The debate on renminbi (RMB) revaluation has not subsided, despite the policy change announced by the Chinese authorities in July 2005. In this chapter, we show that the evidence of RMB undervaluation may not be as strong as it appears. Specifically, depending on the method used, the evidence...

Using quarterly data on four commodity exporting countries, we study the explanatory power of real commodity prices for predicting real effective exchange rates, with special attention to the separate roles of different sectoral commodity prices during alternative time periods. We find that the...

Motivated by the observed international reserve hoarding behavior in the post-1997 crisis period, we explore the Mrs Machlup's wardrobe hypothesis and the related keeping-up-with-the-Joneses argument. It is conceived that, in addition to psychological reasons, holding a relatively high level of...

We study trade integration among fifteen selected Asian and Oceanic economies using factor models. The principal component approach is employed to extract the common factor that drives trade integration from bilateral trade integration series. It is found that the estimated common trade...

Advanced statistical techniques are used to analyze Hong Kong output dynamics. Hong Kong, Japan and the U.S. are found to share some common long-term and short-term cyclical variations. While the Hong Kong economy is susceptible to external shocks and is "Granger-caused" by the other two...

Standard economic models predict that the choice of an exchange rate regime has important implications for the interdependency of national monetary policies, which is sometimes measured by the degree of inflation transmission across borders. In this paper, we examine how inflation rates in two...