• 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.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.115-143
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• 2023

In this paper, we address how the monetary authority should react to financial market status and exchange rate movements in a small open economy New Keynesian model with financial frictions due to asymmetric information between savers and borrowers. We show that the small economy with financial frictions is more susceptible to the exogenous shocks under the fixed exchange rate regime than under the flexible exchange regime. The small economy experiences a more prolonged and deeper economic recession under the fixed exchange rate regime than under the flexible exchange rate regime. The monetary policy taking into account external finance premium is better than the interest rate rule without considering the financial market status.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.337-370
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• 2018

This paper discusses the design of monetary policy in a New Keynesian small open economy framework by introducing nominal wage rigidities and incomplete exchange rate pass-through on import prices. Three main findings are summarized. First, with the existence of an incomplete exchange rate pass-through and nominal wage rigidities, the optimal policy is to seek to minimize the output gap, the variance of domestic price and wage inflation, as well as deviations from the law of one price. Second, the CPI inflation targeting Taylor rule is welfare enhancing when there is a technological shock to the economy. The exception occurs when there is a foreign income shock, which minimizes welfare losses under the domestic inflation targeting Taylor rule. Last, two stylized Taylor rules turn out to be a bad approximation, but the modified Taylor rules that respond to the unemployment gap rather than the output gap are a closer approximation to the optimal policy.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.361-401
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• 2021

This paper sets up a two agent small open economy with monopolistically competitive firms and catching up with the Joneses to investigate the labor and capital Laffer curve, taking into account aging population along the line of Auray et al. (2016), Galí and Monacelli (2005), and Trabandt and Uhlig (2011). The paper finds that the higher the market power of firms is, the larger the consumption inequality between asset holders and non-asset holders is in the economy with aging population. It also finds that there is room for government to increase the tax revenue by raising tax rates under the economy with higher markup, as households will work more hours to compensate for their loss of labor income to tax hikes. The expected maximum tax revenue is likely to shrink with progressive taxations, since non-asset holders with additional dividend income work less and consume more. The paper finds that the fiscal multiplier decreases with the degree of progressive redistribution.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.301-335
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• 2014

In this paper, we consider a small open economy under the New Keynesian model with unemployment of Gal$\acute{i}$ (2011a, b) to discuss the design of the monetary policy. Our findings can be summarized in three parts. First, even with the existence of unemployment, the optimal policy is to minimize variance of domestic price inflation, wage inflation, and the output gap when both domestic price and wage are sticky. Second, stabilizing unemployment rate is important in reducing the welfare loss incurred by both technology and labor supply shocks. Therefore, introducing the unemployment rate as an another argument into the Taylor-rule type interest rate rule will be welfare-enhancing. Lastly, controlling CPI inflation is the best option when the policy is not allowed to respond to unemployment rate. Once the unemployment rate is controlled, however, stabilizing power of CPI inflation-based Taylor rule is diminished.

• 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 Distribution Science
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• v.12 no.10
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• pp.37-45
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• 2014

Purpose - This study aims to analyze the relationship between trends in innovative EU industries and market distribution in smaller emerging markets under an open economy. Research design, data, and methodology - Although innovation was well-distributed, due to socio-economic factors following European integration, CEE had not achieved sustainable economic growth. However, this paper analyzes the differences among changes in CEE innovation for smaller emerging markets dominated since 2000. Market distribution has facilitated new markets for innovative industries, according to EU surveys and economic indicators. Results - The dominance of the local industrial market distribution has deterred innovation investment the survey shows that innovation investment has been shrinking, despite the EU's open innovation policy for CEE employment and R&D. For the CEE case, there were expectation gaps and uncertainty about whether to use the new distribution dominance or TNCs' innovation in smaller emerging countries without local industrial innovation. Conclusions - Innovation generates market growth and distribution power however, small growth requires stimulation, and creativity and innovative edge need further focus in local public and corporate strategy.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.167-197
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• 2017

I build a small open economy (SOE) dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to investigate the effect of a heterogeneous wage contract between regular and temporary workers on a macroeconomic volatility in a financially fragile economy. The imperfect financial market condition is captured by a quadratic financial adjustment cost for borrowing foreign assets, and the labor market friction is captured by a Nash bargaining process which is only available to the regular workers when they negotiate their wages with the firms while the temporary workers are given their wage which simply equals the marginal cost. As a result of impulse responsesto a domestic productivity shock, the higher elasticity of substitution between two types of workers and the lower weight on the regular workers in the firm's production process induce the higher volatilities in most variables. This is reasoned that the higher substitutability creates more volatile wage determination process while the lower share of the regular workers weakens their Nash bargaining power in the contract process.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.9 no.10
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• pp.129-135
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• 2022

This study aims to identify the factors supporting and inhibiting the digitalization of blue economy MSMEs in Bitung, Indonesia. The literature shows little research on digitalization related to the blue economy in Southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia. This indicates that there is a large research gap related to digitalization and the blue economy in the Indonesian context. Data was collected through the distribution of questionnaires with open-ended questions to blue economy MSMEs. Data was also obtained from in-depth interviews with representatives of Aruna, an Indonesian company that focuses on simplifying the supply chain of fishery products by connecting small-scale fishers to the global market through technology. According to the study's findings, two primary factors-motivation to develop their business and efforts to maintain seller-buyer interaction-support SMEs' use of technology in the blue economy. However, digital literacy and technological infrastructure, such as the internet network, are the two main factors that become obstacles in the effort to digitize MSMEs in the blue economy. The role of the government is also a contingent factor that can strengthen the relationship between factors that support digitization and weaken the relationship between factors that hinder digitalization.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.43-55
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• 2004

This paper investigates how Japanese economic shocks affect the Korean economy and analyzes the channels through which they are transmitted. Also, the relative importance of domestic and foreign shocks on the dynamics of certain key macro variables is investigated. The techniques of vector autoregression (VAR) are employed to investigate the international transmission of economic disturbances. The VAR methodology is a particularly useful means for characterizing the dynamic relationships among economic variables without imposing certain types of theoretical restrictions. The dynamic effects of Japanese economic shocks on the Korean economy are evaluated by estimating variance decompositions (VDCs) and impulse response functions (IRFs). This study supports the notion of economic dependence of a small open economy such as Korea to a large economy such as Japan.