中国的汇率政策和亚洲贸易外文翻译文档格式.docx

1、外文题目：CHINAS EXCHANGE RATE POLICY AND ASIAN TRADE 出 处：New Finance,2009（9） 作 者：Alicia Garcia-Herrero, Tuuli Koivu 原 文 :AbstractThis paper shows empirically that Chinas trade balance is sensitive to fluctuations in the real effective exchange rate of the renminbi. However, the current size of the trade

2、 surplus is such that exchange rate policy alone will probably not be able to address the imbalance. The potential reduction in the trade surplus resulting from an increase in the renminbi exchange rate is limited mainly because Chinese imports do not react as expected to a renminbi appreciation the

3、y tend to fall rather than increase. By estimating bilateral import equations for China and its major trade partners, we find that the reaction for imports is generally confirmed for Chinas trade with Southeast Asian countries. That result might be attributable to Asias vertical integration, as a la

4、rge share of Chinese imports from Southeast Asia are re-exported. We also find that total exports from a number of Asian countries react negatively to a renminbi appreciation, which points to a dependence of Asian countries exports on those of China.Keywords: China, trade, exports, real exchange rat

5、eI. IntroductionChinas share in world trade has increased extremely rapidly during the past years. In fact, it is already one of the largest exporters in the world, together with Germany and the United States.Until recently, Chinas trade balance was very close to zero. According to Chinas customs st

6、atistics, its trade surplus amounted to mere USD 32 billion （or 1.7% of GDP） in 2004 （Graph 1）. However, since 2005 the trade surplus has ballooned: it reached nearly USD 180 billion in 2006 （close to 7% of GDP） and increased further in 2007, to more than 10% of GDP.On the one hand, Chinese policyma

7、kers appear to be maintaining an artificially low exchange rate for the renminbi so as to profit from external demand and achieve a much needed high growth rate. On the other hand, given that prices may still play only a limited role in supply and demand decisions in Chinas transitional economy, dou

8、bts have been raised that the exchange rate can be an effective tool in reducing the trade surplus.Linked to the first argument is the fact that China is facing strong pressure from industrial countries to appreciate the renminbi. The real effective exchange rate （REER） of the renminbi rose steeply

9、from 1994 until end-1997 but tended to decline after that until the move to a more flexible exchange rate regime was announced in July 2005. Thereafter the renminbi has appreciated somewhat in real terms. The question is whether and to what extent the sharp increase in the trade surplus can be expla

10、ined by such a real depreciation.The large size of Chinas trade surplus makes the issue important not only for China but also for the rest of the world. The existing literature is not conclusive. The lack of appropriate data and sufficiently long time series has discouraged research on the link betw

11、een the renminbi exchange rate and Chinas trade. Since the summer of 2003, when discussions on the undervaluation of the renminbi came to the forefront, research on Chinas exchange rate policy has blossomed, but much of it has focused on estimating the long-run equilibrium exchange rate for China or

12、 exploring what kind of exchange rate regime best suits the Chinese economy. While both questions are clearly relevant, the most urgent issue given the size of global imbalances is whether China should use currency appreciation as a tool to reduce its huge trade surplus.Our paper analyzes this quest

13、ion empirically using cointegration analysis. According to our results, a real appreciation of the renminbi would reduce Chinas trade surplus in the long run, but the effect would be limited. The relatively small impact compared with the size of the imbalance is mainly explained by the peculiar pric

14、e elasticity we find for imports: namely, Chinese imports are negatively affected by the renminbis real appreciation. By estimating bilateral import equations, we find that imports from Asian countries tend to fall but not those from other countries. This apparently counterintuitive result might wel

15、l be explained by the vertical integration that characterises intraregional trade in Asia: Chinese imports from the rest of Southeast Asia are mostly geared towards re-export. In addition, we show evidence that the Southeast Asian countries do not seem able to compensate for the reduction in their e

16、xports to China by increasing exports to other countries, as their total exports are generally negatively affected by the renminbis appreciation. In other words, exports from Southeast Asian countries seem to be a complement to exports from China rather than a substitute for them.The rest of the pap

