The type of exchange rate regime a country should adopt and ideal level of the currency have has been an ongoing debate amongst academics, politician and trade unionists. The South African economic debate is currently dominated by debates on the appropriate level of the exchange rate of the rand. With the high volatility of the rand and the rapid appreciation of the rand in 2010 there have been calls for various sectors for government to intervene and devalue the rand. The premise is that devaluation will help counter the volatility of the rand and help stimulate South Africa’s export sector thereby resulting in an improvement of the trade balance. The aim of this research was to determine if there is a relationship between South Africa’s exchange rate and the trade balance and to determine if devaluation of the rand would have a positive influence on the trade balance. Furthermore the extent to which the trade balance would follow the J-Curve effect following devaluation was investigated. Using the long term trade balance model and Autoregressive Distributed Lagged (ARDL) model between the analyses was done between South Africa and the BRIC countries. The conclusion reached was that a devaluation of the rand would not necessarily lead to a long term improvement of the trade balance and no evidence of the J-Curve effect was found. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This paper investigates the effects of real exchange rate misalignment (REM) on economic growth in Kenya over the period 1964-2009. The real exchange rate misalignment is defined as the difference between the equilibrium exchange rate and the actual real exchange rate (RER). The equilibrium real exchange rate was obtained by using the purchasing power parity (PPP) approach. To this effect, the study examined the existence or absence of the cointegration between the REM and economic growth, using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach. The ARDL approach is employed to determine both the long-run and short-run dynamics of the model. The results suggest that no long-run relationship exists between economic growth and the REM in Kenya. The short-run model is then estimated, using the OLS (ordinary least squares) method. From this model, it is determined that trade openness has a positive impact on economic growth, while foreign aid has a negative impact on economic growth; and both are considered empirically significant. The inflation rate and REM both negatively impact economic growth, but are empirically insignificant. All variables corroborate the a priori expectations.

L’objectif principal de la présente thèse est d’analyser les conceptions de la politique monétaire et les cadres monétaires dans les pays en développement. Nous analysons trois aspects du cadre de la politique monétaire : le degré d'indépendance de la banque centrale, la gestion de la politique monétaire et le régime de taux de change. Ce travail comporte des analyses quantitatives et empiriques ainsi que des études de cas détaillées de trois pays du Moyen-Orient. Les analyses empiriques renvoient à trois domaines majeurs que sont : l'existence du phénomène de la peur du flottement et la relation entre la volatilité des taux de change et la volatilité macroéconomique ; le degré d'indépendance de la politique monétaire dans les pays en développement dans le contexte de leur intégration accrue au système économique mondial ; enfin, le degré d'indépendance de la banque centrale et la façon dont il influence la peur du flottement et l'indépendance de la politique monétaire. Les résultats démontrent que l'indépendance de la banque centrale est responsable de l'augmentation de l'indépendance de la politique monétaire nationale vis-à-vis des taux d'intérêt mondiaux et que celle-ci contribue à réduire la peur du flottement dans les pays en développement. Les conclusions des études de cas suggèrent que l'indépendance de la banque centrale est cruciale pour assurer la stabilité des changes et des prix. Toutefois, les pays en développement ne devraient pas se focaliser uniquement et pendant de longues périodes sur la stabilité des changes au détriment d'autres facteurs. On a constaté en effet les avantages découlant d'une gestion efficace et prudente du régime de taux de change. / The main objective of this thesis is to analyse monetary policy designs and monetary frameworks in developing countries. The thesis studies three features of the monetary policy framework: the level of central bank independence, the conduct of monetary policy and exchange rate regime. This study conducts quantitative empirical analyses as well as detailed case studies of three Middle East countries.The above mentioned quantitative analyses cover the following three domains: firstly the existence of the phenomenon of fear of floating and the relationship between exchange rate volatility and macroeconomic volatility, secondly the level of monetary policy independence in developing countries in the context of increasing integration of these countries into the global economic system and lastly the level of central bank independence as well as the way in which it influences both the phenomenon of fear of floating and monetary independence. The findings show that the central bank independence contributes to the increase of national monetary policy independence from the world interest rates and reduces the fear of floating in developing countries, at least to a certain extent. The main conclusions drawn from the case studies put forward that central bank independence is vital in the process of attaining both price stability and exchange rate stability. Nevertheless, developing countries should not aim only at exchange rate stability and they should avoid neglecting other factors for long periods. As a matter of fact, the findings emphasize the advantages of an effective and prudent exchange rate regime management.

