哥伦比亚大学教授Frederic S. Mishkin论文之一 The Mirage of Exchange Rate Regimes
东亚国家汇率制度幻影,The Mirage of Exchange Rate Regimes for Emerging Market Countries,Guillermo A. Calvo and Frederic S. Mishkin,发表于Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 17, Number 4—Fall 2003—Pages 99–118。In recent years, a number of emerging market countries have experienced devastating financial crises and macroeconomic turbulence, including Argentina (2001–2002), Turkey (2000–2001), Ecuador (1999), Russia (1998), east Asia (1997), Mexico (1994–1995) and even Chile (1982). In the ensuing postmortems, an active debate has followed over how the choice of exchange rate regime might have contributed to macroeconomic instability—and conversely, how a shift in exchange rate regime might have improved acroeconomic performance. Should an emerging market economy prefer a floating exchange rate, a fixed exchange rate or some blend of the two, like an exchange rate that was usually fixed but might sometimes shift? Many countries used to choose an intermediate path: that is, an exchange rate that was often stabilized by the central bank, but might sometimes shift, often known as a “soft peg.” However, in the aftermath of the macroeconomic crisis across east Asia in 1997–1998, a view emerged that this exchange rate regime was in part responsible for the depth of the macroeconomic crisis. The governments of Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea and other nations in that region had kept exchange rates fixed. There was no explicit institutional guarantee that the exchange
rate would remain fixed, but the rates had been stable for long enough that local financial institutions borrowed in dollars abroad and then loaned freely in U.S. dollars to domestic borrowers. But when a surge of foreign investment stopped, the existing exchange rate became unsustainable. For example, when the Thai baht collapsed against the U.S. dollar, Thai borrowers were unable to repay their dollar-denominated loans—and in turn many Thai financial institutions were insolvent. This meltdown of the financial sector led to an enormous economic contraction.
附件列表