• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.111-125
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• 1990

For the last several years, considerable criticism has been leveled against Korea's exchange rate management. While Korea was designated a currency manipulator by the U.S., domestically it is often complained that the won/dollar rate did not adequately reflect changes in Korea's export competitiveness and fluctuations in the exchange rates of major currencies. In view of this situation, Korea changed its exchange regime at the beginning of March this year from the dual currency basket system to a more flexible one, called a "market average rate regime". Under this new regime, the won rate is determined in the exchange market based upon the supply of and demand for foreign exchange and is allowed to freely fluctuate each day within a + 0.4 % range. This paper, first, seeks to evaluate Korea's exchange rate management under the dual basket regime of the 1980s, and then to construct an optimal currency basket for the won which could provide a proper indicator for exchange market intervention under the new market average rate regime. The analysis of fluctuations in the real effective exchange rate (REER) of the won indicates that the won rates in the 1980s failed not only to offset changes in relative prices between home and trading partner countries, but also to properly respond to variations in major exchange rates as further evidenced by sizable fluctuations in the nominal effective rates of the won. In other words, the currency basket regime which was adopted in 1980 for the stabilization of the REER of the won has not been operated properly, mainly because authorities often resorted to policy considerations in determining the won's rate. In the second part of the paper, an optimal currency basket for Korea is constructed, designed to minimize the fluctuations in the REER of the won without including policy considerations as a factor. It is recognized, however, that both domestic and foreign price data are not available immediately for the calculation of the REER. For this problem, the approach suggested by Lipschitz (1980) is followed, in which optimal weights for currencies in the basket are determined based upon the past correlation between price and exchange rates. When the optimal basket is applied to Korea since the mid-80s, it is found that the REER of the won could have been much more stable than it actually was. We also argue for the use of variable weights rather than fixed ones, which would be determined by the changing relationship between exchange rates and relative prices. The optimal basket, and the optimal basket exchange rate based on that basket, could provide an important medium- or long-term reference for proper exchange market intervention under the market average rate regime, together with other factors, such as developments in the current account balance and changes in productivity.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.35-46
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• 2016

This study investigates the export behavior of Busan, Gwangyang and Incheon Port. The monthly data cover the period from January 2000 to December 2015. We employ six export functions composed of various exchange rates and industrial production index. This paper finds that the nominal effective exchange rate is more appropriate for explaining the export behaviors of the three ports, regardless of the narrow and wide indices which comprise 26 and 61 economies for the nominal and real indices respectively. This paper tests whether exchange rate and industrial production are stationary or not, rejecting the null hypothesis of a unit root in each of the level variables and of a unit root for the residuals from the cointegration at the 5 percent significance level. The error-correction model is estimated to find that both Gwangyang and Incheon ports are much slower than Busan port in adjusting the short-run disequilibrium and Gwangyang port is a little slower than Incheon port. The rolling regressions show that the influence of exchange rate as well as industrial production tends to decrease in all of three ports. The variance decomposition, however, shows that the export variables are very exogenous and the export of Busan Port is the least exogenous and that of Gwangyang Port the most. This result indicates that the economic variables such as exchange rate and economic activity affect the export of Busan Port more strongly than that of Gwangyang and Incheon Port.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.203-223
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• 2019

This paper examines the interactions between financial conditions and business cycles in Mongolia, a small open economy, heavily depending on commodity exports. We construct two financial conditions indexes based on the reduced form IS model and the vector autoregression (VAR) model as surveillance tools to quantify the degree of the financial conditions. We find that real short-term interest rate and real effective exchange rate gap get a higher weight in the FCIs. Both business and financial cycles are often more pronounced in Mongolia, and financial condition is dependent of the financial and monetary policies in place. The analysis of the predictive power of the FCIs for business cycles shows that they have predictive information for the near-term economic activities. FCIs are also helpful in signaling inflation turning points.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.3-26
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• 1992

The pupose of this paper is to construct a price determination model of the Korean economy and to find out the propogation mechanism of monetary and fiscal policies. The model is a small-size macroeconometric model consisted of ten core equations : consumption, investment, exports, imports, consumer price index, wage rate, corporate bond rate, potential GNP, capital stock, and GNP identity. The model is a Keynesian model : consumer price index is determined by markup over costs, and wage rate is expressed by Phillipse curve ralation. Two features of the model, however, distinguish this model from other macroeconometric models of the Korean economy. First of all, the estimation of potential GNP and the capital stock is endogenized as suggested by Haque, Lahiri, and Montiel (1990). This allows us to calculate the level of excess demand, which is defined as the difference between the actual GNP and the potential GNP. Second, interest rate, inflation and wages are all estimated as endogenous variables. Moreover, all quantity variables include price variables as important determinants. For instance, interest rate is an important determinant of consumption and investment. Exports and imports are determined by the real effective exchange rate. These two features make the interactions between excess demand and prices the driving forces of this model. In the model, any shock which affects quantity variable(s) affects excess demand, which in turn affects prices. This strong interaction between prices and quantities makes the model look like a classical model over the long run. That is, increases in money supply, government expenditures, and exchange rate (the price of the U.S. dollar in terms of Korean won) all have expansionery effects on the real GNP in the short run, but prices, wage, and interest rate all increase as a result. Over the long run, higher prices have dampenning effects on output. Therefore the level of real GNP turns out to be not much different from the baseline level ; on the other hand, the rates of inflation, wage and interest rate remain at higher levels.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.47-59
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• 2017

