Transmission mechanism in a developing economy: does money or credit matter?

This book covers empirical and policy oriented studies. It contents provide a through exposition of economic theory to shed light on real issues in understanding a developing country economy. The book is structured in an easy reading manner that makes it ideal for all levels of researchers, especially for the postgraduate students who are researching in the applied macroeconomics area

ASEAN-5+3 AND US STOCK MARKETS INTERDEPENDENCE BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS

The issues of international stock markets linkages had been investigated over the time. Since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, many economists are concerned about the relationship between Asian stock markets and others in the world. This paper is conducted to examine the linkages between ASEAN-5+3 namely Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Japan and Korea and US stock markets. The data consists of weekly stock indices data. The total samples are separated into three subperiods. First period is pre-crisis period spanning from January 1990 to June 1997. Second period is during-crisis period spanning from July 1997 to June 1998. Third period is post-crisis period spanning from July 1998 to May 2007. All the indices applied are expressed in local currencies. The empirical analysis begins with testing the stationarity properties of the data. All the countries are found to be stationary at first difference except for Japan for pre-crisis period. Next, cointegration test is employed to test the long-run stationary relationship among the stock markets. The number of significant cointegrating vector is higher during-crisis compare to other periods whereas the same number of cointegrating vector is found before and after crisis. Granger-causality based on VECM showed that Thailand is exogenous whereby Malaysia is the most endogenous at before and during the crisis. After the crisis, US become dominant compare to the other countries. In conclusion, we found that ASEAN- 5+3 and US stock markets are interdependence during crisis and post-crisis periods and the impact of US stock market is effective in ASEAN-5+3 stock markets only for pre and during-crisis periodsStock markets, Cointegration, Granger-causality, ASEAN

Broad money demand and financial liberalization in Malaysia: an application of the nonlinear learning function and error-correction models

This paper attempts to model the effects of financial liberalization and innovations on the demand for broad money in Malaysia. The nonlinear learning function and error-correction mechanism model were utilized. The results of encompassing tests and dynamic (ex post) simulation confirm the error-correction as the parsimonious specification. The augmented error-correction model with nonlinear interacted variables is unable to detect the effects of financial liberalization on Malaysian broad money demand

Financial integration among ASEAN+3 countries : evidence from exchange rates convergence

As the economies of Asian have moved towards closer economic ties in recent years, the establishment of regional exchange rate arrangement has become an important regional policy concern. A study by the Asian Development Bank forecast that Asian will be the world's largest economy by 2050. Hence, it is not reasonable for Asian to continuously depend on U.S. dollar. Asian must have its own currency and must responsible for its own financial stability. Regional cooperation (including integration) is critical for Asia’s march toward prosperity and facing vulnerabilities to global shocks. Financial integration in ASEAN+3 is assessed in this paper by examining the time-series stochastic behaviour and cointegration in a set of eight ASEAN+3 currencies. The findings imply that not all of the ASEAN+3 countries are financial integrated during the recent float. This finding provided weak support upon formation of regional monetary and exchange rate arrangement in Asia

The endogeneity of the Optimum Currency Area criteria in East Asia

The Asian financial crisis in mid-1997 has increased interest in policies to achieve greater regional exchange rate stability in East Asia. It has renewed calls for greater monetary and exchange rate cooperation. A country's suitability to join a monetary union depends, inter alia, on the trade intensity and the business cycle synchronization with other potential members of the monetary union. However, these two Optimum Currency Area criteria are endogenous. Theoretically, the effect of increased trade integration (after the elimination of exchange fluctuations among the countries in the region) on the business cycle synchronization is ambiguous. Reduction in trade barriers can potentially increase industrial specialization by country and therefore resulting in more asymmetry business cycles from industry-specific shocks. On the other hand, increased trade integration may result in more highly correlated business cycles due to common demand shocks or intra-industry trade. If the second hypothesis is empirically verified, policy makers have little to worry about the region being unsynchronized in their business cycles as the business cycles will become more synchronized after the monetary union is formed. This paper assesses the dynamic relationships between trade, finance, specialization and business cycle synchronization for East Asian economies using a Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) approach. The dynamic panel approach improves on previous efforts to examine the business cycle correlations — trade link using panel procedures, which control for the potential endogeneity of all explanatory variables. Based on the findings on how trade, finance and sectoral specialization have effects on the size of common shocks among countries, potential policies that can help East Asian countries move closer toward a regional currency arrangement can be suggested. The empirical results of this study suggest that there exists scope for East Asia to form a monetary union

