nep-ifn New Economics Papers
on International Finance
Issue of 2011‒05‒24
two papers chosen by
Ajay Shah
National Institute of Public Finance and Policy

  1. Is Malaysia exempted from impossible trinity: empirical evidence from 1991-2009 By Lim, Ewe Ghee; Goh, SooKhoon
  2. Assessing the effect of current account and currency crises on economic growth By Aßmann, Christian

  1. By: Lim, Ewe Ghee; Goh, SooKhoon
    Abstract: This paper examines Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) monetary policy autonomy in 1991-2009, a period of volatile capital flows, during which BNM operated under several exchange regimes: managed floating; fixed exchange rates; and fixed exchange rates with selective capital controls. Using a modified version of the Brissimis, Gibson and Tsakalotos (2002) model, the paper’s empirical estimates show that the same-period offset coefficients are significantly less than unity under all regimes, indicating that the Malaysian central bank possesses some short-run control over monetary policy (even under fixed exchange rates). Although the long-run offset coefficient continues to be less than unity under managed floating, it is not significantly less than unity under fixed exchange rates. These results show that Malaysia is not exempted from the impossible trinity except in the very short-run. Perhaps one of the reasons Malaysia abandoned its US dollar exchange rate peg on 20 July 2005 to move back to managed floating is to increase its monetary policy independence. One implication of the Malaysian monetary policy experience is that managed floating with active sterilization may be a viable strategy for emerging market economies to deal with volatile capital flows.
    Keywords: Offset Coefficient; Sterilization Coefficient; Monetary Autonomy; Impossible Trinity
    JEL: F41
    Date: 2011–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:30804&r=ifn
  2. By: Aßmann, Christian
    Abstract: Several empirical studies are concerned with measuring the effect of currency and current account crises on economic growth. Using different empirical models this paper serves two aspects. It provides an explicit assessment of country specific factors influencing the costs of crises in terms of economic growth and controls via a treatment type model for possible sample selection governing the occurrence of crises in order to estimate the impact on economic growth correctly. The applied empirical models allow for rich intertemporal dependencies via serially correlated errors and capture latent country specific heterogeneity via random coefficients. For accurate estimation of the treatment type model a simulated maximum likelihood approach employing efficient importance sampling is used. The results reveal significant costs in terms of economic growth for both crises. Costs for reversals are linked to country specific variables, while costs for currency crises are not. Furthermore, shocks explaining current account reversals and growth show strong significant positive correlation. --
    Keywords: Currency crises,Current account reversals,Treatment Model,Discrete dependent variable,Efficient Importance Sampling,Panel Data
    JEL: F32 C15 C23 C33 O10
    Date: 2011
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:bamber:80&r=ifn

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