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1. Exchange Rate Flexibility, Financial Market Openness and Economic Growth

Author:
Il Houng Lee, Eunjung Kang, and Kyunghun Kim
Publication Date:
04-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP)
Abstract:
With global recovery not in sight, along with calls for stronger structural reform, international policy coordination is again under spotlight. Correcting global imbalance would contribute towards closing the demand gap. Emerging economies in particular should allow greater exchange rate flexibility and not intervene in the foreign exchange market to reflect fundamentals. Yet, the impact of greater exchange rate flexibility is unclear as they also struggle to keep their growth momentum alive and hedge against greater exposure to potential capital reversal than ever before. With the loss of monetary policy independence, emerging markets (EMs) are running out of policy options. Against this background, unless international policy coordination is fundamentally recast, a comprehensive review of all emerging market economies’ policy options are in order, including both macro policy instruments, micro measures, and global safety net aimed at attaining the best possible solution to escaping global recession.
Topic:
Markets, Finance, Economic Growth, and Exchange Rate Policy
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Push vs. Pull Factors of Capital Flows Revisited: A Cross-country Analysis

Author:
Tae Soo Kang and Kyunghun Kim
Publication Date:
02-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP)
Abstract:
Capital market integration contributes to economic growth and it can be more beneficial for emerging market economies (EMEs, hereafter) at their early stages of development where the capital is relatively insufficient. An open capital market also enables investor to share the country-specific risks by holding foreign assets. However, there are also some negative side effects of capital market integration. Financial shocks originating in the center coun-try can be quickly propagated through the integrated financial market. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC, hereafter) is a good example of the contagion of the financial crisis. Volatile cross-border capital inflows and outflows nega-tively affect financial stability, which eventually lowers economic growth by causing financial crises. Despite of these negative side effects, capital market integration has been an inevitable long-term trend for many EMEs over the past few decades (Aizenman et al. 2010). There have been continuous capital flows to EMEs, which started even before GFC and this trend has been more pronounced during the U.S. zero-interest rate period (Ahmed and Zlate 2014). Though some monetary authorities in EMEs tried to moderate the procyclicality of credit flows by implementing policy instruments such as capital controls or macro-prudential policy measures after GFC (Kim and Mehrotra 2018), the common factors in the global financial market still play a crucial role in de-termining capital inflows to EMEs. The relationship between the global financial condition and its impact on capital inflows to EMEs, has been a long-debated issue. This issue concerns whether push or pull factors are the major determinant of capital flows. The push factor represents the common factor that exists in the global financial market or center countries, which influences capital inflows to peripheral countries. These factors are interest rates and GDP growth rates of advanced economies (AEs, hereafter), global risk factors such as VIX (S&P 500 Volatili-ty Index), and the commodity price index. The pull factor denotes domestic factors that attract funds from the global financial market to domestic finan-cial markets. These factors are domestic interest rates, domestic GDP growth rates, and other country-specific characteristics such as exchange rate regime, degree of the capital account openness, institutional quality, and stages of economic development. In previous literature, many scholars have found strong evidence for push factors being the major determinant of capital movement. The interest rates of mature economies and VIX are significant determinants of capital inflows to EMEs. However, there is only some evidence that higher domestic interest rates and higher domestic GDP growth rates pull capital from the center countries to individual EMEs (Koepke 2015). Related to this long-debated issue in academia, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell recently stated, "... I will argue that, while global factors play an important role in influencing domestic financial conditions, the role of U.S. monetary policy is often exaggerated." With this statement, he also pointed out that the slowdown in capital inflows to EMEs which has been happening ever since 2011 has been mainly due to the narrowing of GDP gaps between AEs and EMEs, i.e., the recent decrease in capital in-flows to EMEs can be attributed to the decline in EMEs' GDP growth rates given the fact that the U.S. GDP growth rate has picked up. In this paper, we revisit this issue of push and pull factors of capital inflows. To this end, we consider the heterogeneity that exists in EMEs by dividing them into four subgroups. We investigate which is the main driver of capital inflows between push and pull factors across country groups. Categorizing subgroups is important for two reasons. First, EMEs are so heterogeneous that we make subgroups which share similar economic fundamentals by re-gions. Second, making subgroups across EMEs is an effective way to indi-rectly consider the regional contagion effect. With this cross-country analysis, we can figure out the differing effects of push and pull factors across country groups, and this can eventually lead to the development and implementation of appropriate policy instruments. Our empirical finding shows that the push and pull factors play a different role in determining capital inflows to AEs and EMEs. The major drivers of capital inflows to AEs are both push and pull factors, but push factors turn out to be the main determinant of capital inflows to EMEs. When EMEs are divided into four subgroups, we find sizable heterogeneity across subgroups. In Asian countries, both push and pull factors are significant, which is similar to AEs, but only U.S. interest rate plays a major role in Eastern Europe. Some pull factors are important in Latin American countries and other EMEs, but these are not robust to alternative empirical models and measures.
Topic:
Capital Flows, Economic Policy, Push Factor, and Pull Factor
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Redefining Liquidity for Monetary Policy

