NEW ESTIMATION OF CHINA'S EXCHANGE RATE REGIME

Abstract. The present paper updates the question: what precisely is the exchange rate regime that China has put into place since 2005, when it announced a move away from the US dollar peg? Is it a basket anchor with the possibility of cumulatable daily appreciations, as was announced at the time? We apply to this question a new approach of estimating countries’ de facto exchange rate regimes, a synthesis of two techniques. One is a technique that has been used in the past to estimate implicit de facto currency weights when the hypothesis is a basket peg with little flexibility. The second is a technique used to estimate the de facto degree of exchange rate flexibility when the hypothesis is an anchor to the US dollar or some other single major currency. Because the RMB and many other currencies today purportedly follow variants of band‐basket‐crawl, it is important to have available a technique that can cover both dimensions, inferring weights and inferring flexibility. The synthesis adds a variable representing ‘exchange market pressure’ to the currency basket equation, whereby the degree of flexibility is estimated at the same time as the currency weights. This approach reveals that by mid‐2007, the RMB basket had switched a substantial part of the US dollar's weight onto the euro. The implication is that the appreciation of the RMB against the US dollar during this period was due to the appreciation of the euro against the dollar, not to any upward trend in the RMB relative to its basket.     

Possible Best Currency Basket Selection from the Perspective of Real Effective Exchange Rate

We calculated the real effective exchange rate indexes and measured their volatilities based on four currency baskets to find which currency basket is optimal for achieving China's policy target of keeping exchange rates stable. The volatility of the bilateral exchange rate between the RMB and the US dollar is also calculated to make a comparative analysis. Results showed that the bilateral exchange rate of the RMB and the US dollar is only stable in special time periods. In most time periods, pegging to the G3 currency basket is optimal to achieve the goal of stabilizing exchange rates while pegging to the AMU currency basket will result in the most volatile exchange rates.     

Pegging emerging currencies in the face of dollar swings

The aim of this article is to study ruptures of exchange rate pegs by focusing on the fluctuations of the anchor currency. We test for the hypothesis that currencies linked to the USD are more likely to loosen their peg when the USD is appreciating, while sticking to it otherwise. To this end, we estimate smooth-transition regression models for a sample of 28 emerging currencies over the 1994–2011 period. Our findings show that while the real effective exchange rates of most of these countries tend to co-move with that of the USD in times of depreciation, this relationship is frequently reversed when the US currency appreciates over a certain threshold.     

Unconventional monetary policy and the dollar–euro exchange rate: first results from time-series analysis

This article examines the impact on the US dollar–euro (USD–EUR) exchange rate of the unconventional monetary policy conducted by the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB). To that end, we make use of time-series analysis to obtain a reasonable long-run and short run representation of the data generation process and use dummy variables to study how announcements about monetary policy changes can affect the USD–EUR exchange rate. Our results indicate that the announcement and subsequent implementation of such measures by the ECB would have caused an appreciation of the dollar, while those by the Fed would have caused a depreciation of the dollar.     

Unconventional monetary policy and the dollar–euro exchange rate: further evidence from event studies

New evidence is presented on the impact on the US dollar–euro (USD–EUR) exchange rate of the unconventional monetary policy conducted by the US Federal Reserve (FED) and the European Central Bank (ECB). To that end, we employ an event study approach using daily the USD–EUR exchange rate for the period from 2 January 2007 to 31 January 2015. Our results indicate that the announcement and subsequent implementation of such measures by the ECB would have caused in general an appreciation of the dollar, while those by the FED would have caused a depreciation of the dollar.     

Exchange Rate Policy in China after the Financial Crisis: Evidence from Time‐varying Exchange Rate Basket

We analyze the period of a managed floating exchange rate policy in China between June 2010 and November 2014. We estimate a time‐varying structure of a hypothetical currency basket using the Kalman filter. We show that the exchange rate policy continues to focus on the US dollar. However, its weight has been gradually declining, while this decline has moderated in 2014. The euro played some role before summer 2011, but became negligible after the outbreak of the European sovereign debt crisis. Finally, the Thai baht has positive implicit weights.     

Network effects,homogeneous goods and international currency choice: New evidence on oil markets from an older era

Conventional wisdom has it that network effects are strong in markets for homogenous goods, leading to the dominance of one settlement currency in such markets. The dominance of the US dollar in global oil markets is said to epitomize this phenomenon. We question this presumption with evidence for earlier periods showing that several national currencies have simultaneously played substantial roles in global oil markets. European oil import payments before and after World War II were split between the dollar and non‐dollar currencies, mainly sterling. Differences in use of the dollar across countries were associated with trade linkages with the United States and the size of the importing country. That several national currencies could simultaneously play a role in international oil settlements suggests that a shift from the current dollar‐based system toward a multipolar system in the period ahead is not impossible.     

