Test of the Response of the Overnight Rate to the Real Exchange Rate: The Case of Korea,Hong Kong,and Singapore

Abstract

For Korea, the overnight rate responds positively to the inflation rate, the output gap, the lagged real exchange rate, and the lagged overnight rate and negatively to the current real exchange rate. For Hong Kong, the overnight rate reacts positively to the inflation rate and the lagged overnight rate and does not react to other variables. For Singapore, the overnight rate is affected positively by the output gap and the lagged overnight rate and is not influenced by other variables. Hence, interest rate rules for some industrialized countries may not apply to Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore.     

Exchange rates,stock prices,and money markets: evidence from Singapore

This paper uses a monetary approach to analyze the asymmetric asset-price movements (exchange rates and stock prices) in Singapore, a small open economy with managed exchange rate targeting. The Singapore dollar exchange rates vis-à-vis the developed countries’ currencies are negatively related to stock prices whereas the relationship between the Singapore dollar-Malaysian ringgit exchange rate and stock prices is positive instead. The pattern of asymmetry is explained by the relative exchange-rate elasticity of real money demand and real money supply and evidenced by the distributed-lag regression and VAR analysis. Furthermore, the distributed-lag regression of monthly data suggests that fiscal revenues as well as fiscal expenditures exert positive influences on stock prices.     

Detrending and the Money-Output Link: International Evidence

An important policy question is whether nominal money is relatively more useful than interest rates in explaining movements in real output. Previous analyses usually rely only on U.S. data or other financially developed countries from a specific region, such as the EU. This study examines the empirical relation between money, interest rates, and output across a sample of 20 countries, including industrial countries from different regions as well as economically and financially less-developed countries. On the basis of estimating an unconstrained, four-variable VAR model, the weight of evidence indicates that rejecting money as a potentially informative tool in setting monetary policy is unwarranted.     

The North Korean economy seen by satellite: Estimates of national performance,regional gaps based on nighttime light

External estimates must be used to assess North Korea’s economy because Pyongyang authorities withhold economic statistics. The Bank of Korea’s figures are considered the most widely employed estimates. However, they have several limitations. This paper estimates North Korea’s economic growth over a more than 20-year period, by analyzing the nighttime lighting, as recorded by orbiting satellites. The data is more objective and reliable than other data used to evaluate the North Korean economy. It indicates steady growth after 2000, contradicting Bank of Korea estimates. The methodology also has the advantage of being able to gauge regional economic activity. Performance varied widely among regions, the result of internal factors such as market activities and external factors such as trade with China and economic cooperation with South Korea.     

进口国汇率及其波动对福建省出口贸易的影响

本文利用月度数据,研究进口国名义汇率、名义汇率波动率、实际汇率、实际汇率波动率对福建省出口贸易的影响,通过协整检验来估计各变量间长期均衡关系。研究表明,福建省向美日韩、欧盟等国的出口与该国汇率及其波动无关,而福建省向香港、台湾、新加坡等地的出口则很大程度上受到其汇率水平变化的影响,但汇率波动率的影响却较小。同时,实证检验还发现,对于关注汇率变化的进口国而言,名义汇率和实际汇率水平的变化,对贸易的影响程度基本相同。     

Real Exchange Rate in China：A Long-run Perspective

This paper investigates the RMB exchange rate from a long‐run viewpoint. Whether China's rapid economic growth brought about real exchange rate appreciation between 1975 and 2002 is empirically examined, based on a supply‐side model, the Balassa—Semuelson Hypothesis (BSH). The same test is conducted on Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and India. Our result indicates that the BSH only exists where the industrial structure has been upgraded and the economy has been successfully transformed from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy. Interestingly, China, among those where the BSH does not present, appears to be upgrading its industrial and trade structure. We then try to answer the question of why past rapid growth has no significant relationship with the RMB real exchange rate and what factors are underlying the trend of the RMB real exchange rate. We expect an appreciating trend of RMB real exchange rate in the foreseeable future, presuming that China's industrial upgrading process continues and the factors pertaining to the BSH's prediction, such as rise of wage rates in both tradables and nontradables, become more significant. (Edited by Xiaoming Feng)     