Author:
Kyunghun Kim, Il Houng Lee, and Won Shim
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP)
Abstract:
This paper proposes a monetary aggregate “Liquidity” that could serve as a useful indicator for gauging the appropriateness of monetary policy. If liquidity rises above a certain threshold, it is signaling that monetary policy is losing traction due to structural and other impediments even when the inflation gap remains open. This indicator supplements the financial cycle approach but adds value by providing a benchmark that is derived from the national account, and not based on its own trend. Over the last two decades, each time this measure rose above the threshold range, it was followed by a decline in GDP growth. The latter was greater when accompanied by a high physical asset value to GDP, e.g., an elevated property market.
Topic:
Monetary Policy, GDP, Economic Growth, Property, and Liquidity
Political Geography:
Asia, Korea, and Global Focus

4. Financial Market Integration and Income Inequality

Author:
Jae Wook Jung and Kyunghun Kim
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP)
Abstract:
Benefits of financial market integration include cheaper and alternative op-tions of saving and borrowing for households and entrepreneurs. In the global financial market, asset choices for households widen so that individu-als can manage their idiosyncratic income risk more effectively. On the other hand, financial market integration makes investors who hold foreign assets more vulnerable to global financial shocks. In the recent financial crisis, finan-cial market distress which initially arose in the U.S. had an enormous impact on the peripheral countries. This example shows that the strong shock prop-agation occurs via integrated financial markets. The existing literature shows that financial market integration has a sizable impact not only on business cycles in the short run, but also on economic growth in the long run. However, there has been little attention to income distribution, specifically in related to the financial market integration. In this paper, we fill the void in the literature by focusing on the following two styl-ized facts: income inequality has been exacerbated in most countries over the past two decades, and the financial market has been integrated across coun-tries during the same period. In particular, we answer three research questions to investigate the relationship between the two facts. First, how does financial market integration affect income inequality? Second, how do financial market integration and financial market development interact to change income ine-quality? Third, what components do theoretical model need to explain the interaction effect of financial market development and integration on income inequality? We test hypotheses that the effect of financial market openness on inequality is conditional on the level of domestic financial market development when the financial market opens. An empirical study with panel data comprised of 174 countries for the period 1995-2017 finds that the overall effect of finan-cial integration on income inequality is nonlinear. Financial market integration creates the intensive and extensive margins of credit supply which may de-pend on the development level of financial market disproportionally. This paper uncovers a novel empirical evidence that financial market integration and financial market development interact to change income inequality. When other things are controlled, the effect of financial market integration on in-come inequality depends on financial market development. In a country with underdeveloped financial market, income inequality gets worse as financial market opens. On the other hand, when financial market is highly developed, the effect of financial market openness on income inequality is mostly insig-nificant in a statistical sense. The results are still valid with different measures of financial market development, integration, and income inequality. We check that the results are robust as an endogeneity issue among financial market development and integration is controlled. We also suggest some important structures for the conventional economic model to account for our empirical finding as theoretical implications. Based on these implications, extensions of the conventional small open economy model with financial constraints having suggested components such as het-erogeneous holdings of foreign assets across income and asset levels and entrepreneurial shocks will be necessary to understand an interaction of fi-nancial market openness and domestic market development on the distribu-tion of income in a country. Our finding also echoes that studying an eco-nomic mechanism in which economic growth, financial market outcomes, and inequality are endogenously determined.
Topic:
Development, Income Inequality, Financial Markets, Economic Growth, and Integration
Political Geography:
Global Focus