Wai-Mun Chia

Financial crises and interacting heterogeneous agents

In this paper we examine various types of financial crises and conjecture their underlying mechanisms using a deterministic heterogeneous agent model (HAM). In a market-maker framework, forward-looking investors update their price expectations according to psychological trading windows and cluster themselves strategically to optimize their expected profits. The switches between trading strategies lead to price dynamics in market that subsequently move price up and down, and in the extreme case, cause financial crises. The model suggests that both fundamentalists and chartists could potentially contribute to the financial crises.

Regime Switching Models in the Foreign Exchange Market

This chapter compares three regime-switching models in estimating and forecasting behavioural heterogeneity in the AUD/USD foreign exchange market. The three heterogeneous agent models allow different elements to be regime-dependent following different mechanisms. The first model pioneered by Boswijk et al. (2007) models the fraction of each type of agents as a function of its relative past performance. The second model developed by Lof (2012) allows agents to switch their strategies based on macroeconomic fundamentals. The third model proposed by Chiarella et al. (2012) sets agents beliefs to be dependent on a Markov-switching process. Our empirical results show that (i) the model by Lof (2012) provides the best in-sample estimation efficiency and (ii) the model by Boswijk et al. (2007) significantly outperforms the model by Lof (2012) in terms of out-of-sample forecasting accuracy, but not that by Chiarella et al. (2012) in the medium to long run.

Behavioral heterogeneity in the Australian housing market

ABSTRACT We propose a heterogeneous agent model (HAM) of four groups of investors with Markov chain regime-dependent beliefs for the housing market. Within the Markov switching framework, we take into account how heterogeneous investors shift their trading behaviour in response to changes in housing market conditions. The model is estimated and compared with the benchmark rational expectation models using the Australian housing market data from 1982Q1 to 2013Q2. We find evidence of within- and between-group heterogeneity in the Australian housing market. We show that HAM with Markov switching beliefs provides a better in-sample estimation efficiency and outperforms the conventional rational expectation models in terms of out-of-sample prediction.

Oil shocks and monetary policy rules in emerging economies

We examine the effects of shocks in the oil market on key macroeconomic variables in small open economies using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with sticky prices and imperfect competition under different monetary policy rules. The numerical solutions show that the types of exchange rate regimes and monetary policies could partly explain the trends in macroeconomic volatilities considering negative shocks to oil supply (Hamilton, 1983) and positive shocks to oil demand (Kilian, 2009). These findings are confirmed in vector autoregressive responses for Chile and Israel with inflation targeting under flexible exchange regimes and Hong Kong with fixed regime.

Foreign interest rate shocks and exchange rate regimes in East Asia

Using a theoretical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model and an empirical panel vector autoregression, we assess the transmission of foreign real interest rate shocks on the volatility of various key macroeconomic variables in nine small open economies in East Asia taking into account the role of exchange rate regimes. Both the theoretical and empirical findings confirm the hypothesis that flexible exchange rate may work as a shock absorber when the economy is hit by foreign real interest rate shocks. The findings suggest a clear trade-off between the volatility of real exchange rate and real output to foreign interest rate shocks, both the US and G7 real interest rates, where the responses of real output are mitigated in countries that have more flexible exchange rate regime.

A Welfare Evaluation of East Asian Monetary Policy Regimes Under Foreign Output Shock

Adverse foreign output shocks have a sizable impact on the welfare of small open economies. Therefore, one of the key roles of monetary policy in those economies is to minimize the welfare losses arising from such shocks. To assess the welfare impact of external shocks under different monetary policy regimes, we numerically solve and calculate the welfare loss function of a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with complete exchange rate pass through. We find that consumer price index (CPI) inflation targeting minimizes welfare losses for import-to-gross domestic product (GDP) ratios from 0.3 to 0.9. However, welfare under the pegged exchange rate regime is almost equivalent to CPI inflation targeting when the import-to-GDP ratio is 1, while the domestic inflation targeting minimizes welfare when the import-to-GDP ratio is 0.1. We calibrate the model and derive welfare implications for eight East Asian small open economies.