人民币升值是紧缩性的吗?

中国经济近年来呈现出比较明显的外部失衡和内部失衡,这与人民币汇率低估不无关系。我国政府对是否允许人民币升值保持非常谨慎的态度,主要原因是担心人民币升值如传统宏观经济理论所言是紧缩性的,从而造成中国经济增长放慢和失业上升。本文运用向量自回归模型实证考察了人民币实质汇率冲击对中国产出的影响,实证分析表明:(1)在控制了可能导致人民币实质汇率与中国产出之间伪相关的来源后,人民币实质汇率升值仍会导致中国产出一定程度的下降,因此货币升值在中国确实是紧缩性的,“紧缩性贬值”文献揭示的升值扩张性效应在中国不是支配性的;(2)一旦考虑了中国经济的国际金融联系,实质汇率冲击对中国产出变动的解释力和影响程度明显变小,而美国利率冲击对中国产出变动有更大的影响,其影响超过了人民币实质汇率冲击的影响。本文进一步分析了实证结果背后的可能原因,并且指出并不能从本文的结论引出中国应该继续维持人民币汇率低估的政策建议。

Are Currency Appreciations Contractionary in China?

Chinese economy has been in a state of external and internal imbalances for some years, which has something to do with the undervaluation of renminbi (RMB). But Chinese Government hesitates to allow RMB to appreciate because of the worry that RMB appreciations are contractionary thus have negative impact on China's economic growth and employment. The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess the effects of RMB real exchange rate on China's output. The econometric results of the paper show that (1) even after source of spurious correlation is controlled for, RMB appreciation has led to a decline in China's output, suggesting that RMB appreciations do be contractionary, and that (2) once the international finance linkage of Chinese economy is accounted for, the effect of RMB real exchange rate shocks on China's output and the power of the shocks in explaining the change of China's output are diminished. The paper gives some possible explanations to those findings, and points out that the findings do not necessarily imply that China should continue maintaining the undervaluation of RMB.