Uncovered Interest Parity at Long Horizons: Evidence on Emerging Economies*

This paper estimates uncovered interest parity (UIP) at long horizons using bilateral US dollar rates vis‐à‐vis mature economy and emerging market currencies. The paper finds support in favor of UIP for dollar rates vis‐à‐vis major mature economy currencies, but far less against emerging market currencies. There are also signs that political risk and the exchange risk premium help explain the empirical failure of UIP for these latter currencies. This suggests that whether UIP holds depends more on the currency than on the horizon.     

VEHICLE CURRENCY*

Historically, the world economy has been dominated by a single currency accepted in the exchange of goods and assets among countries. In recent decades, the U.S. dollar has played this role. The dollar acts as a “vehicle currency” in the sense that agents in nondollar economies will generally engage in currency trade indirectly using the U.S. dollar instead of using direct bilateral trade among their own currencies. A vehicle currency is desirable when there are transactions costs of exchange. This article constructs a dynamic general equilibrium model of a vehicle currency. We explore the nature of the efficiency gains arising from a vehicle currency and show how it depends on the total number of currencies in existence, the size of the vehicle currency economy, and the monetary policy followed by the vehicle currency’s government. We find that there can be significant welfare gains to a vehicle currency in a system of many independent currencies. But these gains are asymmetrically weighted toward the residents of the vehicle currency country. The survival of a vehicle currency places natural limits on the monetary policy of the vehicle currency country.     

TOWARD A REGIONAL EXCHANGE RATE REGIME IN EAST ASIA

Abstract.  Deepening market-driven economic integration in East Asia makes intraregional exchange rate across the region increasingly desirable and necessary. The paper suggests that East Asia's emerging economies begin to choose a currency basket as a monetary policy anchor to enable all East Asian currencies to collectively appreciate vis-à-vis the US dollar, while maintaining intraregional rate stability, in the event of surges of capital inflows or a rapid unwinding of global payments imbalances. Following this initial step, East Asia may agree on more rigid intraregional exchange rate stabilization schemes through, for example, an Asian Snake or an Asian Exchange Rate Mechanism.     

Optimum currency areas and the European experience

Across nations or regions, the debate on optimum exchange rate cum monetary policies is not yet resolved on three levels. First is the optimum domain of fixed exchange rates versus keeping them flexible. Second is the subordinate debate on whether one needs full monetary union (as in continental Europe) to secure an optimum currency area's internal domain; or, whether virtually fixed exchange rates — where national currencies remain in circulation — can be sufficient. Third is whether a regional grouping of economies with close trade ties (as in East Asia) gain by collectively pegging to an outside currency such as the US dollar. Using an axiomatic approach, which limits the set of cross‐country financial claims to what is feasible, I analyse how best to both share and reduce macroeconomic risks on these three levels. JEL classification: F31, F36.     

Exchange rate volatility and the role of regional currency linkages: the ASEAN case

As the economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have moved towards closer economic ties and trade integration in recent years, the establishment of exchange rate stability is becoming an important regional policy concern, particularly in the wake of the Asian currency crisis of 1997. This paper examines the exchange rate volatility of the currencies of Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand between 1974 and 1999. Using variance decomposition (VDC) methods and impulse response functions, which are VAR-related estimation techniques, the study also investigates the regional currency linkages which may have played a role in transmitting exchange rate fluctuations. The results indicate that, in spite of the adoption of the crawling peg exchange regime following the breakup of the Bretton Woods system, all of the five ASEAN currencies experienced volatility, with the Indonesian rupiah posting the highest volatility level. The switch to de facto pegging against the US dollar in the mid-1980s helped to stabilize all ASEAN currencies with the exception of the Malaysian ringgit. Each of the five currencies became more susceptible to instabilities in other ASEAN currencies in the post-1985 period. Consistent with the experience of the Asian currency crisis, the Thai baht was the main channel through which regional currency fluctuations were transmitted.     

贸易结算货币的新选择:稳定的篮子货币——对“金砖五国”货币合作的探讨

文章研究"金砖五国"货币合作的可能形式,构建了稳定的篮子货币作为贸易结算货币,为货币合作提供政策建议。文章首先考察了汇率之间的关系,认为一种货币的加权几何平均汇率能够消除不同货币表示币值的差异,在此基础上构建了篮子货币指数;其次研究了篮子货币波动最小的货币权重的选取,通过最优化方法获得最优权重;最后模拟计算了"金砖五国"篮子货币的权重,并探讨了如何把篮子货币最优权重转化为具体的货币篮子,同时给出了篮子货币和各国货币之间的汇率关系。     

Currency restrictions,government transaction policies and currency exchange

Summary. We study how currency restrictions and government transaction policies affect the values of fiat currencies in a two country, divisible good, search model. We show that these policies can generate equilibria where both currencies circulate as medium of exchange and where currency exchange occurs between citizens of different countries. Restrictions on the internal use of foreign currency can cause the domestic currency to be relatively more valuable to domestic agents while taxes on domestic currency create an incentive for home agents to hold foreign currency. We demonstrate that some policies increase prices and lower welfare while others do the reverse. Received: September 5, 2001; revised version: March 1, 2002     

Choice of currency basket weights and its implications on trade balance

This paper seeks to find an optimal choice of currency basket weights for emerging economies that peg their currencies to a currency basket, and to examine the long-run relationship between the real exchange rates of a group of trading partners. A general equilibrium model is set up to establish an optimal set of currency basket weights, coupled with the choice of fiscal policy, to simultaneously stabilize trade balance and aggregate price level of an economy. This optimal set of weights is a weighted average of two sets of weights; each targets at one policy goal (stabilizing either balance of trade or aggregate price level) at a time. Empirical studies including vector autoregression (VAR) analysis and cointegration analysis on the long-run relationship between the Thai baht and the real exchange rates of its major trading partners are presented.     

