US Dollar Peg Research Articles

Exchange rate regime switching in Malaysia and Singapore in response to China’s move to a basket peg: A DSGE analysis

Motivated by the observation that when China broke from its US dollar peg in 2005, Malaysia and Singapore likewise loosened their currency ties to the US dollar, this paper considers how these two countries might best respond to a hypothetical transition by China to a new basket peg regime. We specify five alternative exchange rate strategies that encompass fixed, basket, and floating regimes and gradual versus sudden transitions. To project outcomes for macroeconomic variables under these alternative regimes, we apply a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of a small open economy and incorporate exogenous shocks as actually occurred from 2005 Q1 to 2014 Q4. We then compare the strategies based on values of a cumulative loss function defined on the output gap, the inflation rate, and the real effective exchange rate. The exercise reveals that a gradual adjustment to a basket peg with long-term optimal weights is the first-best policy for both countries, where optimal weights are derived to minimize the loss function. Further, both a sudden shift to a basket peg with optimal weights and a sudden shift to a floating rate regime are superior to maintaining the dollar peg in Malaysia, but not to maintaining the existing basket peg in Singapore.

(De)Stabilizing Exchange Rate Strategies in East Asian Monetary and Economic Integration

The East Asian monetary integration process is at the crossroads. Given very benign liquidity conditions in the US, the prevailing common US dollar peg has contributed to growing macroeconomic and financial instability in the region. This has sparked demands to embark on an independent monetary integration process in East Asia. The paper shows that, however, neither the Japanese yen nor the Chinese yuan can challenge the US dollar as anchor currency in the region. Large fluctuations of the Japanese yen against the US dollar have undermined the potential of the Japanese yen to become a regional anchor currency. Exchange rate stability of the Chinese yuan against the US dollar has enhanced intra-regional exchange rate stability and growth, stressing the potential of the Chinese yuan to emerge as a regional anchor currency. Yet, it is shown that underdeveloped Chinese capital markets and financial repression originating in US low interest rate policies constitute an insurmountable impediment for the Chinese yuan to gain anchor currency status in East Asia. Empirical estimations provide evidence in favor of positive growth effects of the exchange rate stability against the US dollar in East Asia.

(DE)STABILIZING EXCHANGE RATE STRATEGIES IN EAST ASIAN MONETARY AND ECONOMIC INTEGRATION

The East Asian monetary integration process is at the crossroads. Given very benign liquidity conditions in the US, the prevailing common US dollar peg has contributed to growing macroeconomic and financial instability in the region. This has sparked demands to embark on an independent monetary integration process in East Asia. The paper shows that, however, neither the Japanese yen nor the Chinese yuan can challenge the US dollar as anchor currency in the region. Large fluctuations of the Japanese yen against the US dollar have undermined the potential of the Japanese yen to become a regional anchor currency. Exchange rate stability of the Chinese yuan against the US dollar has enhanced intra-regional exchange rate stability and growth, stressing the potential of the Chinese yuan to emerge as a regional anchor currency. Yet, it is shown that underdeveloped Chinese capital markets and financial repression originating in US low interest rate policies constitute an insurmountable impediment for the Chinese yuan to gain anchor currency status in East Asia. Empirical estimations provide evidence in favor of positive growth effects of the exchange rate stability against the US dollar in East Asia.

The People's Currency

There has been much discussion lately in international finance about the role of China’s currency, the renminbi (人民币), which translates literally as “the people’s currency”. Via the monetary policy frameworks and transmission mechanisms adopted by the People’s Bank of China, this paper discusses contemporary topics in Chinese economic and monetary policy. These include the US dollar peg, the special exchange rate policy, the possibility of exiting the peg, China’s balance of payments, longer-term prospects, and the use of monetary policy tools. The paper concludes that macroeconomic and monetary policy will stabilize and liberalize cautiously over time, with the belief that the renminbi is a promising candidate for an international currency.

Responding to the global financial crisis: Vietnamese exchange rate policy, 2008–2009

The paper presents an analysis of exchange rate policy in Vietnam during 2008–2009. In early 2008, the country faced a sudden reversal of capital flows as signs of developing domestic vulnerabilities became evident. The downward pressure on the dong then intensified with the onset of the global financial crisis in the fall. In these environments, the Vietnamese authorities responded with various exchange rate policy measures. The paper documents a shift in Vietnam's de facto exchange rate regime, from a basket peg to a simple US dollar peg, when the domestic vulnerabilities became compounded by the evolving global crisis. The authorities utilized additional measures to relieve pressure on the parallel exchange rate. An event study methodology finds little evidence of systematic effectiveness for these policy actions; any effectiveness was short-lived. A close examination of individual actions suggests that the impact of foreign exchange market intervention appeared more consistent than any other type of measure and most effective when combined with other measures.

