerges as the more relevant inflation driver than the contemporaneous domestic output gap.     

中国输出通货膨胀吗——基于贸易数据的实证检验

近年来中国的物价水平上涨较快,少数国家认为中国的出口扩张正在对外输出通货膨胀,引发全球性的通胀压力。针对这种言论指责,本文基于详实的数据资料,对中国的出口增长与进口国通胀之间的关系进行了实证检验。结果表明,中国的出口扩张不仅没有输出通胀,反而是稳定全球价格的重要力量。最后,对全球通胀的影响因素作了进一步的计量分析,发现进口国自身的宽松货币政策和国际市场中能源、原材料及运输价格的上涨才是全球通胀之源。     

Globalization and Inflation: a Swiss Perspective

Is inflation caused by global developments instead of domestic monetary factors? This paper explores the role of globalization for inflation, especially in Switzerland, one of the smallest and most open economies where the globalization hypothesis should be most relevant. It provides tests of whether Swiss inflation is causally related to inflation elsewhere. It also examines Swiss inflation in a P* model and whether it is also influenced by inflation abroad or by import prices. It finds that Swiss inflation is made at home. Evidence is presented of a co-integrating relationship of Swiss and German inflation, likely due to common inflation objectives.     

Exchange rate movements in emerging economies - Global vs regional factors in Asia

The aim of this article is to analyse the main determinants of emerging markets' exchange rate movements, particularly in Asia. For this purpose, we implement a dynamic latent factor model to investigate the drivers of 24 emerging countries' exchange rate movements and decompose the patterns into three components: a global common factor, a regional factor and a country-specific factor. Our results reveal that, in the whole period of 2000–2015, the common global factor is by far the most important determinant of exchange rate variations for Asian economies and, albeit to a lesser extent, for Latin America. However, after 2005, there is a strong increase in the explanatory power of the regional factor in Asia, from 5.6% to 45.1%, and to 49.7% in the period of 2011–2015, which shows that it is becoming the dominant factor in this area. Then, we use a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model and an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model to show that the regional factor in Asia, estimated from the dynamic latent factor model, is mainly explained by Chinese economic variables. More particularly, our results highlight that the bilateral exchange rate of China, both the onshore and the offshore rates, and the macroeconomic climate in China greatly influence the regional factor in Asia in the long-run. These results give some evidence of a Renminbi zone in the long-run and are robust to the inclusion of two other major currencies in Asia, the Japanese Yen and the Korean Won, notably in the long run.     

What to Aim for? The Choice of an Inflation Objective when Openness Matters

Inflation targeting countries generally define the inflation objective in terms of the consumer price index. Studies in the academic literature, however, reach conflicting conclusions concerning which measure of inflation a central bank should target in a small open economy. This paper examines the properties of domestic, CPI, and real-exchange-rate-adjusted (REX) inflation targeting. In one class of open economy New Keynesian models there is an isomorphism between optimal policy in an open versus closed economy. In the type of model we consider, where the real exchange rate appears in the Phillips curve, this isomorphism breaks down; openness matters. REX inflation targeting restores the isomorphism but this may not be desirable. Instead, under domestic and CPI inflation targeting the exchange rate channel can be exploited to enhance the effects of monetary policy. Our results indicate that CPI inflation targeting delivers price stability across the three inflation objectives and will be desirable to a central bank with a high aversion to inflation instability. CPI inflation targeting also does a better job of stabilizing the real exchange rate and interest rate which is an advantage from the standpoint of financial stability. REX inflation targeting does well in achieving output stability and has an advantage if demand shocks are predominant. In general, the choice of the inflation objective affects the trade-offs between policy goals and thus policy choices and outcomes.     

The Relationship Between Price Stability and Financial Stability: Evidence From Major Emerging Economies

We examine the relationship between price stability and financial stability for major emerging economies using a Markov regime-switching model. Empirical results suggest that monetary policy is consistent with the Taylor rule in all countries except for India and all countries followed both low and high inflation targeting monetary policy regimes. Low inflation targeting regime seems to be more persistent and has higher duration than high inflation targeting regimes except for Indonesia and South Africa. All countries seem to have had financial stability concerns when they formulated their monetary policy as the coefficient of the financial stress index is statistically significant at least in one regime. Overall the results suggest that Taylor rule-based monetary policies have been implemented to various degrees in major emerging economies to achieve economic stability, price stability, and financial stability.     

What Drives Clarity of Central Bank Communication About Inflation?

This paper examines whether the clarity of central bank communication about inflation varies with the economic environment. Using readability statistics and content analysis, we study the clarity of communication on the inflation outlook by seven central banks across three continents during the recent decade. We uncover significant and persistent differences in clarity over time and across countries. However, identifying determinants of clarity that are robustly relevant across our sample of central banks proves elusive. Overall, our findings suggest that a single model for clarity of central bank communication is not appropriate. Rather, when studying clarity of communication, country-specific and institution-specific factors are highly relevant.     

