Thesis advisor: Fabio Ghironi / My doctoral dissertation studies the interaction between financial development, exchange rate regimes and productivity growth. The first chapter provides a microfounded, quantitative model that rationalizes recent empirical evidence by Aghion et al (2009), who find that fixed exchange rate regimes lead to higher long-run productivity growth in countries with low financial development, while the effect in financially developed countries is insignificant. The channel that explains this evidence in my model is the following: A fixed exchange rate regime leads to lower inflation when the money growth is otherwise high. In turn, lower inflation results in higher long-run productivity growth since financial intermediaries hold a fraction of deposits as reserves, whose return is lower than the market rate and, thus, is affected by inflation. The lower return paid on reserves drives a wedge between the return paid on deposits and the return paid on loans by reducing the former and increasing the latter. In turn, this reduces entry of new innovators in the economy and, consequently, productivity growth. I show that the negative effect of flexible exchange rate regimes on growth is larger for countries with lower levels of financial development because inflation and the fraction of deposits held as reserves are higher in these countries. In the second chapter, I perform panel-data analysis to find how much of the effect of exchange rate regimes on productivity growth, documented previously by Aghion et al. (2009), can be accounted for by the channel proposed in the first chapter of my dissertation. I use data for 83 countries over the period 1960-2000. The data comes from the Penn World Table, World Development Indicators, International Financial Statistics, and the Reinhart and Rogoff classification of exchange rate regimes. I use the GMM system estimator and regress productivity growth on financial development, a variable describing the exchange rate regime, growth controls, as well as bank reserve ratios. I find that when the interaction effect of inflation and financial development or the interaction of the reserve ratio and financial development are added to the regression used by Aghion et al. (2009), the exchange rate regime effect on productivity growth in less financially developed countries is no longer significant. This implies that the channel proposed in the first chapter of my dissertation can explain most of the initial empirical results. The third chapter explores the short-run effect of exchange rate regimes on the macroeconomic performance of a small open economy with endogenous productivity growth and underdeveloped financial markets when the home economy is subject to shocks. I use the model introduced in the first chapter, add nominal price rigidities, and calculate impulse responses, given a productivity shock and a shock to the foreign nominal interest rate. I also calculate second moments implied by the model and compare them to empirical second moments. The results show that after a positive exogenous productivity shock, productivity growth, output and consumption increase more under the flexible exchange rate regime. However, given an increase in the foreign nominal interest rate, productivity growth falls but the reduction in productivity growth is smaller under the fixed exchange rate regime. In addition, output and consumption fall after the shock, however, the reduction of consumption and output is higher under the fixed exchange rate regime. I also find that after both shocks analyzed here, welfare is higher under the fixed exchange rate regime. The model is also able to match some features of business cycles in developing countries. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This dissertation includes three issues, however, they are all adopted the view of firm¡¦s foreign exchange rate exposure to do the research. The main results of three topics as follows: In the first topic, this study uses the example of a Taiwanese firm investing in China and develops an exchange rate exposure model which depends on only four endogenous variables: the percentage of the firm¡¦s revenues denoted in the currency of trade country, the percentage of the firm¡¦s expenses denoted in the currency of trade country and third country, and its profit rate. The main issue in this research attempts to detect whether producing goods in the third country will affect a multinational firm on the exchange rate exposure and whether the currency manipulation will affect the decision of producing goods in the third country. This study finds that if a multinational firm can effectively adjust operational strategy and match foreign currency income with its cost, most of the exposure can be reduced. Besides this reducible effect of operational strategy, it is worth to note that diversified strategy just works under some conditions. For example, whether producing goods in the third country or not, the firm¡¦s exposure will not make changes as long as the currency is equal to its true value. However, under the case of currency manipulation, the firm producing goods in the third country can reduce exchange rate risk further. In the second topic, this paper studies the sensitivity of the cash flows generated by Chinese and Taiwanese firms to the movements in a trade-weighted exchange rate index, as well as to the currencies of their major trading partners. To overcome the deficiencies in previous researches using variations of the market-based model, this paper adopts the polynomial distributed lag (PDL) model to investigate the relative importance of transaction exposure versus economic exposure by decomposing exchange risk into short-term and long-term components. In contrast to the market-based model, we find that PDL model is better in detecting exposures with evidence confirmed both in China and Taiwan markets. Furthermore, our empirical results also verify past findings in Taiwan market that firms with higher foreign involvement have larger exchange rate exposure, firms with larger size have less exchange rate exposure, firms with larger exporting business are less exposed to the currency of primary exporting country, and firms with larger importing business are less exposed to the currency of primary importing country. However, these results are seldom agreed in China market. These findings imply that the exchange rate under the pegging regime and the floating system significantly affects firms in managing their exchange risk. In the third topic, it is generally argued that the choice of an appropriate exchange rate regime depends on which regime minimizes fluctuations in output, consumption, domestic price level, or some other macroeconomic variables. However, our study provides alternative analytic evidences on the firm-specific behavior. Using the real performance of operating income, this paper attempts to investigate the impact of fluctuating currencies on the values of U.S., Chinese, and Taiwanese companies. We find that the Chinese companies have more short-term exposures under the pegged regime, and the U.S. companies have more long-term exposures under the floating regime. Under the managed floating system, optimal lag length for Taiwanese companies is close to that of U.S. companies. However, the magnitude of exposure for Taiwanese companies is close to that of Chinese companies. These findings imply that the exchange rate under different exchange rate regimes significantly affects firms in managing their exchange risk.