Macroeconomic Effects of China’s Fiscal Stimulus

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic impact of Chinas 2009-2010 fiscal stimulus package by simulating a dynamic general equilibrium multi-country model of the world economy, showing that the effects on Chinas economic activity are sizeable: absent fiscal stimulus Chinas GDP would be 2.6 and 0.6 percentage points lower in 2009 and 2010, respectively. The effects are stronger under a US dollar peg because of the imported loose monetary policy stance from the United States. Higher Chinese aggregate demand stimulates higher (gross and net) imports from other regions, in particular from Japan and the rest of the world, and, only to a lesser extent, from the United States and the euro area. However, the overall GDP impact of the Chinese stimulus on the rest of the world is limited. These results warn that a fiscal policydriven increase in Chinas domestic aggregate demand associated with a more flexible exchange rate regime have only a limited potential to contribute to an orderly resolution of global trade and financial imbalances.

HONG KONG'S INFLATION AND DEFLATION UNDER THE US DOLLAR PEG: THE BALASSA-SAMUELSON EFFECT OR EXPORT PRICE SHOCKS?

Hong Kong's US dollar peg, adopted in 1983, has failed to deliver price stability. Hong Kong experienced high inflation before the Asian financial crisis and prolonged deflation after it. The annual rate of inflation (GDP-deflator based) was 7.4% in the first period (1985–97) and −2.0% in the second (1998–2007). There was no clear trend for the inflation rate to converge to the US level. The nominal anchor via a fixed exchange rate in Hong Kong had an upward and downward drift in the order of 4% from the US inflation rate, casting doubt on the anchor's efficacy. Despite Hong Kong's high output growth relative to that of the United States, the Balassa-Samuelson effect was not the main factor behind the pre-Asian crisis inflation. Price shocks in service exports played a major role in Hong Kong's general prices through the two periods.

A “Time Series” Approach on the Chinese Exchange Rate Regime

This paper deals with the issue of the exchange rate regime that China has established since 2005, when it announced a move away from the US dollar peg. In fact, from that date, the RMB was managed with reference to a basket of currencies rather than being pegged to the dollar; the exchange rate, therefore, became more flexible.But, though in the presence of basket peg, early econometric analysis (Shan-2005, Frankel & Wei-2006, Ogawa-2006, Yamazaky-2006) found that the assigned basket gave overwhelming weight to the dollar, and that the degree of flexibility had hardly increased at all.Almost all those studies used a technique introduced by Frankel in 1994 to estimate the weights in a currency basket: on one side regressed changes in the value of the local currency, in this case the RMB, while on the other one changes in the values of the dollar, the euro, the yen and other currencies that may be in the basket.Though there are numerous econometric techniques for estimating the exchange rate system, the technique proposed by Frankel is still the most widely used. However, in our opinion, this model has an error of autocorrelation among the variables, a factor that could lead the analysis to different results.Therefore, this work proposes a study on the Chinese exchange rate regime through an alternative econometric technique.

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.

The GCC Monetary Union: Choice of Exchange Rate Regime

The creation of a monetary union has been the primary objective of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members since the early 1980s. Significant progress has already been made in regional economic integration: The GCC countries have largely unrestricted intraregional mobility of goods, labor, and capital; regulation of the banking sector is being harmonized; and in 2008 the countries established a common market. Further, most of the convergence criteria established for entry into a monetary union have already been achieved. In establishing a monetary union, however, the GCC countries must decide on the exchange rate regime for the single currency. The countries' use of a US dollar peg as an external anchor for monetary policy has so far served them well, but rising inflation and differing economic cycles from the United States in recent years has raised the question of whether the dollar peg remains the best policy. Mohsin Khan considers the costs and benefits of alternative exchange rate regimes for the GCC. These include continued use of a dollar peg, a peg to a basket of currencies such as the SDR or simply the dollar and euro, a peg to the export price of oil, and a managed floating exchange rate. In light of the structural characteristics of the GCC countries, Khan considers the dollar peg the best option following the establishment of a GCC monetary union. The peg has proved credible and is easy to administer. If further international integration in trade, services, and asset markets makes a higher degree of exchange rate flexibility desirable in the future, implementing a basket peg could provide this flexibility. Regardless, the choice of exchange rate regime for the GCC countries need not be permanent: The countries could initially peg the single GCC currency to the US dollar and then move to a more flexible regime as their policy needs and institutions develop.