17、er is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the existing literature. Section 3 describes the methodology and the data used. Section 4 presents the results on how Chinas exports and imports react to changes in the exchange rate and demand. In Section 5, we dig deeper into the issue of why Chinese i

18、mports do not get a boost from the renminbis appreciation; to do so, we estimate bilateral trade equations with Chinas main trade partners and then analyse the export equations of selected Asian countries. Section 6 concludes.IV. Results for Chinas import and export equationsAs a preliminary step, w

19、e test for the order of integration of the variables included in our analysis. We use the augmented Dickey-Fuller （ADF） tests for the existence of a unit root. Nearly all variables are found to be non-stationary in levels but stationary in first differences. We then test for the existence of cointeg

20、ration vectors using the Johansen procedure. We find at least one cointegrating vector for each variable group. As proposed by Phillips and Loretan （1991）,the presence of the cointegrating vectors allows us to estimate a regression of the lagged determinants and their differences through a non-linea

21、r least squares approach. Such an approach will yield unbiased and consistent estimates of the long-run and short-run parameters.Besides regressions on export and import equations for our full sample （19942005）, we also ran such regressions for a shorter period （200005） that concentrates on the peri

22、od of WTO influence. In both cases, we consider it important to distinguish between processed and ordinary trade and, therefore, run separate equations for each of them in the case of both exports and imports. The maximum number of short-term lags introduced in the equations was three, and we ultima

23、tely included only those that were statistically significant.The full results for the export equations can be found in Table A2 in the Appendix.16 As expected, long-run exchange rate elasticities of Chinas exports both processed and ordinary are negative and significant in our full sample and also a

24、fter WTO entry. When appropriately transformed （see Table 2）, the estimated long-run impact of the real exchange rate is around 1.3 for processed exports for both periods. For ordinary exports, it drops from 2.3 measured for the whole period to 1.6 for the more recent period. Our results are very cl

25、ose to those found by other authors using cointegration analysis （1.5 for total exports in Lau et al （2004） and 1.3 in Shu and Yip （2006）. They are also similar to the estimated export price elasticities for major industrial countries （1.5 and 1.6 for the United States and the United Kingdom, respec

26、tively, according to Hooper et al （1998）.For both ordinary and processed exports, the long-run positive effect of world demand on Chinese exports is very small and not statistically significant in our full sample, but it does become significant after WTO membership. That result is in line with the i

27、dea that China was facing considerable barriers to profiting from other countries growth before its WTO entry. In addition, for the most recent sample, the income elasticity of Chinese exports is very close to 1, as expected.The estimated coefficients of the import equations are shown in Table A3 in

28、 the Appendix. Demand factors seem to play a relatively moderate role in explaining past imports. In the later subsample, imports for processing do react positively to external demand, measured by processed exports, and domestic industrial output increases ordinary imports, as expected.As one would

29、expect, the FDI stock appears to have a positive effect in the long run both on ordinary imports and on imports for processing. Finally, a reduction in import tariffs seems to foster imports for processing in the long run.19 As for exports, dummies for the Chinese New Year as well as for December we

30、re significant in most cases.Finally, the exchange rate elasticity of imports is always negative and generally significant. The only exception is imports for processing in the latter subperiod, for which the negative coefficient on the exchange rate is significant only at the 15% level. The exchange

31、 rate has not only a direct link to imports for processing but also an indirect link via processed exports. In other words, a renminbi real appreciation tends to reduce imports rather than to increase them. Although counterintuitive at first sight, such negative elasticity has already been reported

32、in some of the most recent literature, such as Marquez and Schindler （2006）. The finding basically implies that imports even ordinary ones are more sensitive to the lowering of exports induced by the renminbi real appreciation than to a rise in purchasing power.VI. ConclusionsDuring the past few years, there has been growing discussion both in China and in international forums on the desirability of a renminbi appreciation. Many have argued that exchange rate policy would not serve the purpose of reducing Chinas large trade surplus. This paper shows