Investigating Intraday Interdependence Between Gold,Silver and Three Major Currencies: the Euro,British Pound and Japanese Yen

In this study, the interrelationship between major exchange rate returns (namely EUR/USD, GBP/USD, JPY/USD) and precious metal returns (gold and silver) is examined using a vector autoregressive model in a multivariate asymmetric GARCH framework on the intraday frequency. Our findings indicate a unidirectional volatility transmission from the majority of our currencies (EUR/USD, GBP/USD) to precious metals. The sluggish response of silver volatility to currency volatility shocks permits implementation of intraday profitable strategies, providing implications against market efficiency when analyzing intraday data. In the case of the British pound and Japanese yen, a volatility shock affects silver volatility more than gold volatility. Crisis events such as the Greek default and US credit rating downgrade reduce significantly the correlation of EUR/USD and gold/silver. The covariance between EUR/USD and silver increases after a volatility shock in EUR/USD. The same happens with JPY/USD and silver. These findings are important for portfolio managers and monetary authorities.     

Transmission of monetary policy and exchange rate shocks under foreign currency lending

This paper analyses the differences in reaction of domestic and foreign currency lending to monetary and exchange rate shocks, using a panel VAR model estimated for the three biggest Central and Eastern European countries (Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary). Our results point toward a drop in domestic currency loans and an increase of foreign currency credit in reaction to monetary policy tightening in Poland and Hungary, suggesting that the presence of foreign currency debt weakens the transmission of monetary policy. A currency depreciation shock leads to an initial decline in foreign currency lending, but also in loans denominated in domestic currency as central banks react to a weaker exchange rate by increasing the interest rates. However, after several quarters, credit in foreign currency accelerates, indicating that borrowers start using it to substitute for depressed domestic currency lending.     

Weights and Empirical Analysis of RMB Exchange Rate Adjustments with Reference to a Basket of Currencies Following the Exchange Rate System Reform of 2010

This paper constructs an RMB/USD exchange rate index and a basket currency exchange rate index. The correlation maximization of the RMB/USD and the basket currency index may determine the weight and quantity of the basket currency. The currency basket indicates that the weight of the USD is highest, whereas that of the GB Pound is the lowest. Our currency basket has a high linear dependence on that of the central bank. We found that the RMB/USD and currency basket indices have a long-term co-integration relationship according to the optimal currency weights. The results of the error-correcting model manifest as the RMB/USD exchange rate deviates from the long-term equilibrium level, wherein 76.3% will be corrected. This paper checks the prediction capacity, which indicates the good fit of the model. By using the Granger causality test the findings show that the People＇s Bank of China adjusts the RMB/USD exchange rate with reference to the currency basket.     

SYNCHRONIZATION OF ECONOMIC SHOCKS BETWEEN GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL AND UNITED STATES,EUROPE, JAPAN,AND OIL MARKET: CHOICE OF EXCHANGE RATE REGIME†

Using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) with block exogeneity, this study examines the impacts of external shocks originating from the United States, the European Union, Japan, and the oil market as well as those of the regional shocks, on the oil‐rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), viewed as a prospective monetary union. It takes into account the implications of the shock impacts for selecting an appropriate common exchange rate arrangement. The SVAR variance decomposition and impulse response analyses strongly underscore the relative impacts of the global shocks over the regional ones. The findings imply that the world's two major currencies, the U.S. dollar and the euro, should figure highly in a GCC's common basket of currencies. Accordingly, a transitional movement to a more flexible exchange rate arrangement such as a basket peg may be desirable for these trade‐dependent economies in the long run, as is argued in the optimal currency literature for developing countries. (JEL E52, O52, C22)     

Export growth slowdown and currency crisis: the Malaysian experience

A slowdown in export growth occurred in all East Asian economies that were affected by the Asian currency crisis. Misaligned exchange rates have been widely cited as a cause of the slowdown. In the Malaysian context at least a vulnerability to the downturn in the electronic cycle could also be a major factor leading to poor export performance. Using the US/yen dollar rate as a proxy for exchange rate misalignment and US total new orders for electronics as a proxy for global electronics demand, cointegration analysis was used to establish the likely causes of a slowdown in Malaysia's export performance. Empirical results suggest that a unique long-run relationship exists between all three variables. The policy implications of these results including exchange rate monitoring and export diversification are discussed in the conclusion.