Is there a yen optimum currency area? Evidence from 18 Asian and Pacific economies

This paper examines the macroeconomic costs and benefits of adopting a common currency (the yen) for 18 Asian and Pacific countries. Economic theory suggests that the main benefit is enhanced price stability, while the main cost is higher business-cycle volatility if the adopting country’s output is not sufficiently correlated with that of Japan. Using data from 1960–2001, the paper finds that the estimated cost and benefit measures exhibit substantial variability across the countries and are often positively correlated: countries (such as Bangladesh or Nepal) that have a lot to gain from adopting the yen, also have a lot to lose from it; while other economies (such as Singapore, Thailand, or Taiwan) that have little to lose by adopting the yen, have also little to gain by it. The empirical results can be also used to compare net benefits for individual countries, showing, for example, that Korea is a more promising candidate for adopting the yen than Pakistan or Malaysia.     

Exchange rates and the trade balance: the case of Singapore 1970 to 1996

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the real trade balance and the real exchange rate for bilateral trade in merchandise goods between Singapore and the USA on a quarterly basis over the period 1970 to 1996 using the partial reduced form model of Rose and Yellen (1989). We also hope to shed further light on what has become known as the ‘Singapore export puzzle’: the observation that, despite periods of rapid nominal and real appreciation of the Singapore dollar, export growth in aggregate has remained buoyant.Our findings suggest that the real exchange rate does not have a significant impact on the real bilateral trade balance for Singapore and the USA, thus confirming previous work which finds a weak relationship between changes in the exchange rate and changes in export and import prices and volumes for Singapore. We also found little evidence of a J-curve effect. Although positive coefficients linking real exports with lagged values of the real exchange rate might be indicative of ‘small country’ pricing by exporters in U.S. dollars, it is not clear that this is masking J-curve effects from an initial rise in import values as the home currency depreciates.     

Does Money Have a Role in Monetary Policy for Price Stability under Inflation Targeting in Thailand?

This paper deploys Thai quarterly data for the study period 1999q1–2014q4 to econometrically investigate the proposition that money growth is an important, if not the sole, determinant of inflation under inflation targeting and that the money growth-inflation relation is not conditional on the stability of the money-demand function. The autoregressive distributed-lag (ARDL) bounds-testing results suggest that, across the study period, the Thai money stock (narrow or broad), real output, prices, interest rates and exchange rates maintained a long-run equilibrium relationship. The associated error-correction model of inflation confirms the cointegral relationship among money (narrow or broad), real output, prices, interest rates and exchange rates. It also suggests that money growth has a significant distributed-lag impact on inflation. The presence of this money growth-inflation relationship was associated with a stable narrow money-demand function, whereas the broad money-demand function remained unstable. These results for the study period are consistent with the view that the causal relationship between money growth and inflation holds in Thailand under inflation targeting when the Bank of Thailand deploys a short-term policy interest rate, rather than a monetary aggregate, as the instrument of monetary policy and that this relationship is not conditional on the stability of the money-demand function.     

Managing in the Middle: Characterizing Singapore's Exchange Rate Policy*

It is by now common knowledge that there can be a significant divergence in the de facto versus de jure exchange rate regimes operated by economies. Although much of the recent published literature in Asia has focused on the crisis-hit economies, Korea and Thailand in particular, scant attention has been paid to Singapore, which officially targets its nominal effective exchange rate (around a band). The present paper examines the degree of exchange rate intervention for Singapore using various methods of assessing de facto exchange rate regimes. In the main, we show that although the Singapore dollar is primarily influenced by the US dollar, in keeping with its de jure classification of a basket pegged regime, other major currencies, such as the yen and the euro, also impact the Singapore dollar. There is also evidence to indicate that Singapore uses the nominal effective exchange rate strategically as a policy instrument to satisfy domestic inflation objectives.     