The objective of this study is to determine the short run and long run dynamics between maritime import volume (IMV), industrial production (IP), and real effective exchange rate (REER) of the Korean Won over the REER of certain major currencies (US Dollar, Chinese Yuan, and Japanese Yen) in Korea's Jeonnam province. The Johansen and Juselius cointegration results reveal that at least one cointegration vector or long-run relationship exists. Hence, this study estimated the long run equilibrium equation, which indicates that both IP and REER are inelastic, although the former is bigger than the latter. Moreover, the dynamic causality analysis reveals short and long-run unidirectional causality from IP and REER to IMV in all three models. Further, in all the models, the results indicate short run unidirectional causality from REER to IP. In addition, the impulse response (IR) results show that the impulse of IP and REER decayed after four months. Additionally, the IR analysis results indicate that the REER of the Korean Won over the REER of Japanese Yen is the biggest with respect to the impact of relative REER on IP, which is the proxy variable of regional real income. Thus, empirical results indicated that real income and REER play an important role in determining the Jeonnam's maritime import demand behavior in the short run and long run. More importantly, substantial actions reducing unexpected fluctuation of the REER and real income based on micro and macro economic policies will increase the imported volume in the ports of the Jeonnam province.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.219-240
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• 2011

The main purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of stock price and real estate price on the money demand. We investigated the demand for money for 25 money units of 10 countries. To estimate the money demand functions, Johansen's cointegration and ARDL-bounds test were employed. Additionally, Stock and Watson's DOLS method was applied to estimate long-run cointegration vectors. According to the results of cointegration test, stock price and real estate price are crucial in the long-run equilibrium relationship. There were no cointegration relationships among money demand, real income, interest rate, and exchange rate in 12 money unit models. However, by including stock price and real estate price on the tested models, we could find strong cointegration relationships, using ARDL-bounds test. The results of DOLS confirm that stock price and real estate price are effective factors influencing on money demands. Especially, the coefficient of real estate price is statistically significant in the 19 out of 20 money unit models. However, the direction and magnitude of coefficients of asset prices are different across countries and money units.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.255-274
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• 2005

To acquire a port traffic, governments in North-East Asia have intensively invested port development. Furthermore, the major shipping company directly make a call at northern chinese ports like Qingdao, Dalian and Tianjin. Those changes of port environment will have a considerable effect on a port traffic in Korea. In order to prepare against those changes, it is necessary to estimate a port traffic in Korea A port traffic in Korea is estimated by the use of explanation variables like GDP of Korea, real effective exchange rate, world economic performances and the trade in China, et al. When GDP in Korea goes up 1%, it is estimated that container port traffic of all ports and Pusan Port is upward $1.0{\sim}1.2%$ and $0.8{\sim}0.9%$ respectively. When the trade in China goes up 1%, it is estimated that Container transshipment is upward $1.6{\sim}1.7%$ approximately.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.289-305
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• 2019

Recently, each country has been using non-tariff barriers (Non-Tariff Barriers, NTB) as a new protection trade policy. In particular, TBT lies at the center of NTB. In this context, we examine the impact of Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) on Korea's exports to ASEAN. Using 10-year statistics from 2007 to 2016 that came into effect with the ASEAN FTA, we analyze the impact of TBT on the Korean exports in the electrical machinery industry (HS85), which accounts for more than 30 percent of Korea's total exports to ASEAN. The results of the empirical analysis using a gravity model showed significant and positive effects in the variables of GDP and real effective exchange rate in each ASEAN country on Korea's exports to ASEAN. As expected, the tariff rate has a negative effect. As for TBT, the key variable of this study, the results are as follows. Although many previous studies reported that TBT has negative impacts on exports, this study could not find any significant impact of TBT and found that Korea's exports of electrical machinery to ASEAN countries are not affected by TBT. Various implications of these results are suggested.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.771-780
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• 2021

The study assesses the impact of tariffs on Vietnam's trade in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Research data was conducted between 2001 and 2018 on the official website of the Uncomtrade and the World Bank. This paper uses the gravity model to estimate the relationship between data series and considers the impact of factors on Vietnam's trade with CPTPP countries. The results have proven that tariff reductions have a positive effect on Vietnam's trade. Besides, the trade openness of Vietnam and CPTPP countries has positive impacts on Vietnam's trade. The study also shows that Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) between Vietnam's and CPTPP countries' currencies has no strong effect on Vietnam's trade. Based on these findings, the article also suggests a number of policies to promote Vietnam's trade in future. In order to support businesses to better utilize opportunities and promote exports to CPTPP countries, the government of Vietnam should: (1) focus on reducing costs and time to participate in the market for production and business investors; (2) improve business investment environment to mobilize resources for production; and (3) continue to organize information campaigns to raise businesses' awareness of how to take advantage of CPTPP preferences.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.117-133
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• 2007

This paper evaluates the efficiency of monetary policy in Korea within the framework of interest rate feedback rules. For this, a small open macroeconomic model is constructed in a similar fashion to Ball (1999). The model is shown to capture key features of the Korean economy well. Using this estimated model, optimal instrument rules are derived for a set of different monetary policy objectives. Empirical results find that the actual monetary policy in the class of instrument rules was not very effective in stabilizing the output gap relative to inflation. However, seemingly successful inflation stabilization observed in the data are not consistent with the policy rules as the reaction of the interest rate to inflation is very low. It also appears that the central bank did not react right to movements in the real exchange rate. This paper offers some suggestions for the conduct of monetary policy in Korea.