• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.281-310
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• 2013

The aim of this paper is to estimate the degree of RMB misalignment from its equilibrium exchange rate by applying the Behavioral Equilibrium Exchange Rate (BEER) approach. We employ monthly data with reference to China's top 20 trading partners covering the period of 1997 to 2012. We find that the RMB was slightly overvalued before 2001 and significantly undervalued by up to 20 per cent in the end of 2006. There is evidence showing that the RMB approached to its equilibrium level from 2007 to 2008. However, the global financial crisis interrupted the trend of declining misalignment of RMB exchange rate. The RMB's total misalignment increased to around 25 per cent in the mid-2011 mainly because the RMB was re-pegged to the US dollar and some currencies of China's main trading partners depreciated during the period of crisis. More recently, the degree of RMB misalignment slightly declined since 2012 when the RMB proceeded to appreciate and China's ratio of current account surplus to GDP dropped considerably. Our findings prove that there is a trend of the RMB approaching to its equilibrium exchange rate since 2007 except for the period of crisis.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.273-290
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• 2012

While the issue of RMB (Renminbi, Chinese Yuan) revaluation became the focus of world attention in 2003, the reform of the RMB exchange rate regime in 2005 didn't fundamentally solve the RMB appreciation problem, and even in 2008 the global financial crisis made RMB appreciation face new challenges and risks. It appears that the rise in RMB value is caused by supply exceeding demand in China's foreign exchange market; however, intrinsically it is due to the asymmetry in RMB exchange rate formation mechanism. The export tax rebates policy implemented by Chinese government is one of the leading causes of the asymmetry. This study constructs a transmission model between export tax rebates and foreign exchange rates, and applies the Granger Test to validate the causality between kernel variables based on correlative data from 1994-2011, and uses the error correction method to analyze the quantified relations of kernel variables, and finally gets the contribution rate of export tax rebates to RMB appreciation.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.275-306
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• 2018

Amid a general rise in protectionism and a trade war between the world's two largest economies, this paper analyzes changes in gains from trade for the world over a decade marked by rapid global economic integration preceding the global financial crisis of 2007-08. It employs state-of-the-art quantitative trade models based on the gravity equation to estimate autarky gains from trade, as well as a recently introduced ANOVA-type structural estimation of the gravity equation to obtain trade costs free of residual trade cost bias. Between 1995 and 2006, the cost of moving to autarky increased by about 45% on average. A decomposition exercise suggests most of the increase in autarky gains from trade on average was due to increases in import shares in total spending, with a limited role for reallocations of spending across sectors with varied trade elasticities. Changes in trade costs between 1995 and 2006 are found to have increased autarky gains from trade, as measured in 2006, by up to 100%.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.129-159
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• 2013

Over the course of the recent global financial crisis, emerging economies experienced massive swings in capital inflows. In this paper, we estimate a VAR model to assess the impact of capital inflow shocks, which are identified using a set of sign restrictions, on house prices in Korea. We base the analysis on three alternative measures of capital inflows: net total inflows, net portfolio inflows and gross total inflows. The results suggest that capital inflow shocks have a significantly positive and persistent effect on real house prices. Although shocks to capital inflows are found to be substantially more important for Korean asset markets than for other OECD countries, their overall explanatory power is modest. Using regional house price data we also show that capital inflow shocks have an asymmetric effect on property markets across the seven largest Korean cities and across different parts of Seoul.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.143-169
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• 2022

This study investigates the effect of economic factors on immigration using the gravity model of immigration. Cross-sectional regression and panel data analyses are conducted from 2000 to 2019 using the OECD International Migration Database, which consists of 36 destination countries and 201 countries of origin. The Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood method, which can effectively correct potential biased estimates caused by zeros in the immigration data, is used for estimation. The results indicate that the economic factors strengthened after the global financial crisis. Additionally, this effect varies depending on the type of immigration (the income level of origin country). The gravity model applied to immigration performs reasonably well, but it is necessary to consider the country-specific and time-varying characteristics.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.95-140
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• 2024

This study empirically investigates the international transmission of China's uncertainty shocks. It estimates a time-varying parameter Bayesian global structural vector autoregressive model (TVP-BGVAR) using time series data for 33 countries to evaluate heterogeneous international linkage across countries and time. Uncertainty shocks are identified via sign restrictions. The empirical results reveal that an increase in uncertainty in China negatively affects the global economy, but those effects significantly vary over time. The effects of China's uncertainty shocks on the global economy have been significantly altered by China's WTO accession, the global financial crisis, and the recent US-China trade conflict. Furthermore, the effects of China's uncertainty shocks, typically on inflation, differ significantly across countries. Moreover, Trade openness appears crucial in explaining heterogeneous GDP responses across countries, whereas the international dimension of monetary policy appears to be important in explaining heterogeneous inflation responses across countries.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.161-206
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• 2013