Monetary and exchange rate stability in South and East Asia

Regaining exchange rate stability has been a major monetary policy goal of East Asian countries in the aftermath of the 1997/98 currency crisis. While most countries have abstained from re-establishing a formal US Dollar peg, they have typically managed the US Dollar exchange rate de facto. We show that most of these countries were able to regain their monetary credibility within a relatively short time period. The Argentine crisis in 2001 caused a minor setback in this process for some countries. We measure the credibility of monetary policy by separating the fundamental and excess volatility of the exchange rate on the basis of a chartist-fundamentalist model. The degree of excess volatility is interpreted as the ability of the central bank to manage the exchange rate via the coordination channel.

Can the traditional Asian US dollar peg exchange rate regime be extended to include the Japanese yen?

Using daily data for a select set of four Asian exchange rates, namely the Hong Kong dollar, the Singapore dollar, the Taiwan dollar and the Thailand baht, from October 1985 to October 2002, we apply principal components analysis and the O-GARCH model to describe the evolution and persistence in the correlations over time. We also estimate 2-, 3- and 4-variable multivariate GARCH models, without imposing the assumption of constant correlations, to investigate volatility interaction amongst the currencies. To allow for fat tails in the distributions of exchange rate changes, we use the multivariate student- t distribution in maximising our log-likelihood functions. Our results indicate the possibility of designing an Asian exchange rate system involving a number of the region's currencies.

Global Realignment of Exchange Rates: East Asia's Dilemma

Over the past year East Asia has featured prominently in the international debate over the widening global economic imbalances. In particular, China has attracted much attention for the nature of its currency regime and its large trade surplus. Until recently, China pursued a strict policy of tightly fixing the value of the renminbi against the US dollar and, as a result, Chinese exports have remained highly competitive while the US current account position has deteriorated markedly. A substantial widening of China's trade surplus in the first half of this year has sparked a great deal of criticism from the US regarding China's exchange rate regime. Protectionist threats from the US and growing domestic imbalances in the Chinese economy have succeeded in prompting the Chinese authorities to reform their exchange rate regime. On 21 July, Chinese authorities announced the abandonment of the longstanding US dollar peg in favour of a managed system where the renminbi is fixed against a basket of currencies. The specifics of this new exchange rate regime provide ample scope for further renminbi appreciation; however, this will be an orderly and drawn-out process dictated by both economic and market conditions.

The Interplay of the “China Factor” and US Dollar Peg in the Hong Kong Economy

This article examines the significance of the “China factor” in maintaining economics stability and growth in Hong Kong, relative to the role played by the “US dollar peg” exchange rate regime that has been in place since 1983. It shows how, by virtue of the peg, Hong Hong was made subservient to US monetary policy, and how unsynchronized business cycle with the US resulted in spiralling wage and land costs to trigger a mass exodus of Hong Kong's manufacturers across the border to China. The article analyses in detail to what extent the economic base of Hong Kong's export industries has been expanded as a result of the relocation; and measures, in particular, by how much the cost-savings has helped to lower Hong Kong's overall export costs and thus enhance the viability of the peg that is so crucial to such a small and entirely open economy. The analysis extends through the Asian financial crisis and beyond, examining how the peg has fuelled deflation but the “China factor” may have helped mitigate it. Important questions are raised about the peg in light of the disastrous consequences of the Asian financial crisis for some Asian economies, and the concomitant search for a more viable exchange rate regime. It concludes that despite the increased integration of the Hong Kong and mainland China economies, the likelihood of the Hong Kong dollar being de-pegged from the US dollar and re-pegged to the Chinese currency is yet remote.

Exchange Rate Management and Trade Balance in Selected East Asian Countries

Exchange rate management has become a hot topic in academic circles examining the merits of fixed versus floating regimes. The 1997-98 Asian crisis has refocused attention on the exchange rate management of East Asian countries. Most views expressed are critical of the pre-crisis US dollar peg regime, citing it as one cause of the crisis.This article evaluates the pre-crisis US dollar peg regime in the selected East Asian countries by examining its negative effect on trade balance through currency appreciation. The main findings of the study are as follows: First, a significantly large appreciation of real effective exchange rates was found in the selected East Asian countries under the precrisis US dollar peg regime. Second, a regression analysis verified the correlation between real effective exchange rates and trade balances. Third, a simulation analysis showed that the appreciation of real effective exchange rates had a clearly negative effect on trade balances. The strategic implication of our findings is how important the stabilizing of the real effective exchange rate is in exchange rate management.