The main focus of the paper is the problem of exchange-rate exposure of Swedish firms between Jan, 1st 2002 and Sep, 27th 2006. Defined as “a measure of the potential for a firm’s profitability, net cash flow, market value to change because of a change in exchange rates”, the problem of exchange rate exposure is investigated, making use of the “Market Value Approach” (also known as “Stock Market Ap-proach”), with certain additional extensions. With Sweden being a very open economy with strong export orientation, we expected to find a greater number of firms showing significant ex-change rate exposure to one or more of the chosen 6 bilateral exchange rates (SEK/EUR, SEK/USD, SEK/DKK, SEK/NOK, SEK/GBP and SEK/JPY). Also, companies are divided into categories with respect to their main operating activity. The empirical study finds 78% of all companies in the sample with significant exposure, with dominance of lagged effect over con-temporaneous. This percentage is higher than found in previous empirical studies, being in sup-port of the suggestion that relation exists between economy openness and exchange rate expo-sure of firms. However, the significant cross-section differences across categories and the high level of heterogeneity within categories deter us from determining the sign, direction and magni-tude of the exchange rate exposure. Suggestions are made for further studies and possible exten-sions of the topic of the present paper.

<p>The main focus of the paper is the problem of exchange-rate exposure of Swedish firms between Jan, 1st 2002 and Sep, 27th 2006. Defined as “a measure of the potential for a firm’s profitability, net cash flow, market value to change because of a change in exchange rates”, the problem of exchange rate exposure is investigated, making use of the “Market Value Approach” (also known as “Stock Market Ap-proach”), with certain additional extensions. With Sweden being a very open economy with strong export orientation, we expected to find a greater number of firms showing significant ex-change rate exposure to one or more of the chosen 6 bilateral exchange rates (SEK/EUR, SEK/USD, SEK/DKK, SEK/NOK, SEK/GBP and SEK/JPY). Also, companies are divided into categories with respect to their main operating activity. The empirical study finds 78% of all companies in the sample with significant exposure, with dominance of lagged effect over con-temporaneous. This percentage is higher than found in previous empirical studies, being in sup-port of the suggestion that relation exists between economy openness and exchange rate expo-sure of firms. However, the significant cross-section differences across categories and the high level of heterogeneity within categories deter us from determining the sign, direction and magni-tude of the exchange rate exposure. Suggestions are made for further studies and possible exten-sions of the topic of the present paper.</p>

Following the development of international trade, exchange rate uncertainty is a majorsource of risk for corporations involved in international activities. It has forcedmanagers and academics to pay more attention to the effect of exchange rate volatilityon firm value, particularly in developed countries. In the 1990s Asian financial crises,the stock return volatility of US multinational firms increases significantly with therapid expansion of Asian currency crises to world stock market. It led academics andinvestors to pay increasing attention to examine exchange rate exposure in Asia stockmarkets. Nowadays the value of U.S. dollar increased volatility against Asian countries’currency since U.S. financial crisis beginning in August 2007. From what we know, fewof researches report the impact of US financial crisis for Asia firms. This paper aims toexplore the relation between exchange rate movement and firm values in Asian markets. The main purpose of this paper is to examine whether a significant contemporaneousand lagged variability of Asian firms’ stock returns are affected by exchange ratemovement in Asian markets, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Taiwan, andMalaysia during the period from August 2005 to March 2010. Differences of capitalmaturity were compared with among these five Asian economies, covering bothdeveloped markets and emerging markets in Asia. This comparison makes sense tounderstand the efficient market hypothesis theory. In order to ensure our research’svalidity and reliability, sample firms are randomly chosen by the method of stratifiedsampling. The second step in this study is to examine the impact of firm-specific factorson sensitivity to exchange rate movement for those firms with a significant exchangerate exposure. The five firm specific factors are firm size, leverage situation, hedgingactivities, foreign involvement level, and industry classification. The main methods inthis quantitative research are simple and multiple linear regressions. The ordinary leastsquares method in SPSS program was used to estimate the parameters for eachindependent variable. Using a sample of 182 listed firms in these five sample markets, except China,exchange rate exposure of firms in other four Asian markets increases significantly insome sub-period during three sub-periods. After examining the sensitivity to weeklyexchange rate movement of local currency to US Dollar, it is noticeable for academicsthat there is no obvious difference between developed markets and emerging markets inAsia during the period of August 2005 to March 2010. Moreover, the relationshipbetween exchange rate and stock returns varied from markets with respect to exchangerate regimes and level of capital control. As to firm-specific factors, firm size wasnegatively related to exchange rate exposure and this effect was stronger in developedmarkets than other. Similar to previous studies, Asian markets also showed thatexchange rate exposure differed among industries. However, the effect on exchange rateexposure is not significant caused by leverage, foreign sales and hedging activityinvolvement. Suggestions and recommendations for further studies are provided in thelast part of this paper.

