Aaron Mehrotra

Exchange and Interest Rate Channels During a Deflationary Era - Evidence from Japan, Hong Kong and China

We examine the role of the exchange and interest rate channels during recent deflation episodes in Japan, Hong Kong and China. We estimate open-economy structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models for the three economies with different monetary regimes and varying degrees of openness. In both Japan and Hong Kong, shocks to the nominal effective exchange rate have a statistically significant impact on prices, with a notably stronger effect in Hong Kong. Our results provide evidence about the role of external influences in the deflation episodes of these economies, and could also be seen to weakly support suggestions to depreciate the currency in order to escape from a liquidity trap. The importance of the interest rate channel is also found to be high in Japan and Hong Kong. In China, where interest rates have not been an important monetary policy tool, neither exchange nor interest rate shocks significantly influence price developments.

Money demand in post-crisis Russia : De-dollarisation and re-monetisation

Estimating money demand functions for Russia following the 1998 crisis, we find a stable money demand relationship when augmented by a deterministic trend signifying falling velocity. As predicted by theory, higher income boosts demand for real rouble balances and the income elasticity of money is close to unity. Inflation affects the adjustment towards equilibrium, while broad money shocks lead to higher inflation. We also show that exchange rate fluctuations have a considerable influence on Russian money demand. The results indicate that Russian monetary authorities have been correct in using the money stock as an information variable and that the strong influence of exchange rate on money demand is likely to continue despite de-dollarisation of the Russian economy.

The Impact of Chinese Monetary Policy Shocks on East and South-East Asia

We study the effects of Chinese monetary policy shocks on Chinas major trading partners in East and South-East Asia by estimating structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) models for six economies in the region. We find that a monetary expansion in Mainland China leads to an increase in real GDP (temporary) and the price level (permanent) in a number of economies in our sample, most notably in Hong Kong and the Philippines. The impact could result from intertemporal substitution present in a general equilibrium framework, which allows for positive domestic impacts of foreign monetary expansions. Our results emphasize the growing importance of China for its neighbouring economies and the significance of Chinese shocks for the design of monetary policy in Asian economies.

Demand for Money in Transition: Evidence from China’s Disinflation

We examine money demand in the Chinese economy during a period characterized by significant disinflation and outright deflation, coupled with strong output growth. Our study establishes a stable money demand system for broad money M2. Inflation affects the adjustment of the system towards equilibrium, and shocks to broad money are found to lead to higher inflation in the context of an impulse response analysis. No evidence of non-linearity in money demand is found for the disinflationary period. The results provide support for the People’s Bank of China’s policy of specifying intermediate targets for money growth. Importantly, our results suggest that movements in the nominal effective exchange rate should be taken into account in a successful implementation of such a policy.

Comparing China's GDP Statistics with Coincident Indicators

We use factor analysis to summarize information from various macroeconomic indicators, effectively producing coincident indicators for the Chinese economy. We compare the dynamics of the estimated factors with GDP, and compare our factors with other published indicators for the Chinese economy. The indicator data match the GDP dynamics well and discrepancies are very short. The periods of discrepancies seem to correspond to shocks affecting the growth process as neither autoregressive models for GDP itself nor various coincident indicators are able to forecast them satisfactorily.

Modelling Inflation in China - A Regional Perspective

We model provincial inflation in China during the reform period. In particular, we are interested in the ability of the hybrid New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) to capture the inflation process at the provincial level. The study highlights differences in inflation formation and shows that the NKPC provides a reasonable description of the inflation process only for the coastal provinces. A probit analysis suggests that the forward-looking inflation component and the output gap are important inflation drivers in provinces that have advanced most in marketisation of the economy and have most likely experienced excess demand pressures. These results have implications for the relative effectiveness of monetary policy across the Chinese provinces.

Changing Economic Structures and Impacts of Shocks: Evidence from a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model for China

We present a small‐scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model that features price rigidities, habit formation in consumption and costs in capital adjustment. We estimate the key parameters and calibrate the model with data for the Chinese economy. Our interest centres on the impact of technology and monetary policy shocks for different structures of the Chinese economy. In particular, we evaluate how a rebalancing of the economy from investment‐led to consumption‐led growth would affect the economic dynamics after a shock occurs. Our findings suggest that a rebalancing would reduce the volatility of the real economy in the event of a technology shock, which provides support for policies aiming to increase the consumption share in China.

Forecasting inflation in China

This paper forecasts inflation in China over a 12-month horizon. The analysis runs 15 alternative models and finds that only those considering many predictors via a principal component display a better relative forecasting performance than the univariate benchmark.

An analysis of Chinese money and prices using a McCallum-type rule

This paper evaluates the usefulness of a McCallum-type monetary policy rule based on money supply for maintaining price stability in mainland China. We examine whether excess money relative to rule-based values provides information that improves the forecasting of price developments. The results suggest that our monetary variable helps in predicting both consumer and corporate goods price inflation, but the results for consumer prices depend on the forecasting period. Moreover, results using a structural vector autoregression suggest that our measure of excess money supply could be used to identify monetary policy shocks in the Chinese economy.

Financial Payment Instruments and Corruption

Using recent pooled data from a number of developed nations, this research uniquely examines whether the composition of payment instruments has a bearing on the prevalence of corruption in a country. Our results suggest that the choice of instruments matters. Paper credit transfer transactions consistently add to corrupt activities, while credit card transactions check such endeavours. Cheques mostly increase corruption, the results with respect to nonpaper credit transfers are mixed, while direct debits fail to show significant effects on corruption. These findings hold using alternate corruption measures and when allowance is made for endogeneity of payment instruments.