区域经济金融合作:东亚应对全球失衡的必然选择

从中长期来看，全球国际收支失衡不断向主要几个国家和地区集中是不可持续的，东亚国家面临极大的风险。这一背景下，加强东亚区域经济金融合作是必然的选择。东亚国家和地区应完善区域合作协调机制、加强区域货币和贸易投资合作，并进一步促进亚洲债券市场发展。     

从应对全球经济失衡视角看东亚经济金融合作

经常项目收支失衡加剧是全球经济失衡的重要体现。近年来,以美国为一极的发达国家经常项目逆差急剧膨胀;而包括中国在内的东亚国家和地区的经常项目顺差不断扩张。由于经常项目赤字滚雪球般地急剧膨胀,加上美国储蓄率过低、财政赤字高涨,导致了美国对国际资本的巨大需求。而东亚地区由于汇率体制和对美经济依存等原因,被动地持有大量美元资产并向美国提供大量资金。全球国际收支失衡不断向主要几个国家和地区集中,从中长期来看这种不均衡现象是不可持续的,东亚国家面临极大的风险。这一背景下,加强东亚区域经济金融合作是必然的选择。     

Should East Asia’s currencies be pegged to the yen? The role of invoice currency

Growing concern that a dollar peg exposes East Asian economies to fluctuations in the dollar–yen exchange rate has stimulated research on currency basket regimes as alternatives for these economies. However, existing studies have mostly ignored an important characteristic of East Asia, i.e., most of its international trade is invoiced in the U.S. dollars. This paper investigates how the preponderance of dollar invoicing affects optimal currency basket regimes for East Asian economies. I develop a three-country center-periphery sticky-price dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for the analysis. The model is solved numerically by taking second-order approximations to the policy functions with the expected lifetime utility of households chosen as the welfare criterion. Contrary to the conjecture of existing literature, I show that predominance of dollar invoicing implies that the dollar should receive a smaller weight than suggested by bilateral trade shares between emerging markets in East Asia and the United States. The results hinge on the interaction of different degrees of pass-through implied by the choice of invoice currency and endogenous responses of monetary policies in the center countries.     

Regional Trade Agreements in East Asia: Will They Be Sustainable?*

By assessing the sustainability of regional trade agreements (RTAs) for East Asia, we quantitatively evaluate the likely impact of proposed East Asian RTA strategies on the East Asian economies and the world economy with respect to consumption, production, volume of trade and terms of trade effects by applying a multi‐country and multi‐sector computable general equilibrium model. These strategies include: (i) the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA: a being‐left‐alone strategy); (ii) an ASEAN Hub RTA (a hub‐and‐spoke type of overlapping RTA strategy); (iii) the AFTA versus a China–Japan–Korea RTA (a duplicating or competing RTA strategy); and (iv) an ASEAN+3 RTA (an expansionary RTA strategy). We find that an expansionary ASEAN+3 RTA could be a sustainable policy option because the members’ gains would be significantly positive, with more equitably distributed gains between members than when using other strategies. The effect on world welfare would also be positive and the negative effect on nonmembers would not be very strong. More interestingly, if the East Asian countries cooperate with Pacific Basin countries to form an APEC‐level RTA, such as a free trade area of the Asia‐Pacific, the extension of the regional trade bloc might be considered a more desirable policy option than the proposed East Asian RTAs for East Asian economies, even though countries excluded from the free trade area of the Asia Pacific are worse off.     

东亚的美元本位:影响和汇率协调及我国的对策

在以美元为主导的国际货币体系框架下,东亚地区事实上处于美元区内,没有自己的货币定价权。为了克服美元本位制度的弊端和对美元依赖造成的负面影响,东亚地区需要积极开展汇率协调或汇率合作,为本地区的经济发展营造良好稳定的宏观环境。我国应该积极参与东亚外汇储备库的建设,稳步推进人民币的区域化和国际化的步伐,以积极主动的姿态,参与东亚国家的汇率协调与合作。     

The Impact of Trade Integration on Business Cycle Co-Movements in Europe

This paper extends our previous research on East Asia to the case of 14 European countries from 1977 to 1999. According to our empirical results, intraindustry trade is again the major channel through which the business cycles of European countries become synchronized. This contrasts with existing studies that found that increased trade itself led to the synchronization of business cycles. Our findings have important implications for the adoption of a currency union, as we expect that the costs of joining a currency union will diminish significantly only when intraindustry trade becomes dominant. JEL no. E32, F33, F36, F41     