Feldstein-Horioka puzzle and international capital mobility in high income countries: a pool mean group approach

This paper reexamines the status of international capital mobility under the Feldstein-Horioka (1980) hypothesis by comparing the results from the OECD and non-OECD high income categories. Data on savings and investment ratios of 21 OECD and 17 non-OECD countries were analyzed using the dynamic heterogeneous panel estimators of Pooled Mean Group (PMG), Mean Group (MG) and Dynamic Fixed Effects (DFE). Based on the series of Hausman post-estimation test, result from the PMG is upheld. The saving-retention coefficient, showing the level of international capital mobility, reads 0.89, 0.93 and 0.16 for the high-income group, OECD category and non-OECD category respectively. This suggests lower capital mobility in high-income as a whole and OECD countries, and higher capital mobility in the non-OECD countries. The contradictory findings confirmed that the Feldstein-Horioka saving-retention coefficient is unlikely, a viable option of measuring cross-border capital mobility. Further researches therefore need to re-observe the qualification of saving-retention coefficient in explaining international capital mobility

Monetary policy and stock market volatility in ASEAN5: asymmetries over bull and bear markets

This paper examines the asymmetric response of stock market volatility to monetary policy over bull and bear market periods in ASEAN5 countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand) using the well-tested pooled mean group (PMG) technique. Bull and bear markets are identified by employing Markov-switching models and the rule- based non-parametric approach. Estimating the models using monthly data from 1991:1 to 2011:12, the results show that a contractionary monetary policy (interest rate increases) has a stronger long-run effect on stock market volatility in bear markets than bulls consistent with the prediction of finance constraints models

International reserves, current account imbalance and external debt : evidence from Malaysia.

The purpose of the study is to analyze both the short-run and long-run demand for international reserves in Malaysia for the period 1970-2004. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach proposed by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) is used to test for the existence of cointegration relationship between the demand for international reserves and its determinants. The empirical results suggest that current account balance and short-term external debt significantly affect the demand for international reserves both in the long run and short run

The linkages of Asian and the US stock markets

The issues of international stock market linkages have already been investigated over the time. Many researchers and economists are concerned about the relationship between the Asian stock markets and others after the Asian Financial Crisis. This paper aims to examine the interrelationship between the Asian stock markets namely, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Japan, Korea, and the US stock markets. The data consists of weekly stock indexes. The total samples are separated into three subperiods. First period is pre-crisis period spanning from January 1990 to June 1997. Second period is during-crisis period spanning from July 1997 to June 1998. Third period is post-crisis period spanning from July 1998 to February 2009. The empirical results show that the number of significant cointegrating vector is higher during the crisis periods compared to other periods. Granger-causality based on Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) showed that stock markets of Thailand, Japan and China are exogenous before, during and after the crisis respectively. This paper concludes that the linkages between the Asian and the US stock markets are stronger in the post-crisis period

ASEAN-5+3 and US stock markets interdependence before, during and after Asian financial crisis

The issues of international stock markets linkages had been investigated over the time. Since the Asian financial crisis in 1997, many economists are concerned about the relationship between Asian stock markets and others in the world. The main objective of this paper is to examine the linkages between ASEAN-5+3 namely Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, China, Japan and Korea an d US stock markets. The data consists of weekly stock indices data. The total samples are separated into three sub-periods. All the indices applied are expressed in local currencies. In conclusion, we found that ASEAN-5+3 and US stock markets are interdependence during crisis and post-crisis periods and the impact of US stock market is effective in ASEAN-5+3 stock markets only for pre- and during-crisis periods