Diploma thesis is concerned with foreign exchange risk management in terms of international trade. It deals with types of foreign exchange rate risk (transaction exposure, economic exposure, translation exposure) and their influence on business activity. Diploma thesis also focuses on the possibility of future foreign exchange rate's prediction. The main part of the thesis is devoted to various methods of foreign exchange rate risk management. These methods are analysed under two main groups, internal methods and external methods. Under internal methods, following techniques are analysed: netting, matching, leading and lagging, currency diversification, choice of invoicing currency and pricing policy. External methods focus on the use of financial derivatives, specifically currency forwards, currency futures, currency option and currency swaps. Analysis of exchange rate risk management using financial derivatives is supported with illustrative examples.

This dissertation investigates the long and the short run relationships as well as the causal relationship between oil price movements and exchange rates. The study uses daily data for a 12-year period commencing in January 2007 and December 2018, focuses on four net oil exporting African countries, namely, Nigeria, Angola, Algeria and Egypt. The data was analysed using the time series techniques covering unit root, cointegration and causality analyses. The results of the study found that in the long run, oil prices movements are observed to be negatively related to the returns on the Nigerian Naira, Egyptian Pounds and Algerian Dinar indicating that an oil price increases result in the depreciation of the exchange rates for each of the aforementioned countries. In the short run, oil prices movements are observed to be positively related to the returns on Nigerian Naira, Egyptian Pounds and Algerian Dinar indicating that oil price increase results in the appreciation of the exchange rates. The causality results show evidence of bidirectional causality for the Nigerian Naira and the Angolan Dinar, unidirectional causality for the Egyptian pound and lastly no evidence of causality was found for the Angolan Kwanza. This dissertation suggests the policymakers to stabilize the effects of oil price movements through expansionary monetary policy, to shield African economies from sudden economic depression.

Increased globalisation of trade has led a growing number of firms to search beyond their traditional domestic markets. As a result, export-led growth has gained focus, particularly amongst industrialising nations, or so-called efficiencydriven economies, in search of economic growth. Policy prescriptions have generally proposed a weakening of the exchange rate as a means to stimulate exports; whilst an exchange rate appreciation would be detrimental to exports and encourage imports. Past research on this topic has been mixed.This research examines the impact of exchange rate on export performance in a sample of nine efficiency-driven economies for the period from 1990 to 2009. These economies, with floating exchange rate arrangements, include Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey. Panel data models using a fixed-effects method have been applied in this research. The research finds that a weakening of the exchange rate does not necessarily improve export performance. To the contrary, export growth is associated with a stronger, relative exchange rate. The lag effect of exchange rate movement on export performance is slightly more pronounced, but remains statistically insignificant. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第24376号 / 経博第663号 / 新制||経||302(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 神事 直人, 准教授 長谷川 誠, 准教授 高野 久紀 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DGAM

Emerging insurance markets, have limited access to financial instruments that they can use to create common hedge(s) to manage foreign exchange risk. This is the first empirical study to focus on the limitations when modelling foreign exchange rate transaction exposure in emerging insurance markets. This work is based on the cash flow methodology proposed by Martin and Mauer (2003, 2005) in reference to banks, and employed by Li et al. (2009) when assessing US insurance companies. Some econometric methodological innovations have been introduced to study the limitations of modelling foreign exchange rate transaction exposure in emerging insurance markets. An extensive literature review is followed by a quantitative investigation, to answer the following research questions. 1) Is the foreign exchange transaction exposure, as measured by a fundamental (economic) method of modelling the interplay of foreign exchange rates with other economic variables, significant, for all Egyptian insurance companies? 2) Is the foreign exchange transaction exposure, as measured by a technical (statistical) way of modelling the interplay of foreign exchange rates with other economic variables, significant for all Egyptian insurance companies? 3) Is the exchange transaction exposure for the Egyptian insurance industry, as a whole, significant? Although the foreign exchange rate transaction exposure for the Egyptian insurance industry, as a whole, is insignificant (question3), the percentage of Egyptian insurers affected by foreign exchange rate transaction exposure in US dollars, estimated at the individual firm level, was found to be 22% (question 1) and 35% (question2) respectively.

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