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.     

Toward regional financial and monetary cooperation in East Asia1

The financial and economic crisis in 1997–98 came as a dramatic shock to East Asian economies, and has prompted to institutionalize a regional financial and monetary cooperation. This paper demonstrates the strong will of East Asian countries to develop the regional financial and monetary cooperation, outlines recent developments, and provides possible prospects for the future. It points out that the option to keep consistent with the IMF system actually weakens regional solidarity, and recommends an immediate establishment of a strong regional surveillance and peer pressure mechanism for the Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) to evolve into a common pool of foreign exchange reserves, a sort of East Asian IMF. It also argues that East Asian countries should closely coordinate their exchange rate regime to maintain intra‐regional and extra‐regional exchange rate stability.     

Inflation dynamics and monetary policy transmission in Vietnam and emerging Asia

This paper provides an overview of inflation developments in Vietnam in the years following the doi moi reforms, and uses empirical analysis to answer two key questions: (i) what are the key drivers of inflation in Vietnam, and what role does monetary policy play? and (ii) why has inflation in Vietnam been persistently higher than in most other emerging market economies in the region? It focuses on understanding the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Vietnam, and in understanding the extent to which monetary policy can explain why inflation in Vietnam has been higher than in other Asian emerging markets over the past decade.     

全球金融危机下我国企业的经营对策

源于美国"次贷危机"引发了新一轮的全球金融危机,进而衍变为全球性的经济衰退。国内企业面临着成本增加、出口渠道受阻、国内需求不旺、信贷紧缩等多重压力,生存与发展步履唯艰。企业可采取战略调整、供应链管理、开辟新的市场、加强软环境建设等措施积极应对。     

Commodity prices and global economic activity

Commodity prices provide useful information about current and future global economic activity. First, we show that overall commodity prices indeed tend to comove with economic activity. Second, we try to extract the global demand factor(s) using many commodity prices. While commodity prices reflect both demand and supply factors, by relying on a wide variety of commodity prices, supply shocks can be filtered out as they tend to be commodity-specific idiosyncratic shocks except for widespread supply disruptions confined to a few historical periods. In this paper, we then show that factors extracted from commodity prices movement contain useful information to nowcast and forecast global GDP and industrial production.     

Global food prices and monetary policy in an emerging market economy: The case of India

This paper investigates a perception in the political debates as to what extent poor countries are affected by price movements in the global commodity markets. To test this perception, we use the case of India to establish in a standard SVAR model that global food prices influence aggregate prices and food prices in India. To further analyze these empirical results, we specify a small open economy New-Keynesian model including oil and food prices and estimate it using observed data over the period 1996Q2 to 2013Q2 by applying Bayesian estimation techniques. The results suggest that a big part of the variation in inflation in India is due to cost-push shocks and, mainly during the years 2008 and 2010, also to global food price shocks, after having controlled for exogenous rainfall shocks. We conclude that the inflationary supply shocks (cost-push, oil price, domestic food price and global food price shocks) are important contributors to inflation in India. Since the monetary authority responds to these supply shocks with a higher interest rate which tends to slow growth, this raises concerns about how such output losses can be prevented by reducing exposure to commodity price shocks.     

Working capital management during the global financial crisis: Evidence from Japan

This paper demonstrates the adjustment speed of firm working capital and the relationships between working capital and firm performance in Japan during the global financial crisis. Using quarterly firm-level data, we find that the adjustment of working capital was weaker during the crisis. Moreover, the negative relationship between excess working capital and firm performance became more significant during the crisis, especially for larger firms. However, this crisis-related working capital–firm performance effect does not appear to persist for very long, because to finance any excess working capital, firms borrow from banks and reduce their internal cash both during and outside periods of crisis.     

Japanese repo and call markets before,during, and emerging from the financial crisis

We empirically investigate the relationship between the Japanese general collateral (GC) repurchase agreement (repo) and uncollateralized call rates before, during, and emerging from the recent financial crisis. Unlike the US and many other countries, the Japanese GC repo rate had been higher than the uncollateralized call rate, despite the former being secured by collateral. Moreover, during the financial crisis, the Japanese GC repo rate rose, whereas the US Treasury GC repo rate decreased. The results of our empirical analysis suggest that segmentation between the Japanese repo and call markets was an important factor in explaining these features. Our results also imply that the Bank of Japan’s policy actions during and after the financial crisis were effective to some extent in lowering both the repo and call rates, and stabilizing the relationship between them.     

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。     

Dissecting long-run and short-run causalities between monetary policy and stock prices

We adopt a Cointegrated Vector-Autoregressive (CVAR) model to analyze the long-run behavior and short-run dynamics of stock markets across five developed and three emerging economies. Our main aim is to check whether liquidity conditions play an important role for stock market developments. As an innovation, liquidity conditions enter the analysis from three angles: in the form of a broad monetary aggregate, the interbank overnight rate and net capital flows which represent the share of global liquidity that arrives in the respective country. A second objective is to understand whether central banks are able to influence the stock market.     

Fiscal lessons from the East Asian financial crisis

This paper examines the financial crises experienced in East Asian countries beginning in 1997. A common thread of these occurrences is the failure to address the risks of positions and policies by either the public or private sector, suggesting that there is a need to improve fiscal flexibility, to better understand public sector assets and liabilities, and for a more flexible public cash management or control system. The international community may need to establish fast-disbursing assistance systems to support this increased flexibility.     

