• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.221-244
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• 2024

This study examines how the independence of monetary policy changes in situations where the interest rate differential between domestic and foreign rates inverts, utilizing the trilemma indices. For analysis, this paper uses the trilemma indices developed by Kim et al. (2017) to analyze the relationship between the monetary policy independence index and the other two trilemma indices, namely the capital account openness index and the exchange rate stability index, across 45 countries from 2002 to 2018. The analysis reveals that the trilemma's validity is contingent. In particular, no statistically significant negative correlation was found between the monetary policy independence index and exchange rate stability index during periods of interest rate differential inversion. A positive correlation emerges between exchange rate stability and the independence of monetary policy, particularly when the inverted interest rate differential exceeds a certain threshold. This situation, where the exchange rate remains stable despite low domestic interest rates, implies that the central bank is effectively managing monetary policy to appropriately respond to economic conditions, which is reflected in the monetary policy independence index.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.3-16
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• 2009

This paper investigates the existence of uncovered interest rate parity between the Korea-USA as well as the Korea-Japan. We may ascertain the existence of uncovered interest rate parity by examining the empirical relationship between real exchange rates and interest rate differentials in the Korea-USA as well as in the Korea-Japan. The empirical relationship between real exchange rates and interest rate differentials in the Korean-USA and Korean-Japanese economies is investigated using cointegration tests. In the context of this study, cointegration technique is appropriate to examine the relationship between two(or more) nonstationary time series. Also, this method is useful to detect the possibility that the nonstationarity in both series can be explained by a single factor. The empirical results support the nonexistence of a long run equilibrium relation between real exchange rates and interest rate differentials. Also, the results show that the nonstationarity cannot be explained by a single factor.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.165-184
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• 2020

Applying Ismailov and Rossi (2018), I newly construct the Korea FX uncertainty based on the density distribution of historical forecast errors. This uncertainty index properly captures the rare but significant events in the Korean currency market and provides information distinct from other uncertainty measures in recent studies. I show that 1) FX uncertainty arising from unexpected depreciation has a stronger impact on Korea-U.S. exchange rates and that 2) macro variables, such as capital flows or interest rate differentials, have predictive ability regarding Korea FX uncertainty for short horizons. These findings enable us to predict the events of sudden currency crashes and understand the Korea-U.S. exchange rate dynamics.

• Journal of Distribution Science
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.55-62
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• 2013

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to suggest a risk factor that significantly explains foreign currency risk premia. In recent years, some studies have found that the performance of the simultaneous consumption risk model improves considerably when tested on foreign currency portfolios, which are constructed based on the international interest rates differentials. However, this paper focuses on the long-run consumption risk factor. In our empirical research, we found that the real excess returns of high interest rate currency portfolios depreciate on average, when the future American long-run consumption growth rate appears low. This makes the high interest rate currency portfolios have relatively high risk premia. Meanwhile, the real excess returns of low interest rate currency portfolios appreciate on average, under the same conditions, which results in relatively low risk premia for these portfolios. Therefore, this long-run consumption risk factor might explain why low interest rate currencies do not appreciate as much as the interest rate differential, and why high interest rate currencies do not depreciate as much as the interest rate differential. Research design, data, methodology - In our explanation, we provide new evidence on the success of long-run consumption risks in currency risk premia by focusing on the long-run consumption risks borne by American representative investors. To uncover the hidden link between exchange rates and long-run consumption growth, we set the eight currency portfolios as our basic assets, which have been built based on the foreign interest rates of eighty countries. As these eight currency portfolios are rebalanced every year, the first group always contains the lowest interest rate currencies, and the last group contains the highest interest rate currencies. Against these basic eight currency portfolios, we estimate the long-run consumption risk model. We use recursive utility framework and the stochastic discount factor that depends on the present value of expected future consumption growth rates. We find that our model is optimized in the two-year period of constructing the durable consumption expectation factor. Our main results surprisingly surpass the performance of the existing benchmark simultaneous consumption model in terms of R², relatively risk aversion coefficient γ, and p-value of J-test. Results - The performance of our model is superior. R², relatively risk aversion coefficient γ, and p-value of J-test of our long-run durable consumption model are 90%, 93%, and 65.5%, respectively, while those of EZ-DCAPM are 87%, 113%, and 62.8%, respectively. Thus, we can speculate that the risk premia in foreign currency markets have been determined by the long-run consumption risk. Conclusions - The aggregate long-run consumption growth risk explains a large part of the average change in the real excess returns of foreign currency portfolios. The real excess returns of high interest rate currency portfolios depreciate on average when American long-run consumption growth rate is low, and the real excess returns of low interest rate currency portfolios appreciate under the same conditions. Thus, the low interest rate currency portfolios allow investors to hedge against aggregate long-run consumption growth risk.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.37-47
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• 2022

This study uses monthly data from January 2009 to December 2020 to examine the effectiveness of foreign currency intervention and its influence on monetary policy in Vietnam using a Hierarchical Bayesian VAR model. The findings suggest that foreign exchange intervention has little influence on the exchange rate level or exports, but it can significantly minimize exchange rate volatility. As a result, we can demonstrate that the claim that Vietnam is a currency manipulator is false. As well, the forecast error variance decomposition results reveal that interest rate differentials mainly determine the exchange rate level instead of foreign exchange intervention. Moreover, the findings suggest that foreign exchange intervention is not effectively sterilized in Vietnam. Inflation is caused by an increase in international reserves, which leads to an expansion of the money supply and a decrease in interest rates. Although the impact of foreign exchange intervention grows in tandem with the growth of international reserves, if the sterilizing capacity does not improve, rising foreign exchange intervention will instead result in inflation. Finally, we use a rolling window approach to examine the time-varying effect of foreign exchange intervention.