The dissertation investigates the issues pertaining to China’s fixed exchange rate policy and attempts to appraise the case for greater exchange rate flexibility. The thesis addresses three objectives: First, a critical appraisal of China’s exchange rate policy in the light of theoretical and empirical literature supporting greater flexibility in exchange rate; second, it builds a monetary dual exchange rate model and analyses in a dynamic theoretical framework the impact of nominal demand and price shocks due to over and undervalued currency. Third, using Chinese macroeconomic data it empirically examines the factors determining China’s real exchange rate fluctuations. After presenting a brief history of China’s exchange rate policy in the post-war period, an assessment of China’s fixed exchange rate policy is made, including the costs of maintaining its current peg. It is argued that the literature on China’s exchange rate regime has not reached a consensus, and further theoretical arguments are appraised regarding the reluctance to move to a more flexible exchange rate regime. A theoretical dual exchange rate monetary model, in the spirit of Flood and Marion (1983), is then developed to analyse the dynamics in the responses to nominal and real shocks. This provides a theoretical basis for analysing the underlying working mechanism and policy implications under some degree of capital control, to resemble the Chinese exchange rate regime. In the light of the theoretical analysis, empirical research is conducted using a structural vector auto-regression (SVAR) model to examine the effects of real exchange rate fluctuations to nominal and real shocks (represented by inflation and real GDP), in order to determine the case for exchange rate flexibility. Both the theoretical and empirical analyses complement to inform the ongoing debate on whether the current exchange rate regime in China should be made more flexible, and whether a more flexible regime is appropriate in stabilising the effects of macroeconomic shocks. The empirical findings reveal that the responses of the real exchange rate to nominal IX demand and real supply shocks are consistent with a managed exchange rate system that currently operates in China. In particular, the results show that, as China has been under a fixed exchange rate arrangement for much of the estimation period, the real exchange rate appreciates immediately in response to a positive nominal shock. The use of quarterly Chinese data in this study, which no previous study on China has used, makes it possible to identify to a greater degree the initial appreciation impact of a positive nominal shock on the real exchange rate, although the results are generally consistent with the previous study by Wang (2004) using annual data. The study finds that supply shocks are dominant in the fluctuations of output growth, and while both nominal and real shocks are significant the nominal contributes more than real shocks in real exchange rate fluctuations. Overall, these findings are consistent with other studies for developing countries and support a case for greater exchange rate flexibility for China.

Does the choice of exchange-rate regime effect the economic growth performance of a country? And does the significance of such a relationship vary across different levels of development? Few questions in international economics, whether it be in academic or policy circles, have inspired as much debate yielding as little consensus. Although both economic growth theory and empirical literatures suggests the existence of direct and indirect channels, through which the choice of regime may indeed impinge the growth rate, neither has managed to provide an unambiguous answer. The aim of this paper is to analyze the theoretical arguments as to the relationship between the choice of exchange-rate regime and economic growth and to empirically investigate if there is an optimal regime, in terms of growth, and if the significance of this impact differs across various levels of country development. Applying a cross-sectional regression estimation of 60 countries over the period 2000-2010, this paper finds that the choice of exchange-rate regime holds no significant explanatory power over economic growth. These findings were robust to dividing the sample based on the level of country development. Although no direct relationship was found, these findings supports the argument that the choice of regime may indeed effect growth indirectly, through its impact on other deterministic growth factors, such as trade, investment and productivity. The findings of this paper are both in accord and discord with previous results and underlines how divergent the empirical research is on this continuously debated issue.

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This thesis investigates the exchange rate pass-through to consumer prices, and its non-linearity and asymmetry effect in Mongolia. The recursive VAR model and non-linear econometric model are applied using monthly data from January 2000 to December 2013. We find that exchange rate pass-through is high and incomplete both in the short and in the long run in Mongolia. There is a statistically significant asymmetry effect, which states that impact of exchange rate depreciation on consumer price is higher than appreciation. However, we do not find an evidence of non-linearity in consumer price reaction to the large and small absolute changes of the exchange rate relative to its sample average and median as a threshold level. Additionally, we estimate the importance of the exchange rate shock for the consumer price variation using variance decomposition technique. In spite of this relatively high pass through, the exchange rate shocks explain a relatively small percentage of the variation in CPI inflation. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Abstract The resilience of trade balances of the major industrialised economies such as the US and Japan to changes in their exchange rates following the switch from fixed to floating exchange rate regimes, triggered interest in the exchange rate pass-through relationship. Because of the importance of the pass-through issue particularly in economic policy formulation, a sizeable literature has developed over recent years. Comprehensive surveys of this literature include Menon (1995), Goldberg and Knetter (1997) and McCarthy (2002). However, not much attention has been paid to the comparison of the methodologies for estimating exchange rate pass-through. This research report aims to address this imbalance by comparing some of the exchange rate pass-through estimation methodologies via a Monte Carlo simulation study, based on the South African data set. The econometric results reported in this research report suggest that the Johansen type VECMs are superior to polynomial distributed lag models, exchange rate pass-through to South Africa’s import prices is incomplete (around 78%) and that the speed of adjustment to long-run equilibrium is low, about 7 per cent of disequilibrium in the previous month is corrected in the current month. We conclude that if we are not sure about the unit root properties of the data (as is normally the case), then the ARDL precedure is the appropriate model for empirical work.

Thesis (M.M. (Finance & Investment))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Business Administration, 2015. / Could not copy abstract