Openness and growth in East Asia after the Asian crisis

Openness with respect to trade in goods, services and foreign direct investment has a positive marginal effect on growth. The fast-growing East Asian economies were early openers, and this contributed to their fast growth. However, East Asian countries are not relatively open today. This factor, together with the convergence effect of fast growth in the past, imply that their economies will slow down. Their growth prospects are further reduced by growing geographic discrimination against their goods and services in world markets, and the slow down of the Japanese economy.     

Responding to the global financial crisis: Vietnamese exchange rate policy, 2008–2009

The paper presents an analysis of exchange rate policy in Vietnam during 2008–2009. In early 2008, the country faced a sudden reversal of capital flows as signs of developing domestic vulnerabilities became evident. The downward pressure on the dong then intensified with the onset of the global financial crisis in the fall. In these environments, the Vietnamese authorities responded with various exchange rate policy measures. The paper documents a shift in Vietnam's de facto exchange rate regime, from a basket peg to a simple US dollar peg, when the domestic vulnerabilities became compounded by the evolving global crisis. The authorities utilized additional measures to relieve pressure on the parallel exchange rate. An event study methodology finds little evidence of systematic effectiveness for these policy actions; any effectiveness was short-lived. A close examination of individual actions suggests that the impact of foreign exchange market intervention appeared more consistent than any other type of measure and most effective when combined with other measures.     

Bank financial structure in pre-crisis East and Southeast Asia

Seeking evidence on the role of bank governance in the 1997 crisis, we study financial structure and bank performance from 1987 to 1997. Financial performance ratios (capital adequacy, liquidity, profitability, and loan preference) are regressed on structural variables (bank assets, net income, administrative expenses, and time), focusing on banks’ management efficiency and financial performance. During financial liberalization, loan-preference ratios were higher, perhaps signaling more risk; so were capital-adequacy ratios. Capital adequacy falls, then rises as management size increases; profitability behaves oppositely, indicating diminishing returns. Thailand’s, Korea’s and Indonesia’s banks show stronger lending preference but weaker profitability; possible harbingers of crisis.     

An empirical analysis of the factors determining the financial crisis in Asia

This article tests a hypothesis that the causes of the Asian financial crisis are weaknesses in the balance sheet of financial institutions, high international interest rates, high short-term external debts, excessive loans, and continuing large current account deficits. It also tests a hypothesis regarding the determination of nonperforming bank loans. Empirical tests are carried out with panel data on seven countries in Asia—Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand—for the 1995 through 1997 period. The 3-month LIBOR interest rate and nonperforming loan rates of banks are found to be the major determinants of the Asian financial crisis. The nonperforming bank loan ratios are explained by the corporate leverage ratio. In addition, both the corporate high leverage ratio and LIBOR interest rates are found to significantly affect the outcome of the Asian crisis. Lowering world interest rates and taking the measures of individual Asian countries to reduce nonperforming assets and debt-to-equity ratios would be very effective in preventing reoccurrence of the crisis.     

东亚金融合作的经验分析与理性反思

金融危机后,从单边角度考察,东亚各经济体又陷入了一种汇率制度选择的囚徒困境,东亚地区的汇率安排问题需要求助于区域性的金融合作机制。东亚强势国家的政府在跨国界的经济制度安排中更能够发挥强制性制度变迁的主导功能,并提供制度化的合作体系。为了防止市场溢出和政策外溢,降低合作成本,避免逆效合作与搭便车行为,保证金融合作的稳定推进与分步实施,必须通过多次博弈,对东亚国家的货币政策、财政政策以及汇率政策进行国际间的协调。     

From the Asian crisis to the global credit crisis: reforming the international financial architecture redux

2008 was marked by the tenth anniversary of the Asian crisis and the debate over how to reform the international financial architecture but also by the outbreak of the most serious global credit crisis in generations. This paper reviews the debate over how to strengthen the international monetary and financial system in this light. An earlier version of this paper was presented to a meeting of the Tokyo Club, Tokyo, Japan, 11–12 November 2008. Comments of the participants there and of the editors of this journal are acknowledged with thanks. I am grateful as well to the Tokyo Club for permission to publish this revised version. Financial support from the Coleman Fund Risk Management Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley is acknowledged with thanks.

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The dynamic contagion of the global financial crisis into Japanese markets

This paper investigates the risk contagion channel of the global financial crisis into Japan using daily data on bond risk premiums for the financial and manufacturing industries from July 18, 2006 to May 25, 2010. We employ a bivariate EGARCH model with the constant exogenous contagion impacts of foreign industries and the time-varying endogenous contagion impacts of domestic industries. We find evidence that: (i) a constant exogenous impact from foreign industries appears in the risk premium for 5-year bonds issued by manufacturing industry firms, and (ii) contagion only exists from the manufacturing industry to the financial industry, and that there is no evidence of any reverse causation, even during the Lehman Brothers shock on September 15, 2008. Thus, in Japan, risk transfers from foreign industries to the domestic manufacturing industry, and thence to the domestic financial industry.     

中国经济增长中财政与货币政策效应的比较分析

1990年代末，中国政府为推动经济持续、健康发展，制订并实施了积极的财政政策和稳健的货币政策。哪项政策对经济增长的拉动作用更大？笔者运用计量经济模型进行实证分析，从理论和实践两个层面论证得出近年来财政政策的效应更大。