• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.1-17
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• 2020

Purpose - Since China has been South Korea's biggest export destination, uncertainty shocks originating from it would influence South Korea's exports. This paper evaluates the effects of China's economic policy uncertainty on Korea's exports to explore the transmission channels. Design/methodology - Incorporating endogeneities and nonlinearities, this study employs a quarterly time-varying parameters vector autoregressive model to investigate the relationships between China's economic policy uncertainty and Korea's exports, where the overparameterization due to time-varying specifications is overcome by a novel stochastic model specification search framework. According to previous theoretical studies, this paper assesses two channels, demand shock channel and exchange rate channel, through which foreign uncertainty affects Korea's exports. This paper identifies the primary drivers of Korea's aggregate exports and analyzes the rationales for the time-variant impacts of China's economic policy uncertainty on Korea's exports to China. Findings - Our empirical results reveal that Korea's aggregate exports are less responsive to China's economic policy uncertainty shocks and significantly move together with global demand. In contrast, its bilateral exports to China are highly responsive in a negative and time-variant way. Moreover, Chinese investment is an important channel through which China's economic policy uncertainty affects Korea's exports to China after 2010. Further, the time-variant effects of China's economic policy uncertainty on Korea's exports to China are related to changes in China's foreign trade policies, global economic conditions, and China's degree of economic freedom. Originality/value - Few previous studies touch the effects of external uncertainty shocks on South Korea's exports. This paper attempts to fill this gap and explicitly investigate the impacts of China's economic policy uncertainty on Korea's exports from a time-varying perspective. As Korea is an export-oriented economy, this study provides insights for the Korean government to understand the transmissions of external uncertainty better.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.69-89
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• 2018

We study whether a default option attached to non-recourse mortgages improves borrowers' surplus from mortgage financing. By defaulting on mortgage debt, borrowers can save their non-collateralized income from being foreclosed. In exchange, borrowers must forgo non-monetary surplus from retaining any collateral. Banks may charge a high mortgage rate due to increased default rates. We find that the interest rate of non-recourse mortgage decreases with the borrower's surplus from home ownership. Moreover, non-recourse mortgages benefit only borrowers who deem housing property as an investment asset. Hence, the transition to a non-recourse mortgage is detrimental to welfare if the borrower enjoys a large surplus from home ownership. Although the borrower privately knows how much surplus she enjoys from home ownership, a menu of non-recourse mortgage contracts may exist, yielding a separating equilibrium without information rent.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.111-142
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• 2014

We examine whether country fundamentals help explain the cross-section of currency excess returns. For this purpose, we consider fundamental variables such as default risk, foreign exchange rate regime, capital control as well as interest rate in the multi-factor model framework. Our empirical results show that fundamental factors explain a large part of the cross-section of currency excess returns. The zero-intercept restriction of the factor model is not rejected for most currencies. They also reveal that our factor model with country fundamentals performs better than a factor model with usual investment-style factors. Our main empirical results are based on 2001-2010 balanced panel data of 19 major currencies. This paper may fill the gap between country fundamentals and practitioners' strategies on currency investment.

• 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.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.119-133
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• 2001

It is important to find the equilibrium level of real interest rate for it affects real and financial sector of economy. However, it is difficult to find the equilibrium level because like the most macroeconomic model the real interest model has parameter instability problem caused by structural change and it is supported by various theories and definitions. Hence, in order to cover these problems structural change detection model of real interest rate is developed to combine the real interest rate equilibrium model and the procedure to detect structural change points. 3 equations are established to find various effects of other interest-related macroeconomic variables and from each equation, structural changes are found. Those structural change points are consistent with common expectation. Oil Crisis (December, 1987), the starting point of Economic Stabilization Policy (January, 1982), the starting point of capital liberalization (January, 1988), the starting and finishing points of Interest deregulation (January, 1992 and December, 1994), Foreign Exchange Crisis (December, 1977) are detected as important points. From the equation of fisher and real effects, real interest rate level is estimated as 4.09% (October, 1988) and dependent on the underlying model, it is estimated as 0%∼13.56% (October, 1988), so it varies so much. It is expected that this result is connected to the large scale simultaneous equations to detect the parameter instability in real time, so induces the flexible economic policies.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.105-125
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• 2016

The expansionary monetary policy was practiced after 2001 in Japan to treat the deflation spiral, and reduced only the nominal interest rates and domestic household demand. One of the most serious factors for this failure was the change of private sector's expectancy. This paper has studied the effect of Japanese monetary policy in 21c., with empirical research based on a renewed macroeconomic model and the VAR. The empirical analysis shows that the effect of monetary policy on the national income during 2001.01-2015.03 is weaker than that of 1985.01-1994.04. Money volume has a diminutive effect on the growth of GDP within a short term after 2001. The change in the expectations of the private sectors might have been the cause of ineffectiveness of the expansive monetary policy. Economic agents learned from the past Japanese financial crisis that an expansive monetary policy increased the inflation rate and caused the 'bubbles to burst' afterwards. The VAR analysis says that the effectiveness of monetary policy on the economic depression declined over the past 20 years and the expansion of money volume has no influence on exchange rate and net export. This means that the expansive monetary policy lost its effect on net export and national income steadily. Monetary policy makers have to recognize this fact, and to consider another anti-cycle political instrument, i.e. the fiscal policy with government debt.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.63-72
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• 2020

