Financial Crises Exchange Rate Linkages And Uncovered Interest Rate Parity

This paper examines the dynamic linkages among major exchange rates during the Global Financial Crisis and Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crisis. We extend the previous literature on volatility spillover linkages among the currencies by taking into account the uncovered interest-rate parity hypothesis for 2004-2015. The results indicate that the Canadian Dollar and Great British Pound were affected mainly by the US Dollar across the two crises due to strong financial and economic ties among the three economies, while the Japanese Yen shows evidence of a safe-haven currency. We also provide evidence of varying vulnerability of currencies to both crises, implying increased portfolio diversification benefits, since holding a portfolio with diverse currencies is less subject to systematic risk. These results show that the policy makers need to adopt a stricter form of monetary policy coordination among central banks, since the different vulnerability of currencies across turbulent periods reveals possible non-cooperative monetary policies.

Using an adaptation of the Uncovered Interest Parity (UIP) condition, this paper analyzes the drivers behind the large, symmetric exchange rate swings observed during the financial crisis of 2008-2010. Employing a Nelson-Siegel model, we estimate yield curves and decompose the exchange rate movements into changes we attribute to monetary policy and a residual. We find that the depreciation phase of the currencies in our sample was largely dominated by safe-haven effects rather than carry trade activity or other return considerations. For some countries, however, the appreciation that began at the end of 2008 seems largely to reflect downward movement in the cumulative revisions to nominal forward differentials, suggesting carry trade.

For about three decades until the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Covered Interest Parity (CIP) appeared to hold quite closely—even as a broad macroeconomic relationship applying to daily or weekly data. Not only have CIP deviations significantly increased since the GFC, but potential macrofinancial drivers of the variation in CIP deviations have also become significant. The variation in CIP deviations seems to be associated with multiple factors, not only regulatory changes. Most of these do not display a uniform importance across currency pairs and time, and some are associated with possible temporary considerations (such as asynchronous monetary policy cycles).

In the 1990s, currency crises in Europe, Mexico, and Asia have drawn worldwide attention to speculative attacks on government-controlled exchange rates and have prompted researchers to undertake new theoretical and empirical analysis of these events. This paper provides some perspective on this work and relates it to earlier research. It derives the optimal commitment to a fixed exchange rate and proposes a common framework for analyzing currency crises. This framework stresses the important role of speculators and recognizes that the government’s commitment to a fixed exchange rate is constrained by other policy goals. The final section finds that some crises may be particularly difficult to predict using currently popular methods.

Combining critical perspectives with a positive contribution to economic policy, both national and international, this book considers the causes and consequences of recent financial crises presenting cutting-edge material.

Economists and policymakers are still trying to understand the lessons recent financial crises in Asia and other emerging market countries hold for the future of the global financial system. In this timely and important volume, distinguished academics, officials in multilateral organizations, and public and private sector economists explore the causes of and effective policy responses to international currency crises. Topics covered include exchange rate regimes, contagion (transmission of currency crises across countries), the current account of the balance of payments, the role of private sector investors and of speculators, the reaction of the official sector (including the multilaterals), capital controls, bank supervision and weaknesses, and the roles of cronyism, corruption, and large players (including hedge funds). Ably balancing detailed case studies, cross-country comparisons, and theoretical concerns, this book will make a major contribution to ongoing efforts to understand and prevent international currency crises.

The tremendous success of China's program of economic reform and the rapid integration of China into the global economy have prompted this study on the economic and financial integration between mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan – a grouping sometimes referred to as Greater China. While there has been a plethora of analyses of China's economic interactions with other economies, this book fills the need for a thorough investigation of regional financial and real interactions – corresponding to the many exhaustive studies of such interactions between developed countries and between East Asian countries. Since real and financial integration has substantial implications for the efficiency of resource allocation and the efficacy of macroeconomics policy, Cheung, Chinn and Fujii offer clear analysis of the current state of economic integration of Greater China, thereby helping to gauge the potential role of China in the global economy. Prospects of a currency union in Greater China, an extreme form of integration, are also evaluated with respect to benefits and costs to the three parties. In addition, the authors provide complementary discussions regarding the degree of integration between China and several Pacific Rim economies, including those of Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United States. Cheung, Chinn and Fujii provide an up-to-date assessment of mainland China's economic development and its integration with its neighboring economies, especially Hong Kong and Taiwan. This grouping is also known as Greater China. There are a number of approaches to assessing economic integration, and the authors present some standard measures – including trade flows, output movements, saving and investment correlations, and consumption comovements. They emphasize the measures based on some key parity conditions in international finance – real interest parity, uncovered interest parity, and relative purchasing power parity. While there is no perfect empirical measure of economic integration, the theoretical relationships between integration and these three parity conditions are well founded in economics. Moreover, the three parity conditions constitute a unified framework that can be used to assess the degree of real and financial integration, and thus offer a convenient way to investigate the interaction between these two types of integration. In addition, the authors evaluate the prospect of a currency union in Greater China, the most extreme form of integration. Prospects of China's continued integration with the world economy, and the implications of policies in Beijing and other Pacific Rim capitals are also discussed.

Tight money in a given financial crisis can serve either to attract funds or to repel them, depending on the expectations that a rise in interest rates generates. With inelastic expectations, no fear of crisis or of currency depreciation, an increase in the discount rate attracts funds from abroad, and helps provide the cash needed to ensure liquidity; with elastic expectations of change - of falling prices, bankruptcies, or exchange depreciation - raising the discount rate may suggest to foreigners the need to take more funds out rather than in.