There are four chapters in my dissertation. Chapter one gives a brief introduction of the three essays. Chapter two studies the choice of exchange rate regimes in East Asia using a business-cycle approach. My results suggest that countries in East Asia are driven mainly by country-specific shocks, making more rigid exchange rate regimes less desirable. Neither a yen bloc nor a dollar bloc has been identified in East Asia. However, Japan seems more influential to countries such as Korea and Taiwan. An optimum currency area does not seem feasible for East Asia, at least in the short run. Chapter three applies the cointegration and causality analyses to the real effective exchange rates to study the degree of monetary integration in East Asia. I find that the ASEAN and the NIE countries, respectively, have achieved some degree of integration, but not East Asia as a whole. The yen is found to move closely with the NIE currencies. However, neither the yen nor the dollar imposes a dominant driving force on the East Asian currencies. My results suggest that East Asia is not an optimum currency area. Chapter four expands the traditional monetary model of exchange rate determination into a structural VAR model incorporating various capital flows and the balance of trade in addition to the macroeconomic fundamentals. The model is then applied to the Australian dollar (AUD), the Canadian dollar (CAD), and the US dollar (USD) exchange rates over 19802004. I find that capital flows, especially portfolio investments, explain a major portion of the exchange rate fluctuations in the relatively small and open economies such as Australia and Canada in the short-to-medium run. The impacts of capital flows are limited to the US dollar exchange rates. Among the macroeconomic fundamentals, the interest rate plays an important role in exchange rate determination for all three currencies. The results imply that different capital flows do influence exchange rates differently and are important determinants of exchange rates.

(None) Technical Summary of Thesis: The topic of my thesis is currency crisis. Currency crises have been a recurrent feature of the international economy from the invention of paper money. They are not confined to particular economies or specific region. They take place in developed, emerging, and developing countries and are spread all over the globe. Countries that experience currency crises face economic losses that can be huge and disruptive. However, the exacted toll is not only financial and economic, but also human, social, and political. It is clear that the currency crisis is a real threat to financial stability and economic prosperity. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the determinants of currency crises for twenty OECD countries and South Africa from 1970 through 1998. It systematically examines the role of economic fundamentals and contagion in the origins of currency crises and empirically attempts to identify the channels through which the crises are being transmitted. It also examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. The first chapter identifies the episodes of currency crisis in our data set. Determining true crisis periods is a vital step in the empirical studies and has direct impact on the reliability of their estimations and the relevant policy implications. We define a period as a crisis episode when the Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, which consists of changes in exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates, exceeds a threshold. In order to minimize the concerns regarding the accuracy of identified crisis episodes, we apply extreme value theory, which is a more objective approach compared to other methods. In this chapter, we also select the reference country, which a country’s currency pressure index should be built around, in a more systematic way rather than by arbitrary choice or descriptive reasoning. The second chapter studies the probability of a currency exiting a tranquil state into a crisis state. There is an extensive literature on currency crises that empirically evaluate the roots and causes of the crises. Despite the interesting results of the current empirical literature, only very few of them account for the influence of time on the probability of crises. We use duration models that rigorously incorporate the time factor into the likelihood functions and allow us to investigate how the amount of time that a currency has already spent in the tranquil state affects the stability of a currency. Our findings show that high values of volatility of unemployment rates, inflation rates, contagion factors (which mostly work through trade channels), unemployment rates, real effective exchange rate, trade openness, and size of economy increases the hazard of a crisis. We make use of several robustness checks, including running our models on two different crisis episodes sets that are identified based on monthly and quarterly type spells. The third chapter examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. As in our previous paper, duration analysis is our methodology to study the probability of a currency crisis occurrence under different exchange rate regimes and capital mobility policies. The third chapter finds that there is a significant link between the choice of exchange rate regime and the incidence of currency crises in our sample. Nevertheless, the results are sensitive to the choice of the de facto exchange rate system. Moreover, in our sample, capital control policies appear to be helpful in preventing low duration currency crises. The results are robust to a wide variety of sample and models checks.