The study aims to investigate the impact level of earnings quality on firm value. The study has used data with 3,910 observations at listed firms on Vietnam Stock Exchange for the period from 2010 to 2018, and GLS regression analysis is employed in this research. Earnings quality is measured in the aspects of earnings management, earnings persistence, and timeliness of profitability. This study also considers a number of controlled variables that positively influence the firm's value such as firm size, fixed asset investment rate and dividend payout ratio. The results show that earnings quality is positively associated with firm value with having statistical significance. In contrast, some determinants negatively influence firm value such as financial leverage, ratio of market value to book value, and revenue growth. Determinants of firm size, the rate of investment in fixed assets, the rate of dividend payment positively affect the firm value. In contrast, determinants of financial leverage, revenue growth rate and market value to book value ratio are inversely related to firm value according to economic value, Tobin's Q or Price. Based on the findings, some recommendations are proposed for investors, management and policy makers as well in the context of emerging countries including Vietnam.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.1-44
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• 2011

Terms of trade shocks have been considered one of the main driving forces causing business cycle fluctuations in small open economies. Despite their importance in business cycles of small open economies, it is hard to find a serious study in existing literature investigating their implications on monetary policy under a small open economy. Considering it, this paper studies what form of monetary policy rule is the most adequate for a small open economy where terms of trade shocks are dominant factors in generating its business cycle fluctuations. For this purpose, various implementable monetary policy rules frequently analyzed in existing literature are compared in terms of social welfare levels which they can provide for the economy respectively. Main results of this paper can be summarized as follows. First, for a small open economy where terms of trade shocks are main driving forces of its business cycle fluctuations, the nontradable goods price inflation targeting can provide higher level of social welfare than other traditional monetary policy rules such as the CPI inflation targeting or the fixed exchange rate regime. Second, the social welfare improvement of the non-tradable goods price inflation targeting is more apparent when export goods price shocks are more important than import goods price shocks.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.1-9
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• 2021

UAE has rapidly developed into one of the leading global financial hubs, with significant transformations in its stock exchanges. In its attempt at economic diversification in the last two decades, the country has also taken a lead in the GCC region in introducing extensive reforms to attract FDI to the Emirates. However, oil price volatilities have posed a significant challenge to all oil-exporting countries. The main aim of this study is to explore the impact of economic diversification and oil price on the UAE stock market. The study applies Granger Causality and Vector Autoregressive Model on monthly Abu Dhabi stock exchange index, Dubai Fateh crude oil spot price, and FDI inflows during 2001-19. The short-term interbank rate has been included as a monetary policy variable. The results show a substantial difference between the two phases of reforms. Oil price and Abu Dhabi stock index show bidirectional relationship during 2001-09 but no causality was found during 2010-19. Furthermore, the second phase was characterized by unidirectional causation from FDI to ADX index. This study highlights FDI inflows as a key driver of stock market performance during the last decade and emphasizes the success of the intense reforms in the UAE initiated for the diversification of its economy.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 2021

Purpose - The global trend of protectionism has expanded since the onset of US President Donald Trump's administration in 2017. This global phenomenon has led to a significant reduction in world trade volume and a negative impact on economic development in some countries where the external sector accounts for a large proportion of GDP. Although Korea is a country vulnerable to this deteriorating trade environment, few studies have examined the relationship between protectionism and its business cycles based on Korean data. Thus, this paper investigates the impact of protectionism on Korea's business cycle. Design/methodology - To identify future implications, we conduct a structural vector autoregression (VAR) analysis using monthly Korean data from 1994 to 2015. Macroeconomic variables in the model include the industrial production index, inflation rates, exports (or net exports), interest rates, and exchange rates. For the identification of the shock reflecting the expansion of protectionism, we use an antidumping investigation (ADI) data. Since ADIs are followed generally by the imposition of antidumping tariffs, they have no contemporaneous impact on tariffs and are also contemporaneously exogenous to other endogenous variables in the VAR model. We examine two kinds of ADI shocks i) shocks on Korean exports imposed by Korea's trading partners (ADI-imposed shocks) and ii) shocks on imports imposed by the Korean government (ADI-imposing shocks). Findings - We find that Korea's exports decline sharply due to ADI-imposed shocks; the lowest point at the third month after the initial shock; and do not recover until 24 months later. Simultaneously, the inflation rate decreases. Therefore, the ADI-imposed shock can be regarded as a negative shock on the demand curve where both production and price decrease. In contrast, the ADI-imposing shock generates a different response. The net exports decline, but the inflation rate increases. These can be seen as standard responses with respect to the negative shock on the supply curve. Originality/value - We shed light on the relationship between protectionism and Korea's economic fluctuations, which is rarely addressed in previous studies. We also consider the effects of both protective policy measures on imports to Korea imposed by the Korean government and on policy measures imposed by Korea's trading partner countries on its exports.