Regional Monetary Coordination in Asia after the Global Financial Crisis: Comparison in Regional Monetary Stability between ASEAN+3 and ASEAN+3+3

This paper analyzes how much deviation we have among Asian currencies, which include the Indian rupee, the Australian dollar, and the New Zealand dollar, given that we are discussing East Asian Community based on ASEAN+3 (Japan, China, and South Korea)+3 (India, Australia, and New Zealand). We investigate whether the instability or deviation of intra-regional exchange rates would increase when the additional three countries (India, Australia, and New Zealand) join the ASEAN+3. Contribution of each currency to the weighted average of AMU-wide Deviation Indicators shows that movements in the Japanese yen have contributed to those in the weighted average of the AMU-wide Deviation Indicators over time during the sample period from January 2000 to January 2010. Moreover, we use concepts of β and σ convergences in the context of economic growth to statistically analyze convergence or divergence for the ASEAN+3+3 currencies. The addition of the Indian rupee into the ASEAN+3 currencies makes the regional currencies unstable before and during the global financial crisis. Moreover, comparison between ASEAN+3+3 and ASEAN+3+Indian currencies shows that the addition of only the Indian rupee is relatively more stable than the addition of the Australian dollar and the New Zealand dollar as well as the Indian rupee since September 2008. It is worthy to consider that India will join the Chiang Mai Initiative to manage currency crises while the monetary authorities will conduct surveillance over stability of the intra-regional exchange rates in the near future.

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 (2005)). We obtained the following results: first, the AMU peg system would be more effective in reducing fluctuations of the effective exchange rates as more countries applied the AMU peg system in East Asia. Second, the AMU peg system would more effectively stabilize the effective exchange rates than a common G-3 currency basket peg system for four (Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand) of the seven countries. The results suggest that the AMU basket peg would be useful for the East Asian countries whose trade weights on Japan are relatively higher than others.

Asian Monetary Unit and Monetary Cooperation in Asia

Regional monetary and financial cooperation in Asia has been discussed for years. To move towards a coordinated exchange rate policy, Ogawa and Shimizu (2005) proposed both an Asian Monetary Unit (AMU), which is a common currency basket computed as a weighted average of the thirteen ASEAN+3 currencies, and AMU Deviation Indicators (AMU DIs), which indicates the deviation of each Asian currency in terms of the AMU compared with the benchmark rate. The AMU and the AMU DIs are considered both as surveillance measures under the Chiang Mai Initiative and as benchmarks for coordinated exchange rate policies among Asian countries. In this paper, the authors show that monitoring the AMU and the AMU DIs plays an important role in the regional surveillance process under the Chiang Mai Initiative. By using daily and monthly data of AMU and AMU DIs for the period from January 2000 to June 2010, which are available from the website of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry (RIETI), they examine their usefulness as a surveillance indicator. Our studies of AMU and AMU DIs confirm the following: first, an AMU peg system stabilizes the nominal effective exchange rate (NEER) of each Asian country. Second, the AMU and the AMU DIs could signal overvaluation or undervaluation for each of the Asian currencies. Third, trade imbalances within the region have been growing as the AMU DIs have been widening. Fourth, the AMU DIs could predict huge capital inflows and outflows for each Asian country. The above findings support the usefulness of using the AMU and the AMU DIs as surveillance indicators for monetary cooperation in Asia.asian monetary unit; asian monetary cooperation; asian financial cooperation; chiang mai initiative; exchange rate policy; common currency basket; asian currencies

On the Desirability of a Regional Basket Currency Arrangement

This paper considers a theoretical model to examine an optimal exchange rate regime for (Asian) emerging market economies that export goods to the U.S., Japan, and neighboring countries. The optimality of the exchange rate regime is defined as minimizing the fluctuation of trade balances, in the environment where the yen-dollar exchange rate fluctuates. Since the de facto dollar peg regime is blamed as one of the factors that caused the Asian currency crisis, the question of the optimal exchange rate regime is quite relevant in Asia. The novelty of this paper is to show how an emerging market economy's choice of the exchange rate regime (or weights in the basket) is dependent on the neighboring country's. The dollar weights in the currency baskets of the two countries are determined as a Nash equilibrium. In general, there are multiple equilibria, and a coordination failure' may result.

Possible depreciation of the US dollar for unsustainable current account deficit in the United States

Zahlungsbilanzungleichgewicht, US-Dollar, Vereinigte Staaten, Balance of payments imbalances, US Dollar, United States

AMU Deviation Indicator for Coordinated Exchange Rate Policies in East Asia and its Relation with Effective Exchange Rates

The monetary authorities in East Asian countries have been strengthening their regional monetary cooperation since the Asian Currency Crisis in 1997. In this paper, we propose a deviation measurement for coordinated exchange rate policies in East Asia to enhance the monetary authorities' surveillance process for their regional monetary cooperation. We calculate the AMU as a weighted average of East Asian currencies following the method used to calculate the European Currency Unit (ECU) and the AMU Deviation Indicators, which how the degree of deviation from the hypothetical benchmark rate for each of the East Asian currencies in terms of the AMU. Furthermore, we investigate the relationships between the AMU and its Deviation Indicators and the effective exchange rates of each East Asian currency. As a result, we found the strong relationships between the AMU or the AMU Deviation Indicators and the effective exchange rates except for some currencies. These results indicate that the AMU Deviation Indicators have positive relationship with their effective exchange rates. Accordingly, we should monitor both the AMU and the AMU Deviation Indicator for the monetary authorities' surveillance in order to stabilize effective exchange rate in terms of trader partners'currencies.

How much depreciation of the US dollar for sustainability of the current accounts?

In this paper, we conduct a simulation analysis to investigate how much depreciation of the US dollar is needed to reduce the current account deficits in the near future. We use some VAR models to estimate relationships between the exchange rate of the US dollar and the current accounts in the United States. We conclude that some scenarios of the US dollar depreciation would reduce the current account deficits to a level under 2% of GDP in the next several years. The results are regarded as robust for each of the scenarios thought they depend on our supposed VAR models.US dollar depreciation, Current account sustainability, Investment-saving balance, International trade flows, Vector Autoregression (VAR)

Analysis on ƒÀ and ƒÐ Convergences of East Asian Currencies

This paper investigates recent diverging trends among East Asian currencies as well as recent movements of the weighted average value of East Asian currencies (Asian Monetary Unit: AMU) and deviations (AMU Deviation Indicators) of the East Asian currencies from the average values by ƒÀ and ƒÐ convergence methods. Our empirical analysis shows that linkages with the US dollar have been weakening since 2001 or 2002 for some of the East Asian countries. On the other hand, the monetary authority of China continues stabilizing the exchange rate of the Chinese yuan against the US dollar even though it announced its adoption of a currency basket system. It is found that the weighted average of East Asian currencies has been appreciating against the US dollar while depreciating against the currency basket of the US dollar and the euro until the global financial crisis in 2008. Also, the analytical results on ƒÀ and ƒÐ Convergences show that deviations among the East Asian currencies have been widening@in recent years, reflecting the fact that these countriesf monetary authorities are adopting a variety of exchange rate systems. In other words, a coordination failure in adopting exchange rate systems among these monetary authorities increases volatility and misalignment of intra-regional exchange rates in East Asia.