Balances of payments and exchange markets: A lost correspondence

The article presents an accounting framework capable of consistently describing on a worldwide scale international money (euro-currency) markets. It also shows that, in such a framework, interest rates on international money markets need not be explained by econometric models specific to such international markets, but could simply result from the appropriate aggregation of national econometric models. Finally, the author emphasizes that in a world in which a country's money can be created by the banking systems of other countries, the correspondence between a country's balance of payments equilibrium and the foreign exchange market for its own money is no longer valid.     

Income instability,terms of trade,and the choice of exchange rate regime

In this article terms of trade fluctuations, which constitute an important source of income instability in many LDC's, are decomposed into three principal components: (a) shifts in world market conditions, (b) shifts in home market conditions and (c) changes in exchange rates. The appropriateness of a ‘basket peg’ is then analyzed in terms of a country's net export-side market power and a weighting formula is derived which would offset variations in third countries' exchange rates on the home country's terms of trade. Initial empirical results tend to support the hypothesis that basket pegs are usually adopted by countries with net export-side market power.     

Dynamic stability in a model of dual exchange rates

The dynamic stability of a small open economy operating under a regime of dual exchange rates is shown to depend on residents' net foreign asset position. This result is in contrast to the economy's dynamic behavior under unified fixed-rate and flexible-rate regimes where stability is unrelated to net foreign asset position.     

The impact of West European trade strategies on exports to Eastern Europe

This paper examines the extent to which West European countries have utilized diplomacy and reductions in trade barriers to improve their export performance in East European markets during the 1960's. Equal-price export shares of 7 West European countries are estimated by means of an econometric model, and their behavior over time and among importing regions is related to the commercial and foreign policies of the exporters. Our results demonstrate that East European import decisions have been significantly influenced both by changes in western commercial policies and by diplomatic initiatives such as DeGaulle's effort at détente with the Soviet Union. Our results also indicate that elasticities of substitution in East-West trade are significantly lower than those in trade among western countries.     

Covered interest arbitrage in the 1970's

This paper provides an empirical overview on covered interest arbitrage during the flexible exchange rate regime of the 1970's. It estimates the cost of transactions in foreign exchange and security markets and shows that these costs account for most of the deviations from parity.     

Grain imports and food security in an unstable international market

The paper explores a decision theoretic approach to deriving excess demand functions for grain for food deficit foreign-exchange constrained developing countries. The form of excess demand functions derived is consistent with empirically observed ones. Different strategies to improve on the country's food security are investigated using the expected value of a criterion incorporating foreign exchange and the cost of not satisfying domestic requirements. The results indicate that, besides a drive toward self-sufficiency, by reducing variability of grain requirements with the help, for example, of domestic buffer stocks and by improving the domestic crop information system, a country can go a long way toward improving its international food security position.     

A short-term analytical model of the Singapore economy

The rapid economic transformation of the ‘newly industrializing countries’ has aroused considerable interest in their economic structure and functioning. This paper contributes to the discussion by seeking to anatomise the Singapore economy. The economy's dynamism is reflected by the fact that, although our model is a short-term one, capital investment, both foreign and domestic, plays a central role in it. The model is also characterized by a novel specification of the export function, the inclusion of non-traded goods and of a sectorally segmented labor market, and a fairly comprehensive treatment of the financial system. The general equilibrium response of the model to various parameter shifts is investigated, and the factors responsible for the economy's rapid development thereby elucidated.     

Anatomy of a balance-of-payments crisis : Application of a computable general equilibrium model to Turkey, 1978–1980

This paper analyses quantitatively the causes of the foreign exchange crisis in Turkey in the late 1970s through application of a multisector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The model incorporates some mechanisms that simulate the actual workings of the foreign exchange market during the turbulent foreign exchange disequilibrium period 1978–1980. It features the simultaneous operation of both quantitative controls and premium rationing schemes. Factors contributing to the foreign exchange crisis are analysed through counterfactual simulations which examine the implications for the Turkish economy of use of a flexible exchange rate, no oil price shock in the 1978–1980 period, and maintaining a constant price-level deflated affective exchange rate. Our results indicate that while exchange rate policy played an important role in bringing about the foreign exchange crisis, the influence of other factors was substancial.     

