Search Results
Working Paper
China and emerging Asia: comrades or competitors?
We explore whether increases in China?s exports reduce exports of other emerging Asian economies. We find that correlations between Chinese export growth and that of other emerging Asian economies are actually positive (though often not significantly so), even after controlling for the effects of income growth of trading partners and real effective exchange rates. We also present results from a VAR estimation of aggregate trade equations on the relative importance of foreign income and exchange rates in the determination of Asian export growth. An important finding is that, while exchange ...
Working Paper
Exchange-rate effects on China's trade: an interim report
The rising current account deficit in the USA has attracted considerable attention in recent years. We use the "business cycle accounting" methodology to identify the principal distortions that have affected the external accounts of the US. In particular, we measure distortions in the optimality conditions of a simple two-country general equilibrium model using data from the US and the other G7 countries. We then feed these measured distortions into the model individually and use the simulated counterfactual paths of the current account to determine the contribution of each of these ...
Working Paper
China and emerging Asia: comrades or competitors?
Do increases in China's exports reduce exports of other emerging Asian economies? We find that correlations between Chinese export growth and that of other emerging Asian economies are actually positive (though usually not significant), even after controlling for trading-partner income growth and real effective exchange rates. We also present results from a VAR estimation of aggregate trade equations on the relative importance of foreign income and exchange rates in determining Asian export growth. Although exchange rates do matter for export performance, the income growth of trading partners ...
Working Paper
Exchange-rate effects on China’s trade: an interim report
Though China's share of world trade is comparable to that of Japan, little is known about the response of China's trade to changes in exchange rates. The few estimates available suffer from two limitations. First, the data for trade prices are based on proxies for prices from other countries. Second, the estimation sample includes the period of China's transformation from a centrally-planned economy to a market-oriented system. To address these limitations, this paper develops an empirical model explaining the shares of China's exports and imports in world trade in terms of the real effective ...
Working Paper
FinTech and Financial Innovation : Drivers and Depth
This paper answers two questions that help those analyzing FinTech understand its origins, growth, and potential to affect financial stability. First, it answers the question of why "FinTech" is happening right now. Many of the technologies that support FinTech innovations are not new, but financial institutions and entrepreneurs are only now applying them to financial products and services. Analysis of the supply and demand factors that drive "traditional" financial innovation reveals a confluence of factors driving a large quantity of innovation. Second, this paper answers the question ...
Working Paper
Adjusting Chinese bilateral trade data: how big is China's trade surplus
Hong Kong plays a prominent role as a re-exporter of a large percentage of trade bound for or coming from China. Current reporting practices in China and its trading partners do not fully reflect this role and therefore provide a misleading picture of the origin or ultimate destination of Chinese exports and imports. We adjust bilateral trade data for both China and its trading partners to correct for this problem. We also correct for differences due to markups in Hong Kong and different standards for reporting trade (c.i.f. versus f.o.b.). For 2003, we estimate that China's overall trade ...
Working Paper
Flying geese or sitting ducks: China’s impact on the trading fortunes of other Asian economies
This paper updates our earlier work (Ahearne, Fernald, Loungani and Schindler, 2003) on whether China, with its huge pool of labor and an allegedly undervalued exchange rate, is hurting the export performance of other emerging market economies in Asia. We continue to find that while exchange rates matter for export performance, the income growth of trading partners matters far more. This suggests the potential for exports of all Asian economies to grow in harmony as long as global growth is strong. We also examine changes in export shares of Asian economies to the U.S. market and find ...
Working Paper
Is China \"exporting deflation\"?
In the past few years, observers increasingly have pointed to China as a source of downward pressure on global prices. This paper evaluates the theoretical and empirical evidence bearing on the question of whether China's buoyant export growth has led to significant changes in the inflation performance of its trading partners. This evidence suggests that the impact of Chinese exports on global prices has been, while non-negligible, fairly modest. On a priori grounds, our theoretical analysis suggests that China's economy is still too small relative to the world economy to have much effect on ...
Working Paper
Firm-Specific Risk-Neutral Distributions : The Role of CDS Spreads
We propose a method to extract individual firms' risk-neutral return distributions by combining options and credit default swaps (CDS). Options provide information about the central part of the distribution, and CDS anchor the left tail. Jointly, options and CDS span the intermediate part of the distribution, which is driven by moderate-sized jump risk. We study the returns on a trading strategy that buys (sells) stocks exposed to positive (negative) moderate-sized jump risk unspanned by options or CDS individually. Controlling for many known factors, this strategy earns a 0.5% premium per ...
Working Paper
Testing optimality in job search models
This paper uses Bayesian techniques to compare three definitions of optimality for the basic job search model: the standard income-maximizing definition, an approximation to the standard definition, and a simple alternative. The important role of prior choice in these comparisons is illustrated. Using natural conjugate priors to represent hypothetical samples of data, we find that the simple alternative is preferred to the standard definition of optimality. However, using priors constructed from findings in the literature, we are able to find some evidence in favor of the standard definition ...