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Working Paper
Crisis, contagion, and country funds: effects on East Asia and Latin America
Spillovers effects, from one country or region to other countries and regions, have attracted renewed attention in the aftermath of the Mexican crisis of December 1994. This paper uses data on closed-end country funds to study how a negative shock in Mexican equities is transmitted to Asia and Latin America, and to particular countries within each region. Country funds allow us to study the transmission to other fund net asset values (NAVs) and prices, which are traded in local stock markets in New York, respectively. The evidence indicates that shocks such as the Mexican crisis produce ...
Working Paper
Liberalization of Korea's foreign exchange markets
Working Paper
Currency crashes in emerging markets: an empirical treatment
We use a panel of annual data for over one hundred developing countries from 1971 through 1992 to characterize currency crashes. We define a currency crash as a large change of the nominal exchange rate that is also a substantial increase in the rate of change of the nominal depreciation. We examine the composition of the debt as well as its level, and a variety of other macroeconomic, external and foreign factors. Our factors are significantly related to crash incidence, especially output growth, the rate of change of domestic credit, and foreign interest rates. A low ratio of FDI to debt is ...
Working Paper
Trade and growth in East Asian countries: cause and effect?
Estimates of growth equations have found a role for openness, particularly in explaining rapid growth among East Asian countries. But major concerns of simultaneous causality between growth and trade have been expressed. This study aims to deal with the endogeneity of trade by using as instrumental variables the exogenous determinants from the gravity model of bilateral trade, such as proximity to trading partners. Our preliminary finding is that the effect of openness on growth is even clearer when we correct for the endogeneity of openness than in standard OLS estimates. We conclude ...
Working Paper
Short-term and long-term expectations of the yen/dollar exchange rate: evidence from survey data
Three surveys of exchange rate expectations allow us to measure directly the expected rates of return on yen versus dollars. Expectations of yen appreciation against the dollar have been (1) consistently large, (2) variable, and (3) greater than the forward premium, implying that investors were willing to accept a lower expected return on dollar assets. At short-term horizons expectations exhibit bandwagon effects, while at longer-term horizons they show the reverse. A 10 percent yen appreciation generates the expectation of a further appreciation of 2.4 percent over the following week, for ...
Working Paper
Who drives real interest rates around the Pacific Rim: the US or Japan?
This paper investigates the relative influence of US and Japanese real interest rates in the determination of local Pacific Rim rates, where influence is defined by the presence of common stochastic trends. Furthermore, the degree to which long run real interest parity holds is examined. The cointegration testing methodology of Johansen (1988) is adopted for this analysis, which allows for multiple cointegrating vectors. The results indicate that Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan are linked with both the US and Japan (in terms of cointegration and positive covariation), while only Singapore is ...
Working Paper
Financial links around the Pacific Rim, 1982-1992