Slow Pass-through Around the World: A New Import for Developing Countries?

Developing countries traditionally experience pass-through of exchange rate changes that is greater and more rapid than high-income countries experience. This is true equally of the determination of prices of imported goods, prices of local competitors’ products, and the general CPI. But developing countries in the 1990s experienced a rapid downward trend in the degree of pass-through and speed of adjustment, more so than did high-income countries. As a consequence, slow and incomplete pass-through is no longer exclusively a luxury of industrial countries. Using a new data set—prices of eight narrowly defined brand commodities, observed in 76 countries—we find empirical support for some of the factors that have been hypothesized in the literature, but not for others. Significant determinants of the pass-through coefficient include per capita incomes, bilateral distance, tariffs, country size, wages, long-term inflation, and long-term exchange rate variability. Some of these factors changed during the 1990s. Part (and only part) of the downward trend in pass-through to imported goods prices, and in turn to competitors’ prices and the CPI, can be explained by changes in the monetary environment—including a fall in long-term inflation. Real wages work to reduce pass-through to competitors’ prices and the CPI, confirming the hypothesized role of distribution and retail costs in pricing to market. Rising distribution costs, due perhaps to the Balassa-Samuelson-Baumol effect, could contribute to the decline in the pass-through coefficient in some developing countries.     

石油冲击对“金砖国家”经济增长和通胀的影响

本文从外生性、长期乘子和短期动态乘子研究石油冲击对"金砖国家"经济增长和通货膨胀的影响。文章引入了Bootstrap方法对短期动态乘子进行了统计推断,结果表明:石油价格对"金砖国家"经济具有外生性;长期而言,油价会显著拉动巴西和俄罗斯的经济增长,还会显著推高俄罗斯的通货膨胀;短期而言,油价会显著刺激巴西、俄罗斯和南非的经济增长,还会显著推高俄罗斯、印度和中国的通货膨胀。本文认为,石油冲击不是导致世界经济衰退的主要原因,但它可能是形成全世界范围内通货膨胀不可忽略的重要因素。     

The role of import prices in flattening the Phillips curve: Evidence from Korea

Are global inflation synchronization and the flattening of the Phillips curve across the globe related? The globalization hypothesis has been proposed to explain the relationship but questions remain on its quantitative role. Focusing on South Korea, one of Asia-Pacific supply chain hubs, this paper investigates the extent to which import prices affect domestic price inflation over the period between 2002 and 2020. Specifically, we conduct the regression decomposition method to identify major sources of variation in domestic inflation, followed by a subsequent set of comparative analyses across various inflation forecasting models. Our findings confirm a tight link from import prices to domestic prices, with a 10pp increase in IPI inflation passed onto PPI and CPI inflation by 3.9pp and 3.4pp over time, respectively. The main finding of this study is consistent with the recent global inflation surge that has been driven largely by imported food and energy price channels.     

Business cycle synchronisation in East Asia

Against the background of the rapid inter- and intra-regional integration of East Asia, we examine the extent and nature of synchronisation of business cycles in the region. We estimate a dynamic common factor model for output growth of 10 East Asian countries. A significant common factor is shared by all Asian countries considered, except China and Japan. The degree of synchronisation has fluctuated over time, with an upward trend particularly evident for the newly industrialised economies. Synchronisation appears to mainly reflect strong export synchronisation, rather than common consumption or investment dynamics. A number of external factors, such as the oil price and the JPY–USD exchange rate, appear to play a role in synchronising activity.     

International Dependency and Economic Fluctuations in East Asian NIEs

Abstract

This paper investigates the sources of economic fluctuations in the four Asian newly industrialized economies (NIEs), namely Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. As small open economies, their macro-economic development is highly dependent on technology as well as markets of large countries. Using the common trends model, we examine the impacts of external supply shock, internal supply shock and trade shock on the key national macro-economic variables of these four economies, i.e. output, consumption, investment, export and import. Our empirical evidence suggests that supply-side disturbances, both the country-specific supply shocks and international supply shocks explain the bulk of fluctuations in output.     

中国通货膨胀的内在周期波动与外在水平波动的驱动机制研究

无论是从有关中国宏观经济周期性文献,或者还是从有关中国通货膨胀文献来看,它们均普遍忽略了中国通货膨胀的内在周期与外在水平波动的分析。为此,文章首先从内部时域和频域视角,通过"谷-谷"划分法和谱分析方法对1990年到2016年的CPI进行了周期划分和波动成分分解;随后从外部视角通过对驱动通货膨胀水平波动的系统因素,进行因子提取,采用FAVAR方法研究了价格变动的影响机制。主要发现：（1）中国以CPI为度量标准的通货膨胀在1990年1月到2016年12月完整经历了6轮周期。在有些轮次周期中,上升跨越度和下降跨越度有明显的不对称性。（2）内在成分中,食品项的主周期长度和次周期长度均与CPI指数保持高度一致,食品对CPI总指数的影响相对较大,长期保持同向变动。（3）外在机制中,外部冲击因素因子、通货膨胀自身惯性和预期对中国通货膨胀变动具有较为重要的驱动贡献。中国通货膨胀不仅是货币现象,而且也是外部冲击、自身惯性与预期波动的重要驱动结果。     

Does the dispersion of unit labor cost dynamics in the EMU imply long-run divergence?