CROSS‐HEDGING OF EXCHANGE RATE RISKS: A NOTE*

This note studies the optimal production and hedging decisions of a competitive international firm that exports to two foreign countries. The firm faces multiple sources of exchange rate uncertainty. Cross‐hedging is plausible in that one of the two foreign countries has a currency forward market. We show that the firm's optimal forward position is an over‐hedge, a full‐hedge or an under‐hedge, depending on whether the two random exchange rates are strongly positively correlated, uncorrelated or negatively correlated, respectively.     

Financial Market Imperfections and the Impact of Exchange Rate Movements on Exports*

This paper analyzes empirically the role of financial market imperfections in the way countries’ exports react to a currency depreciation. Using quarterly data for 27 developed and developing countries over the period 1990–2005, we find that the impact of a depreciation on exports will be less positive—or even negative—for a country if: (i) firms borrow in foreign currency; (ii) they are credit constrained; (iii) they are specialized in industries that require more external capital; (iv) the magnitude of depreciation or devaluation is large. This last result emphasizes the existence of a nonlinear relationship between an exchange rate depreciation and the reaction of a country's exports when financial imperfections are observed. This offers a new explanation for the consequences of recent currency crises in middle‐income countries.     

Domestic and International Sources of Inflation in Developing Countries: Some Evidence from the Monetary Approach

Using the monetary approach, this paper examines empirically the causes of inflation in twenty-five developing countries. In addition to money supply, the underlying money demand function and foreign exchange rates are taken into account in the inflationary process. The lag structures are determined by Akaike's FPE criterion and the exogeneity assumptions are assessed by Granger-type causality tests. The results suggest that the monetary approach provides adequate explanation of inflation across all countries examined. Besides changes in expected inflation and foreign exchange rates, movements in base money in these countries have significantly contributed to their inflationary pressures. [134, 431]     

Foreign interest rate shocks and exchange rate regimes in East Asia

Using a theoretical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model and an empirical panel vector autoregression, we assess the transmission of foreign real interest rate shocks on the volatility of various key macroeconomic variables in nine small open economies in East Asia taking into account the role of exchange rate regimes. Both the theoretical and empirical findings confirm the hypothesis that flexible exchange rate may work as a shock absorber when the economy is hit by foreign real interest rate shocks. The findings suggest a clear trade-off between the volatility of real exchange rate and real output to foreign interest rate shocks, both the US and G7 real interest rates, where the responses of real output are mitigated in countries that have more flexible exchange rate regime.     

Growth and Transition: Why Has China''s Performance Been So Different?

This paper explains the differences in performance between the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) since 1989 and China since its 1978–1979 reforms by the differing goals of economic reformers in China and in the CEECs. In China reforms were intended to promote growth rather than to create a market-based economy. Eastern European reformers’ main goal has been the creation of a market-oriented economy. The paper focuses on policies toward foreign trade, foreign investment, and foreign exchange since these highlight the differences in goals.J. Comp. Econom.,December 1997,25(3), pp. 422–440. University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia.     

Capital Flows Adjustment Policy in Slovenia: Assessment of Design and Efficiency

During the last decade many Central and East European (CEE) countries experienced strong foreign capital inflows. Slovenia was one of them. Sources of inflows in Slovenia changed radically, even though privatisation-driven inflows were absent, in contrast to other CEE countries. Since such inflows could have significant adverse effects on the performance of the economy, some policy measures were taken. This article presents an empirically tested assessment of policy for adjustment to surges in capital flows during the last decade. Speculative reversals, a decline in external competitiveness, exchange rate appreciation, loss of control over the monetary base and inflation are just some of the detrimental effects that can be provoked by surges in capital flows if the economy suffers from fundamental sectoral deficiencies. Empirical results indicated that Slovenia quite successfully mitigated the listed effects of excessive foreign exchange inflows. Efficient combination of direct and indirect adjustment methods succeeded in preventing the still vulnerable economy from suffering a major financial crisis and nominal currency appreciation (which was not the case in some other CEE countries) although there was some real appreciation.     