(None) Technical Summary of Thesis: The topic of my thesis is currency crisis. Currency crises have been a recurrent feature of the international economy from the invention of paper money. They are not confined to particular economies or specific region. They take place in developed, emerging, and developing countries and are spread all over the globe. Countries that experience currency crises face economic losses that can be huge and disruptive. However, the exacted toll is not only financial and economic, but also human, social, and political. It is clear that the currency crisis is a real threat to financial stability and economic prosperity. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the determinants of currency crises for twenty OECD countries and South Africa from 1970 through 1998. It systematically examines the role of economic fundamentals and contagion in the origins of currency crises and empirically attempts to identify the channels through which the crises are being transmitted. It also examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. The first chapter identifies the episodes of currency crisis in our data set. Determining true crisis periods is a vital step in the empirical studies and has direct impact on the reliability of their estimations and the relevant policy implications. We define a period as a crisis episode when the Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, which consists of changes in exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates, exceeds a threshold. In order to minimize the concerns regarding the accuracy of identified crisis episodes, we apply extreme value theory, which is a more objective approach compared to other methods. In this chapter, we also select the reference country, which a country’s currency pressure index should be built around, in a more systematic way rather than by arbitrary choice or descriptive reasoning. The second chapter studies the probability of a currency exiting a tranquil state into a crisis state. There is an extensive literature on currency crises that empirically evaluate the roots and causes of the crises. Despite the interesting results of the current empirical literature, only very few of them account for the influence of time on the probability of crises. We use duration models that rigorously incorporate the time factor into the likelihood functions and allow us to investigate how the amount of time that a currency has already spent in the tranquil state affects the stability of a currency. Our findings show that high values of volatility of unemployment rates, inflation rates, contagion factors (which mostly work through trade channels), unemployment rates, real effective exchange rate, trade openness, and size of economy increases the hazard of a crisis. We make use of several robustness checks, including running our models on two different crisis episodes sets that are identified based on monthly and quarterly type spells. The third chapter examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. As in our previous paper, duration analysis is our methodology to study the probability of a currency crisis occurrence under different exchange rate regimes and capital mobility policies. The third chapter finds that there is a significant link between the choice of exchange rate regime and the incidence of currency crises in our sample. Nevertheless, the results are sensitive to the choice of the de facto exchange rate system. Moreover, in our sample, capital control policies appear to be helpful in preventing low duration currency crises. The results are robust to a wide variety of sample and models checks.

(None) Technical Summary of Thesis: The topic of my thesis is currency crisis. Currency crises have been a recurrent feature of the international economy from the invention of paper money. They are not confined to particular economies or specific region. They take place in developed, emerging, and developing countries and are spread all over the globe. Countries that experience currency crises face economic losses that can be huge and disruptive. However, the exacted toll is not only financial and economic, but also human, social, and political. It is clear that the currency crisis is a real threat to financial stability and economic prosperity. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the determinants of currency crises for twenty OECD countries and South Africa from 1970 through 1998. It systematically examines the role of economic fundamentals and contagion in the origins of currency crises and empirically attempts to identify the channels through which the crises are being transmitted. It also examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. The first chapter identifies the episodes of currency crisis in our data set. Determining true crisis periods is a vital step in the empirical studies and has direct impact on the reliability of their estimations and the relevant policy implications. We define a period as a crisis episode when the Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, which consists of changes in exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates, exceeds a threshold. In order to minimize the concerns regarding the accuracy of identified crisis episodes, we apply extreme value theory, which is a more objective approach compared to other methods. In this chapter, we also select the reference country, which a country’s currency pressure index should be built around, in a more systematic way rather than by arbitrary choice or descriptive reasoning. The second chapter studies the probability of a currency exiting a tranquil state into a crisis state. There is an extensive literature on currency crises that empirically evaluate the roots and causes of the crises. Despite the interesting results of the current empirical literature, only very few of them account for the influence of time on the probability of crises. We use duration models that rigorously incorporate the time factor into the likelihood functions and allow us to investigate how the amount of time that a currency has already spent in the tranquil state affects the stability of a currency. Our findings show that high values of volatility of unemployment rates, inflation rates, contagion factors (which mostly work through trade channels), unemployment rates, real effective exchange rate, trade openness, and size of economy increases the hazard of a crisis. We make use of several robustness checks, including running our models on two different crisis episodes sets that are identified based on monthly and quarterly type spells. The third chapter examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. As in our previous paper, duration analysis is our methodology to study the probability of a currency crisis occurrence under different exchange rate regimes and capital mobility policies. The third chapter finds that there is a significant link between the choice of exchange rate regime and the incidence of currency crises in our sample. Nevertheless, the results are sensitive to the choice of the de facto exchange rate system. Moreover, in our sample, capital control policies appear to be helpful in preventing low duration currency crises. The results are robust to a wide variety of sample and models checks.