东亚货币合作研究文献综述

全球性金融危机的爆发再次助推了东亚地区货币合作的进程。本文详细梳理了东亚货币合作研究的线索,明确了东亚货币合作进一步的研究方向：从货币竞争和锚货币选择这个思路考察区域内核心货币（尤其是人民币）在汇率协调机制中发挥的作用,并对东亚汇率协调机制进行重估。同时,还需在新形势下从理论和实践层面探讨中国如何参与东亚货币合作以促进中国乃至东亚地区的繁荣和发展,为进一步推进东亚货币合作提供理论支持和政策依据。     

中国在东亚区域内的进口贸易分析

从"三角贸易"到"新三角贸易",东亚地区贸易模式都未能摆脱对外部市场的高度依赖,特别是对美国市场的依赖。中国作为区域内经济贸易大国,随着经济改革的日益深入及增长方式的转变,其在东亚区域贸易分工模式转变中的地位及作用将不断增强。本文以中国在东亚区域内的重要贸易伙伴国为研究对象,从世界和东亚两个区域范围入手,以进口份额分布与进口增长率分解指标按进口来源地和按产品分类的分布分别进行静态和动态分析,在此基础上对中国市场在东亚区域内的地位及作用进行深入研究。     

What Should the Weights of the Three Major Currencies be in a Common Currency Basket in East Asia?*

We consider what type of regional common currency should be introduced in East Asia in the future. The common currency basket is, in itself, more desirable as an anchor currency. In this paper we define two types of currency basket and investigate the long‐term sustainability of adopting a common currency basket in East Asia. From our empirical results, a larger weight (but less than 100 percent) for the US dollar in the common currency basket tends to make bilateral exchange rates among East Asian countries stable in the long run.     

东亚金融合作抵御金融危机的路径分析

本文从东亚金融合作抵御金融危机的路径入手,分析了"清迈倡议"下货币互换的本质及缺陷,讨论了区域流动性安排的新制度——东亚外汇储备库其实质是将各国间现存的双边货币互换协议网络进行统合,由区域协议网络转向单一协议。如果东亚外汇储备库最终能够建立起来,这将使得东亚金融合作进程完成对"清迈倡议"的超越,首先是CMI框架下危机救援机制得到扩展和强化,其次是新机制将成为迈向东亚货币合作的基石。     

Estimation of the East African Community's trade benefits from promoting intra‐regional trade

In the literature on economic integration, the optimum currency area (OCA) theory says that there should be a high degree of trade between potential members of a monetary union for them to benefit from the use of a single currency. This study uses an augmented gravity model of trade to estimate the East African Community's (EAC) trade effects, as this community decided to participate in a monetary union by 2024. The study uses the fixed effect filter (FEF) estimator, which follows a two‐step approach and outperforms the standard fixed effects (FE) estimator. The results indicate that EAC has the potential to increase trade among partner states by 122% more than expected from the normal trade levels. The study, therefore, supports the ongoing East African Monetary Union process. However, to improve the likelihood of creating a more sustainable monetary union, the study recommends these countries to primarily focus on the full implementation of the customs union and common market steps. The main contribution of this study is that it provides robust estimates of the EAC's effects on intra‐regional trade using more recent data and updated econometric techniques.     

Stabilization of effective exchange rates under common currency basket systems

We investigate the extent to which a common currency basket peg would stabilize effective exchange rates of East Asian currencies. We use an AMU (Asian Monetary Unit), which is a weighted average of ASEAN10 plus 3 (Japan, China, and Korea) currencies, as a common currency basket to investigate the stabilization effects. We compare our results with another result on stabilization effects of the common G3 currency (the US dollar, the Japanese yen, and the euro) basket in the East Asian countries [Williamson, J., 2005, A currency basket for East Asia, not just China. In: Policy Briefs in International Economics, No. PB05-1. Institute for International Economics]. We obtained the following results: first, the AMU peg system would be more effective in reducing fluctuations of the effective exchange rates of East Asian currencies as a number of countries applied the AMU peg system increases in East Asia. Second, the AMU peg system would more effectively stabilize the effective exchange rates than a common G3 currency basket peg system for four (Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand) of the seven countries. The results suggest that the AMU peg system would be useful for the East Asian countries whose trade weights on Japan are relatively higher than others. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (4) (2006) 590–611.     

Is a Common Currency Area Feasible for East Asia? A Multivariate Structural Vector Autoregression Approach

In this paper the feasibility of forming a common currency area in East Asia is investigated. A three‐variable structural vector autoregression model is used to identify three types of shocks: global, regional and domestic shocks. The empirical results show that in the post‐crisis period the importance of asymmetric domestic shocks has declined sharply, whereas that of symmetric global and regional shocks has increased. Furthermore, although a ‘prevalent shock’ cannot be uniquely defined, most East Asian economies respond to global and regional shocks in a symmetric way. Although the findings do not provide strong support for forming a common currency area in this region at the current stage, they suggest that most East Asian economies have become relatively symmetric in terms of economic shocks and adjustments, implying that a common currency area might become viable through deepening regional integration.     

