Exchange rate constraints and money control in Korea

This paper applies two traditional empirical approaches to investigate how successfully Korea managed to control money supply in response to the changes in foreign reserves since 1980. One is to estimate offset coefficients and the other is to estimate sterilization coefficients. The estimation results are as follows. Reflecting strict and effective capital controls, the domestic monetary policies were partially offset mainly by short-term capital flows. The Bank of Korea pursued sterilization policies very actively. Particularly, sterilization was more active during the late 1980s of huge current account surplus than during the early 1990s of a surge in capital flows. There were over-sterilization during the early 1 980s when foreign reserves kept dropping, which implied that monetary policies were directed to worsening the balance of payments deficit rather than improving it.Foreign exchange - Law and legislation ; Korea ; Money supply

A monetary policy feedback rule in Korea's fast-growing economy

In Korea's high-growth economy, the Bank of Korea had been willing to tolerate double-digit inflation, provided that it remained at "non-explosive" levels. In this article, we estimate a monetary policy feedback rule for Korea and find that the upper threshold of tolerable inflation for the Bank of Korea was about 20 percent. It appears that the Bank of Korea's disciplined, rule-like approach to monetary policy was able to control inflation and keep it away from explosive levels, despite the well-know empirical regularity that inflation becomes more variable at higher levels. After 1983, however, our regime-switching model suggests that the inflation target has been six percent. We also find little evidence that the Bank of Korea has targeted real growth, except for a period in the mid-1980s when industrial production growth suggested that the economy was overheating, relative to an implicit growth target of 7.4 percent. We conclude with a discussion of possible reasons for Korea to choose to stabilize inflation at lower levels since the mid-1980s.Monetary policy - Korea

On-State Resistance Instability of Programmed Antifuse Cells during Read Operation

The on-state resistance (R-ON) instability of standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) antifuse cells has been observed for the first time by using acceleration factors: stress current and ambient temperature. If the program current is limited, the R-ON increases as time passes during read operation.N

Influence of Electron and Hole Distribution on 2T SONOS Embedded NVM

The influence of electron and hole (EH) distribution on two-transistor (2T) silicon-oxidenitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) embedded nonvolatile memory (eNVM) is investigated in terms of reliability. As PE (program/erase) cycles are repeated, it is observed that the electron distribution in the nitride layer becomes wider. It leads to the EH distribution mismatch, which degrades the reliability of 2T SONOS eNVM.N