DSGE模型框架下我国货币政策规则的比较分析

货币政策规则是中央银行为了保持通货膨胀和产出稳定并使经济更快发展所使用的货币政策的指导原则。目前,通行于各个国家的货币政策规则主要有利率规则和货币供应量规则。过去一段时间以来,西方发达国家都已逐渐从货币供应量规则过渡到利率规则,而在我国不管是应用方面还是理论研究方面,对于哪一个货币政策规则更适合我国始终都还没有定论。因此,本文试图在DSGE模型的框架下,对我国的货币政策规则进行比较分析。结果得出,相比于货币供应量规则,利率规则下:(1)货币政策更有效;(2)技术冲击所引起的通货膨胀和产出波动更小;(3)技术冲击对通货膨胀和产出的影响更短暂。因此,研究得出,我国更适合使用利率的货币政策规则。     

Exchange Rates and the Trade Balance for Dynamic Asian Economies—Does the J-Curve Exist for Singapore,Malaysia, and Korea?

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between the real trade balance and the real exchange rate for bilateral trade in merchandise goods between Singapore, Korea, and Malaysia and the USA and Japan on a quarterly basis over the period 1970 to 1996 using the partial reduced form model of Rose and Yellen (1989) derived from the two-country imperfect substitutes model. With the exception of Korean trade with the USA, and in line with recent work using a similar methodology, our findings suggest that the real exchange rate does not have a significant impact on the real trade balance, and for Singapore and Malaysia we can find no persuasive evidence for J-curves. For Korea, however, the data were consistent with some J-curve effects with respect to both Japan and the USA. Moreover, it is possible that for Korea these effects were being masked or muted by small country pricing of exports in foreign currency, but there was no evidence that imports subsequently fell as the lag length on the real exchange rate increased, which would be required to support a strict interpretation of the J-curve.     

RCEP关税减让对各成员国的经济影响分析

大幅度削减成员国间关税是RCEP协议的核心内容,为了揭示RCEP成员国间关税减让的经济影响,文章首先分析了RCEP成员国间贸易现状、产品结构、进口关税和贸易竞争力,然后,运用GTAP模型模拟RCEP关税减让对各成员国宏观经济和产出的影响,得到结论如下：（1）RCEP关税减让可以缓解中美贸易摩擦对于中国经济的不利影响;（2）就短期而言,RCEP成员国间关税减让可以提高中国、日本、韩国和澳大利亚的GDP、社会福利、居民收入和消费水平等宏观经济效益,同时,还可以提高中国、韩国、澳大利亚、东盟的总产出水平;（3）就长期来说,实施零关税可能显著提升RCEP大多数成员国的宏观经济效益和产出水平。     

Saving,investment, growth and the cost of financial repression

This paper presents a quantitative estimate of the cost of financial repression in developing countries. Here, financial repression is interpreted as the technique of holding institutional interest rates (particularly deposit rates of interest) below their market equilibrium levels. For a sample of developing countries, saving is found to be affected positively by the real deposit rate of interest, as is real money demand, where money is defined broadly to include savings and time deposits. Under disequilibrium interest rate conditions, higher saving which raises real money demand increases pari passu the real supply of credit. Credit availability is an important determinant not only of new investment but also of capacity utilization of the entire capital stock. Hence, the growth rate is itself affected positively by the real deposit rate of interest through two channels – first, the volume of saving and investment and, second, capacity utilization of the entire capital stock, i.e. the measured incremental capital/output ratio. Estimates of saving and growth functions lead to the conclusion that the cost of financial repression appears to be around half a percetage point in economic growth foregone for every one percentage point by which the real deposit rate of interest is set below its market equilibrium rate.     