External adjustments and coordinated exchange rate policy in Asia

In this paper, we estimate structural VAR models with contemporaneous restrictions based on neo-classical and Keynesian theories to investigate whether the cause of current account surpluses for East Asian economies is a “saving glut” or undervalued currencies. Analytical results show that the major determinant of the current account is the real effective exchange rate for all East Asian countries with the exception of China for which the major determinant is domestic GDP. Accordingly, the recently requested revaluation of the Chinese yuan may not be an effective policy for reducing the Chinese current account surplus, and may affect other Asian current accounts. We also investigate whether a Chinese currency revaluation would contribute to the improvement of current account imbalances in East Asia and find that a revaluation would, indeed, improve the current accounts of Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand. Since the trade structures of major East Asian countries are substitutes with that of China, a Chinese currency revaluation might not lead to a decrease in East Asian current account surpluses. Coordination of currency policy among East Asian countries is, therefore, needed to solve the global current account imbalance.     

A tale of Asian exchange rate management: Romance of the three currencies

Asian currencies lack regional policy coordination and are therefore subject to volatilities such as the Asian currency crisis of 1997/99. As the Asian currencies have already been observed to be ‘flying-in-unison’, a stable exchange rate arrangement can be helpful as the next step of evolution for regional financial stability. We consider that creating a cluster effect from coordinated efforts/policies of policy-makers can lead to regional exchange rate stability. To demonstrate this cluster effect, a three-party-game is computed for an Asian bloc, viz-á-viz US dollar and the Euro, based on a Nash and a cooperative equilibrium. The cluster effect would generate external and internal pressures that work towards the formation of a regional currency, although the exact form of exchange rate regime would have to await political consensus. There are substantial welfare gains within Asia network economy through currency cooperation. The formation of an Asian currency bloc would also create counter-balance to the current dominance of the US dollar and the Euro. Like the epic story of Three Kingdoms who sought hegemony in Chinese history, the Asian currency bloc will contend with many possible outcomes of competition as well as cooperation.     

东亚经济一体化与合作：朝向共同体

长期以来,东亚地区的经济一体化主要靠市场力量推动,区域经济合作则落后于经济一体化进程。亚洲金融危机证明,仅靠市场推动的经济一体化是脆弱的,只有加强区域经济合作,东亚地区才能增强抵御外部风险的能力,保持经济的持续繁荣。亚洲金融危机后,东亚地区迅速建立起“10 3”的合作机制,在加强金融领域合作的同时,也不断拓展在经贸投资等领域的合作,并逐步确立了以建立东亚自由贸易区和东亚共同体的长远奋斗目标。特别是在中国提出与东盟建立自由贸易区后,东亚地区的合作步伐明显加快。尽管目前离建立东亚共同体的长远目标还很遥远,但东亚地区的合作进程已不可逆转,各种形式的合作努力将最终推动长远目标的实现。     

日本经济复苏中的东亚因素

近年,日本经济显现复苏迹象。一般认为,对东亚出口增加是带动经济复苏的牵引力之一。本文通过分析日本与东亚国家和地区间贸易格局的新特点,阐述东亚因素促进日本经济增长的原因,说明互利情况下,日本在东亚地区经济发展中应发挥的作用。     

东亚区域金融合作的选择探析

自从亚洲金融危机以后,东亚各国纷纷认识到开展区域金融合作的必要性,以增强抵御风险,化解危机的能力。而美元区和欧元区的相继建立既验证了最优货币区理论在实践上的可能性,也增强了东亚各国成功合作的信心。文章从合作的背景和动因,实际进展情况和最终目标,以及面临的困难这三个方面分析讨论了东亚区域金融合作的可行性,并进一步探讨了新加坡在合作中可扮演的角色。     

Trade diversion in a currency union

This paper examines the consequences of trade diversion within the framework of a three-country,n-goods, two-period model. Two of the countries form a currency union while their currency floats with regard to the one of the third country. Trade diversion here is a shift in import demand from the goods produced in the third country to those produced by the union partner. It will be shown that because of the direct demand effect and the real balance effect, trade diversion will clearly increase intertemporal welfare in both union countries.     

东亚金融结构与法律制度演进及其对区域金融合作的含义

区域成员在法律制度和执法效率上的差异,将体现为金融结构的差异,这会导致共同货币政策在区域成员间的传导效果出现较大差异,影响货币联盟的稳定性。东亚各经济体的金融法律制度呈现较大的差异,相应地金融结构也有较大的差异。通过机制化的区域金融合作,采取最低协调一致标准,促进东亚各经济体法律制度和金融结构的渐进趋同,是未来东亚货币金融合作的基础。