Published In

Asian Development Review

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-2014

Subjects

Monetary policy, Fixed exchange rates, International finance, Globalization, Inflation, International reserves, Macroeconomics

Abstract

This paper investigates the potential impacts of the degree of divergence in open macroeconomic policies in the context of the trilemma hypothesis. Using an index that measures the extent of policy divergence among the three trilemma policy choices—monetary independence, exchange rate stability, and financial openness—we find that emerging market economies have adopted trilemma policy combinations with the smallest degree of policy divergence in the last 15 years. We then investigate whether and to what extent the degree of open macro policy convergence affects the probability of a crisis and find that a developing or emerging market economy with a higher degree of policy divergence is more likely to experience a currency or debt crisis. We also compare the development of trilemma policies around the crisis period for the groups of Latin American crisis countries in the 1980s and the Asian crisis countries in the 1990s. We find that Latin American crisis countries tended to close their capital accounts in the aftermath of a crisis, while that is not the case for the Asian crisis countries. The Asian crisis countries tended to reduce the degree of policy divergence in the aftermath of the crisis, which possibly meant they decided to adopt open macro policies that made their economies less prone to a crisis.

Description

This is an open access article, copyright 2014 Asian Development Bank and Asian Development Bank Institute.

This paper was prepared for the Asian Development Review Conference held by the Asian Development Bank in Manila, Philippines, March 25–26, 2013.

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/13004

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