(None) Technical Summary of Thesis: The topic of my thesis is currency crisis. Currency crises have been a recurrent feature of the international economy from the invention of paper money. They are not confined to particular economies or specific region. They take place in developed, emerging, and developing countries and are spread all over the globe. Countries that experience currency crises face economic losses that can be huge and disruptive. However, the exacted toll is not only financial and economic, but also human, social, and political. It is clear that the currency crisis is a real threat to financial stability and economic prosperity. The main objective of this thesis is to analyze the determinants of currency crises for twenty OECD countries and South Africa from 1970 through 1998. It systematically examines the role of economic fundamentals and contagion in the origins of currency crises and empirically attempts to identify the channels through which the crises are being transmitted. It also examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. The first chapter identifies the episodes of currency crisis in our data set. Determining true crisis periods is a vital step in the empirical studies and has direct impact on the reliability of their estimations and the relevant policy implications. We define a period as a crisis episode when the Exchange Market Pressure (EMP) index, which consists of changes in exchange rates, reserves, and interest rates, exceeds a threshold. In order to minimize the concerns regarding the accuracy of identified crisis episodes, we apply extreme value theory, which is a more objective approach compared to other methods. In this chapter, we also select the reference country, which a country’s currency pressure index should be built around, in a more systematic way rather than by arbitrary choice or descriptive reasoning. The second chapter studies the probability of a currency exiting a tranquil state into a crisis state. There is an extensive literature on currency crises that empirically evaluate the roots and causes of the crises. Despite the interesting results of the current empirical literature, only very few of them account for the influence of time on the probability of crises. We use duration models that rigorously incorporate the time factor into the likelihood functions and allow us to investigate how the amount of time that a currency has already spent in the tranquil state affects the stability of a currency. Our findings show that high values of volatility of unemployment rates, inflation rates, contagion factors (which mostly work through trade channels), unemployment rates, real effective exchange rate, trade openness, and size of economy increases the hazard of a crisis. We make use of several robustness checks, including running our models on two different crisis episodes sets that are identified based on monthly and quarterly type spells. The third chapter examines the links between the incidence of currency crises and the choice of exchange rate regimes as well as the impact of capital market liberalization policies on the occurrence of currency crises. As in our previous paper, duration analysis is our methodology to study the probability of a currency crisis occurrence under different exchange rate regimes and capital mobility policies. The third chapter finds that there is a significant link between the choice of exchange rate regime and the incidence of currency crises in our sample. Nevertheless, the results are sensitive to the choice of the de facto exchange rate system. Moreover, in our sample, capital control policies appear to be helpful in preventing low duration currency crises. The results are robust to a wide variety of sample and models checks.

This paper concentrates on the analysis of currency crises in economies undergoing economic transition. The papaer begins with a brief introduction of contemporary exchnage rate regimes, which is followed by an analysis of the history of the World monetary system. The following chapters concentrate on the analysis of the monetary development in selected transitional economies. In case of the the first one, The Czech Republic, the analysis includes the period from the times of the centrally planed economy, through the initial transformation and the currency crisis of 1997 to the present day. In case of the other countries included in this paper, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Icelnad, the analysis concentrates on the current critical development in these economies. Apart from the analysis of the selected currency crises, the objective of this paper is to draw conclusions relevant to the future development of currency policies in the transitional economies.