International Transmission of the People's Bank of China's Balance Sheet Expansion

The People's Bank of China's (PBoC) balance sheet expanded more dramatically than any of its major international counterparts during the past decade. The main contribution to this expansion was the rapid accumulation of the central bank's foreign assets, as a result of foreign exchange market intervention. In this paper, we examine the possible international transmission of this expansion by analyzing monthly data for China and 15 other countries over the period 2000–2012. Impulse response analysis based on vector autoregression modeling suggests that the PBoC's balance sheet expansion has greater impacts on developing than on developed countries. So far the influences appear to be dominated by “trade channels” instead of “financial channels,” possibly due to China's capital account controls. However, the impacts of the PBoC's balance sheet expansion on other countries' interest rates, exchange rates, and stock market prices could strengthen significantly in the coming years as China's economic scale grows and its capital account opens up.     

OPTIMAL EXPORT AND HEDGING DECISIONS WHEN FORWARD MARKETS ARE INCOMPLETE

This paper examines the behaviour of the competitive firm that exports to two foreign countries under multiple sources of exchange rate uncertainty. There is a forward market between the home currency and one foreign country's currency, but there are no hedging instruments directly related to the other foreign country's currency. We show that the separation theorem holds when the firm optimally exports to the foreign country with the currency forward market. The full‐hedging theorem holds either when the firm exports exclusively to the foreign country with the currency forward market or when the relevant spot exchange rates are independent. In the case that the relevant spot exchange rates are positively (negatively) correlated in the sense of regression dependence, the firm optimally opts for a short (long) forward position for cross‐hedging purposes.     

大宗商品价格变化与汇率波动的动态关系——兼论中国外汇储备结构调整

2008年全球金融危机以来,大宗商品价格变化与一些大宗商品输出国货币汇率的波动态势较为一致。这是偶然巧合还是必然联系?本文利用VEC向量误差修正模型等对相关数据进行了实证分析后表明,2008年以来,大宗商品价格上升对澳大利亚、加拿大等大宗商品输出国货币汇率有正面推动作用。基于此,本文建议:为降低外汇储备风险,中国需要适时增加大宗商品输出国货币和资产在外汇储备中的比重,同时相应减持美元和美元资产。     

Binding constraint on economic growth under export-oriented industrialization and globalization

The two-gap model of economic growth implies that different constraints on economic growth, namely the savings and the foreign exchange availability, are binding at different times. This article estimates these varying binding constraints in 16 countries in East and Southeast Asia and Latin America, and explores their differences across countries, regions and periods. I show that the East and Southeast Asian countries, which are recognized to be successful in export-oriented industrialization, are less constrained by the foreign exchange availability with reinforced export capacity than the Latin American countries, which had carried some inertia of import substituting industrialization policy until the 1980s. In addition, the economic growth turns out to be more constrained by the domestic savings in recent years, which can be a reflection of capital account liberalization policies typically implemented in the late 1980s and 1990s, and/or a diminishing return to export-led growth. In either case, this might be a factor underlining the recent reconsideration of export-oriented development strategy to balance past excessive dependence on the external demand in several countries in East and Southeast Asia.     

Net foreign assets,productivity and real exchange rates in constrained economies

Empirical evidence suggests that real exchange rates (RER) behave differently in developed and developing countries. We develop an overlapping generations two-sector exogenous growth model in which RER determination may depend on the country's capacity to borrow from international capital markets. The country faces a constraint on capital inflows. With high domestic savings, the RER only depends on the productivity spread between sectors (Balassa–Samuelson effect). If the constraint is too tight and/or domestic savings too low, the RER depends on both net foreign assets (transfer effect) and productivity. We then analyze the empirical implications of the model and find that, in accordance with the theory, the RER is mainly driven by productivity and net foreign assets in constrained countries and by productivity in unconstrained countries.     

(Asymmetric) trade costs,real exchange rate hedging,and equity home bias in a multicountry model

There has been controversy between (two‐country) theory and the empirics about whether hedging against real exchange rate fluctuations in the goods market influences foreign equity holdings. This study reconciles the theory with the empirics by introducing a multicountry framework with asymmetric trade costs. We find that the incentive to hold foreign equities to hedge real exchange rate risk is negligible because multiple trade partners act as a hedging channel for real exchange rate fluctuations. Further, our theory calls for a country's covariance–variance ratio to be constructed as the sum of the bilateral covariance–variance ratios of the multiple partners. The empirical analysis of 24 advanced countries confirms the theoretical prediction.