Impacts of macroeconomic policies on the Mexican output

This paper examines the potential effects of macroeconomic policies, stock market performance, exchange rate fluctuations, and other related variables on real GDP in Mexico. Extending the works by Arango and Nadiri (1981) and Bahmani‐Oskooee and Ng (2002), and applying comparative‐static analysis, possible effects of a change in the exchange rate or government debt on the equilibrium output are examined. All the variables have unit roots and are stationary in first difference. There is a long‐run stable relationship between real GDP and the right‐hand‐side variables. The GARCH(p,q) (Engle 2001) model is applied to estimate regression parameters. Real GDP is positively associated with real M2, government deficit spending, stock prices, U.S. output, and world oil prices, and negatively affected by the government debt ratio, peso depreciation, and the expected inflation rate. Therefore, fiscal policy to incur more debt needs to be pursued with caution, and both net exports and money demand need to be considered in studying the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on output.     

货币供给、通货膨胀与产出波动的动态效应研究：1992—2013

本文基于包含随机波动率的时变参数向量自回归（SV—TVP—VAR）模型研究了货币供给冲击作用下我国货币政策传导的动态响应机制。实证结果表明：我国的货币传导机制具有明显的时变效应,SV—TVP—VAR模型能够很好的刻画货币传导机制中的时变特征。同时,货币政策传导机制中时变效应大于惯性效应。此外,我国的货币供给过程表现为逐渐增强的产出缺口驱动特征。进一步研究发现,增加货币供给量这种扩张性的货币政策在短期内具有真实效应,能够显著的影响实际利率和产出水平,然而从长期来看对实际利率和产出水平却缺乏永久性影响。     

Exchange rate volatility and ASEAN-4’s trade flows: is there a third country effect?

This paper investigates the impact of exchange rate volatility on the trade flows among ASEAN-4 countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand) as well as to their five main trading partners. External volatility is included in the models to study the ‘third country’ effect on the trade flows. We employ annual import and export data over the period of 1980–2012. The results from the bounds testing approach to cointegration and error-correction model reveal that the real exchange rate volatility does play a significant role in 15 export and four import models in short-run and long-run. Moreover, in both import and export models, the effects of exchange rate volatility on trade flows are negative rather than positive. Finally, the effects of volatility from the ASEAN-4’s currency/yuan rate dominate the third country effect on the ASEAN-4’s trade.     

Output volatility of five crisis-affected East Asia economies

A decade has passed since the Asian financial crisis (AFC) in 1997, and attention is drawn to the output performance of the crisis-affected economies in East Asia. Using the Hodrick–Prescott (HP) filter, this paper examines the growth volatility of GDP, its components and the stock market of five East Asia economies of Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Chinese Taipei and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). Empirical evidences based on quarterly data show that output volatility for both Singapore and South Korea has increased after the AFC. For the GDP components, trade is a major factor in lowering GDP volatility in Chinese Taipei. The Hong Kong SAR economy has experienced an increase/decrease in the volatility of investment/private consumption. Among the five East Asia economies, government intervention is obvious in Singapore. The stock markets in both Hong Kong SAR and Chinese Taipei showed stronger ability in absorbing shocks.     

Bilateral Trade in the Asia-Pacific: A Case Study for Australia, USA, Japan and Singapore

This analysis of bilateral trade involves four Asia-Pacific nations (USA, Japan, Singapore and Australia) on a quarterly data set 1977 to 1994. The reduced-form model applied here derives from a structure which accommodates income, real exchange rate and real-balance effects. We find that bilateral balances between these countries are not cointegrated with some potential determinants, in particular real exchange rates. In the short run, appropriately defined, we find that Singapore’s trade with the USA and Japan is influenced by real exchange rates; Australian-Japanese and Australian-US trade is influenced by real income and real-cash-balance effects but not real exchange rates while USA-Japanese bilateral trade is influenced only by real-cash-balance effects. The general conclusion is that real exchange rates have only limited effects on these selected Asia-Pacific bilateral trading patterns, while real-balance and income effects have a greater impact over the short run.