Os recentes superávits comerciais da economia brasileira transformaram a percepção de elevada fragilidade das contas externas do país que se verificou nas duas últimas décadas e meia. Diante desta nova realidade, parece pertinente avaliarmos quais foram os determinantes deste saldo comercial a partir dos elementos tradicionais da literatura, como a taxa de câmbio, os preços externos e a renda doméstica e mundial. Com este propósito, foram estimadas equações de longo prazo para as exportações e importações brasileiras para que se pudesse avaliar as elasticidades do comércio de bens e serviços não fatores do país. A metodologia utilizada foi a de cointegração proposta por Johansen (1988) e Johansen e Juselius (1990). A estimação das elasticidades se dividiu em dois períodos: 1980-1998 e 1980-2005. Com tal divisão pretendemos capturar os efeitos da mudança do regime cambial de 1999 sobre as contas externas. Além disso, foram realizados uma série de testes recursivos para se checar a estabilidade, quebras e a robustez da cointegração destas variáveis. Os resultados obtidos foram satisfatórios para as elasticidades, condizentes com trabalhos anteriores, mas agregaram a informação da elasticidade para o conjunto de bens e serviços não fatores e não apenas de bens. Além disso, foram identificadas uma série de quebras no período de estimação, em geral associadas a períodos críticos de mudanças de política econômica. Finalmente, foi possível identificar que após a flutuação cambial houve um aumento da elasticidade renda externa das exportações e uma redução da elasticidade-câmbio de exportações e importações. O trabalho conclui sugerindo que os elevados saldos comerciais são resultantes de uma particular combinação de preços externos favoráveis, câmbio real depreciado e renda mundial elevada, além de alguma mudança estrutural associada à maior resposta das exportações à renda mundial, provavelmente por conta do resgate das vantagens comparativas brasileiras na esteira da mudança do regime cambial em 1999. / The recent Brazilian trade surpluses changed the perception about the fragility of the external accounts of the Brazilian economy that lasted for the last two and a half decades. In the face of this new reality it seem reasonable to evaluate which were the determinants of this trade surplus, taking into account the traditional variables of the external accounts literature, like the currency, the external prices, the domestic and foreign output. With this purpose we estimated long run equations for exports and imports for evaluating the external trade of goods and services elasticities. The methodology applied was that proposed by Johansen (1988) and Johansen and Juselius (1990) that take for the account of cointegration methods. The estimation was divided into two periods: 1980-1998 and 1980-2005. With such a division, we intend to capture the effects of the change in the Brazilian foreign exchange regime introduced in 1999 over the external accounts. Further, we tested these models recursively to check for stability, breaks and cointegration power. The results were satisfactory in terms of the elasticities, in line with previous jobs on this field, but we add the information on the aggregated goods and services elasticities, usually estimated only for the goods markets. Further we identified many brakes over the estimation sample, generally associated with macroeconomic policy changes. Finally it was possible to identify that after the floating of the Brazilian currency the external income elasticity of the exports jumped to a higher level and the currency elasticities of both exports and imports showed some reduction. We conclude by saying that the huge trade surpluses recently observed are the result of a particular combination of external favorable prices, a depreciated real exchange and a high level of world income growth, as far as some structural change associated with the bigger responsiveness of the exports to the world growth, probably due to the resurge in the Brazilian external comparative advantages in the face of the currency flotation of 1999.

Magistro baigiamajame darbe išskirti pagrindiniai fiksuoto valiutos kurso privalumai ir trūkumai, nustatyta jų įtaka Lietuvos ekonomikai bei įvertinta ar Lietuvai yra naudinga bendra valiuta su euro zonos šalimis. Pirmoje darbo dalyje išskiriami pagrindinių valiutos kurso režimų privalumai ir trūkumai, apžvelgiama Lietuvos pinigų politikos raida ir optimalios valiutos zonos teorija. Antroje dalyje remiantis pirmoje dalyje išskirtais fiksuoto valiutos kurso privalumais ir trūkumais analizuojama kaip jie veikė infliaciją, investicijas, užsienio prekybą, einamosios sąskaitos balansą, ar nebuvo grėsmės devalvacijai, ar ECB vykdoma pinigų politika buvo palanki. Trečioje darbo dalyje remiantis optimalios valiutos zonos kriterijais analizuojama ar Lietuva yra OVZ su EU (17) ir ar bendra valiuta – euras būtų naudingas. / In the Master‘s thesis main advantages and disadvantages of Fixed Exchange Rate were distinguished, analyzed their impact on Lithuania‘s economy and evaluated whether a common currency with the euro-zone countries would be useful. In the first part of the paper the main Exchange Rate Regime advantages and disadvantages were identified, main developments of Lithuania’s monetary policy and optimum currency area were overviewed. The impact of fixed exchange rate advantages and disadvantages on indicators such as inflation, foreign direct investment, foreign trade, current account balance were analyzed in the second part of the paper including the analyses of litas devaluation possibility and ECB monetary policy. The third part of the paper aims at assessing whether Lithuania and EU (17) is an OCA and whether a common currency – euro is beneficial.