Using unit labor cost (ULC) data from Euro area countries as well as US States and German Länder we investigate inflation convergence using different approaches, namely panel unit root tests, cointegration tests and error-correction models. All in all we cannot reject convergence of ULC growth in EMU. However, country-specific deviations from the rest of the currency union are much more pronounced and much more persistent in Europe than in the US or Germany. This holds before and after the introduction of the common currency. Hence, asymmetric shocks in the future might take a long time to dissipate.     

Welfare Implications of Currency Integration: Labor Mobility and Pricing-to-Market

In this paper, we examine the welfare cost of renouncing monetary policy autonomy in a model that includes labor mobility and pricing-to-market (PTM) behavior in firms. We find that renouncing monetary policy autonomy becomes a cost of currency integration when the consumption basket weights differ between candidate countries and when country-specific total factor productivity (TFP) shocks hit economies, even when the union fulfills the classic optimum currency area theory of labor mobility. We also found that a firm's PTM behavior has a significant effect on the welfare implications of currency integration combined with labor mobility. For instance, currency integration does not produce greater welfare losses in the PTM case (where the labor input weights differ across member countries and asymmetric labor disutility shocks occur), although greater welfare losses arise in the case of producer currency pricing.     

New evidence on sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in sub-Saharan African countries

Following a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) approach, this paper presents new evidence on the validity of international transmission of economic shocks from key trading partners as sources of macroeconomic fluctuations in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The GVAR model was estimated for 21 SSA countries grouped into three country classes—oil-rich, other-resources-rich and non-resource-based economies, to account for output shocks from crucial trading partner countries—United States, United Kingdom, China and Europe. Furthermore, the generalized forecast error variance decompositions results reveal that output shocks from key trading partners constitute significant contributors to changes in key macroeconomic indicators—real gross domestic product, inflation, exchange rate and short-term interest rate, in the SSA region. The generalized impulse response functions indicate that these economic shocks have more significant impacts on oil-rich countries than on other country groups. A key recommendation from this study is that SSA countries, especially the resource-rich economies, need to strengthen and diversify their economic structure, including the trade basket.     

The monetarist explanation of inflation: The experience of six Asian countries

Studies on inflation, employing the Harberger-type monetarist model, have focused almost entirely on the hogh inflation experiences, usually those of Latin American countries. This model is applied here to the six Asian countries, which contain low and moderate inflation cases. The empirical results show that the growth of money stock was not the primary source of inflation in these countries. The failure of the monetarist model to explain the behavior of prices in Asian countries may be due (1) partly to the monetization of these economies which makes the growth of money stock endogenous, and (2) partly to its rigid specification which excludes the impact of the various domestic and external cost pressures. To test the validity of the latter proposition, the monetarist model is augmented by the inclusion of import prices which are widely alleged to have intensified inflationary pressures. The empirical results do indeed provide support for this view. As regards monetary policy the findings of this paper suggest that monetary discipline may be, by and large, ineffective in controlling inflation in moderate inflation countries.     

The fisher hypothesis: Evidence from three high inflation economies

Conclusions In this paper, we have found strong evidence for a long-run unit proportional relationship between nominal interest rates and anticipated inflation for three high inflation economies (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico). These results contrast with the mixed evidence found for low inflation economies. We also found that for those three countries, as well as for the United States and Australia, the speed of adjustment of interest rates to inflationary shocks does not appear to depend directly on the absolute level of the inflation rate or any measure of inflation rate volatility.     

Real exchange rate misalignment and business cycle fluctuations in the Asia-Pacific

Real exchange rate (RER) misalignment, which is the deviation between the actual real exchange rate from its equilibrium, occurs frequently among developing countries. Studies have shown that RER misalignment may have negative economic implications, such as a decline in economic growth, exports, and export diversification and an increased risk of currency crises and political instability. Using quarterly data for 22 sample countries from 1990 to 2018, this paper investigates the impact of RER misalignment on business cycles in the Asia-Pacific by employing a panel vector autoregression involving consumer price index (CPI) inflation, output gap, short-term interest rates, and RER misalignment. We find that RER overvaluation may reduce CPI inflation and short-term interest rates. We also find that the Asia-Pacific region is highly heterogeneous in that the output gaps of some countries, particularly from the Southeast Asian region, are more susceptible to RER misalignment shocks.