Since the global financial crisis in 2008, the world economy has been suffering from the Great Recession characterized by high and persistent unemployment as well as drastic fall in asset prices. Real business cycle theory or new-Keynesian economics which has been the dominant paradigm in macroeconomics for the last four decades is unable to explain the high and persistent unemployment during the Great Recession. This implies that the economics of Keynes should be taken seriously again as a tool to explain the Great Recession. Farmer (2012) proposes a new way of interpreting the economics of Keynes by providing it with a solid micro-foundation based on labor markets with search. According to Farmer (2012), aggregate economic activity independently depends on the long-term self-fulfilling expectations about the stock prices. As a consequence, the government or the central bank should implement a policy that influences the public's confidence about the stock market. For an open economy like the Korean economy, it is not only stock price but also the price of asset such as house that matters more for the aggregate economic activity. Households in the Korean economy hold more than 70 percent of their wealth in the form of real estate asset, especially housing asset. This makes the public's confidence about the future prices of houses even more important in explaining the business cycles of the Korean economy. Policymakers should implement policies to improve the confidence of households about the housing market to recover from the recession caused by a fall in house prices. Little theoretical work has been done in explaining fluctuations in the aggregate economic activity from the point of house prices. This paper develops a small open economy model with traded and non-traded capital based on Farmer (2012) and shows that the aggregate economic activity also independently depends on the households' self-fulfilling expectations about the future prices of non-traded asset such as houses.

• Journal of the Korean Regional Science Association
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.21-38
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• 1999

This paper is concerned with analyzing the role of Northeast Asia intercity networks in Northeast Asia in creating regional networks. For the purpose of this paper, we have followed Choe's (1996) definition of Northeast Asia which includes the Russian Fat East, the Northeast region of China, South Korea, North Korea and Japan. The central hypothesis of the paper is that the geopolitical conditions of Northeast Asia compared for example with Southeast Asia, favor bilateral rather than multilateral linkages between nation states. In these circumstances, it is our hypothesis that cities will play an important role in developing a "local image" of regio-nalism and intercity networks. In order to analyze this hypothesis, the paper is divided into three parts. Part A analyzes the emerging urban system of the Northeast Asia region using Choe's concept of the BESETO corridor and updating his data from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s just prior to the financial crisis. This analysis is further supported by the analysis of economic and transportation linkages within the urban system of the region with some discussion of emerging urban nodes. Part B looks at the specific case studies of the region including the Bohai Sea region, the Japan Sea and case studies of Sapporo, the Japan Sea and case studies of Sapporo, Pusan and Shandong province cities. Part C summarizes this preceding analysis and that the development of regionalism and servicing urban nodes is move likely to emerge from a myriad of linkages developed between the region's cities than from a supra-regional role of nation states. This finding has important implications for regional policy formation suggesting that there should be considerate national support for international linkages between cities.en cities.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.9-37
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• 2020

The present study examines the transnational "Hallyu" (the Korean wave) phenomenon after the 1990s in the context of a solidarity movement of East Asian women. It also focuses on the passion for the world stage given the cultural industry was supported by the government as a "chimney-less factory" during the IMF financial crisis. Over the past twenty years and through Hallyu 1.0, Hallyu 2.0, and Hallyu 3.0, "K-entertainment" has been advocated, as a concept that encompasses K-drama, K-pop, etc. in the cultural industry. Furthermore, everything Korean, through K-culture, is being put at the forefront. However, there is insufficient discussion regarding the actions of the women who led the Korean wave. This paper examines the female fans and girl groups who played leading roles in the rise of popular culture and its transnational prominence within the context of the female agency and female labor involved. The lack of acknowledgment of their roles is linked to the current erasure of the discussion on the female youth. Discussion on "woman" is still limited to the domain of reproduction in the generational discussion that has replaced the existing nation-state or class led discussions in the current era of neoliberalism. However, since The reboot or the popularity of feminism in recent years, the interest in the female narrative, in works such as 'Kim Ji-young, Born 1982' has been expanding beyond East Asia to the rest of the world. Just as Hallyu was created by women in the beginning, there is a new trend in which women across national borders are joining in solidarity. As such, the present study attempts to prove that the female fan, girl group, and female youths must be one meta-narrative through a feminist reading, rather than individuals with separate identities.