Chengsi Zhang

Excess Liquidity, Inflation and the Yuan Appreciation: What Can China Learn from Recent History?

This paper analyses the issues of excess liquidity, inflation and the exchange rate appreciation currently evolving in China. In mapping the co-movement between excess liquidity and inflation and developing a dynamic model, the paper shows that excess liquidity, ignited by dramatic capital inflows, is a significant driver for consumer price inflation in China during the last decade. In addition, the article compares the dynamic paths of inflation and interest rates between China and the United States and reveals marked changes in their differentials over recent years. Associating these findings with the evolving appreciation of the yuan against the dollar, the paper advises a slowdown in the rate of RMB appreciation. Instead of quick appreciation, the paper proposes more flexibility in the RMB exchange rate regime combined with alternative capital control measures to rein-in excess liquidity and curb ongoing inflation in China.

Excess Liquidity and Inflation Dynamics in China: 1997-2007

The surge in international capital inflows and the remarkable excess liquidity in China between 1997 and 2007 are examined in the present paper. It is shown that Chinas improved position in terms of foreign exchange purchases, ignited by huge foreign capital inflows, has effectively induced excess liquidity in China. More importantly, by developing an econometric model for inflation and excess liquidity, the present study demonstrates that excess liquidity has imposed significant pressure on inflation in China over the past 10 years. This finding suggests that excess liquidity in China has not only contributed to the rise in stock prices and the real estate market boom, but also affected the consumer goods market. The potential transmission mechanism of liquidity-driven inflation and policy implications of the findings of this study are discussed.

Inflation Uncertainty and Monetary Policy in China

This paper uses a stochastic volatility model, structural break tests with unknown point, and a counterfactual simulation method to discuss the significant decline in inflation uncertainty in China over 1978–2009. We attempt to quantify the contributions of better monetary policy and smaller structural shocks (including demand, supply and policy impacts) on the reduced inflation uncertainty. Empirical results in the present paper suggest that improved monetary policy accounts for only a small fraction of the reduction in inflation uncertainty from the pre-1997 period to the post-1997 period in China. The bulk of the significant moderation in inflation uncertainty arises from smaller shocks. This finding indicates that the quiescence of inflation in China over the past decade could well be followed by a return to a more turbulent inflation era. Therefore, the use of preemptive monetary policy to anchor inflationary expectations and keep moderate inflation uncertainty is warranted.

Financial Market Turmoil: Implications for Monetary Policy Transmission in China

The recent financial market turmoil has initiated another search for insightful understanding of the interactions between the financial market and monetary policy. This paper explores these interactions in terms of the transmission mechanism of monetary policy in China. We argue that evolving financial development, enhanced by the expansion of the financial market, has altered the conventional channel for monetary transmission in China. Analyzing marked changes in the financial landscape and taking into account policy regime shifts in China, the paper provides clear evidence showing that the financial market has become a new and important channel for transmission of monetary policy in China.

Inflation Dynamics and an Extended New Keynesian Phillips Curve for China

This paper shows that the error term in the stylized New Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) model for China is significantly serially correlated. We propose an extended NKPC model for China, which can be easily rationalized in terms of sticky-price setting of backward-looking firms. Empirical results show that further lags of inflation are needed in the hybrid specification of the NKPC in order to rule out serial correlation; forward-looking behavior has a relatively larger impact on inflation dynamics than backward-looking behavior; and conventional output measures remain valid inflation forces in the extended model. Open economy augmentations, nevertheless, indicate that neither exchange rate nor import prices exert a significant impact on inflation in China.

What Drives China's House Prices: Marriage or Money?

The high and rising house prices in China are not adequately accounted for the traditional explanations emphasizing demand‐driven or cost‐push factors. Recent published studies claim that gender imbalance increases competition among men in the marriage market, which has pushed Chinese, especially parents with a son, to buy houses as a signal of relative status in the marriage market; this marriage competition then causes high demand for houses and eventually leads to rising house prices in China. Empirical results in this paper, however, provide little support for this hypothesis and we find that a rise in the sex ratios for most age cohorts accounts for very small percentage variations in house price movements in China during 1998–2009. Further investigation suggests that excess demand driven by high monetary growth was a significant cause of the rising house prices in China during 1998–2009. Therefore, the impact of gender imbalance on house prices should not be exaggerated and monetary dynamics remains an important leading indicator for house price movements in China.

Output gap estimation and monetary policy in China.

Using the Bayesian multivariate Beveridge-Nelson decomposition method, this paper estimates Chinas output gap based on a multivariate dynamic model featuring distinct interactions among real output, inflation, money, and the exchange rate in China during the period 1980-2010. The authors compare the statistical nature and potential forecasting effects of the resulting multivariate gap measure on monetary policy with those of the output gap measures based on univariate models. The empirical results show that only the measure based on the multivariate system significantly predicts monetary policy, which indicates that the output gap estimated by the multivariate system contains more information than the traditional measures for macroeconomic policy adjustments do.

Why is Inflation in China a Monetary Phenomenon

This paper proposes that inflation in China during the post-reform era (1978 onwards) is always a monetary phenomenon. We construct a multivariate dynamic model based on Friedman’s quantity theory of money and use the standard Granger causality test to show that money growth contains significant predictive power for inflation during the underlying period. The finding is robust to alternative measures of monetary aggregates and both closed and open economy frameworks. The baseline finding of the paper indicates that quantitative tools remain the most important policy instruments for China to manage its inflation effectively.

Openness and Financial Development in China: The Political Economy of Financial Resources Distribution

ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of openness on financial development in China. We use two sets of indicators of financial development to distinguish size and efficiency for both bank and capital market sectors as aspects of financial development in 30 provinces of China over the period from 2000 to 2009. The empirical results suggest that trade and financial openness exert positive impact on financial efficiency but negative impact on the size of financial development for both the indirect and direct financial sectors. The results confirm a mismatch problem between the distribution in the types of trading companies and the allocation of financial resources in China.

Understanding the evolving inflation process in China: 1997–2011

Abstract This paper analyzes the evolving inflation process in China from 1997 to 2011. We construct a multivariate dynamic framework that captures the features of interactions between inflation and other relevant variables in China. Empirical results show that excess liquidity holds the most important predictive power on inflation in China. Further investigation demonstrates that there is significant pass-through effect from exchange rates and import prices to domestic inflation. We conclude with several significant policy implications that are drawn from our findings.