To Devalue or to Defend: The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy in the Developing World

资本跨越国界的速度和力量，让学者和政策制定者都对固定汇率制度的有效性和实用性提出了质疑。虽然固定汇率制度提供了价格稳定，并可以作为货币政策的名义参与者，但它们很容易受到投机攻击，最近欧洲发生的事件就证明了这一点。虽然学术研究有模型来解释和/或预测投机性攻击的发生，但这些模型未能认真考虑政治不确定性和政治偏好。本研究解决了两个与发展中国家汇率政策的政治经济学相关的问题。首先，政治因素在投机性攻击的过程中发挥了什么作用？随便看看东亚的政治局势，就会发现市场对政治不确定性的反应。1997年至1998年，韩国和菲律宾举行了选举，泰国的政治局势也不明朗，因为执政联盟由六个部分组成。这项研究的一部分涉及收集数据来衡量政治不确定性，包括：选举的时间；政府领导层的变动；立法机关中有效的政党数目；选举波动;还有，政府凝聚力。研究人员假设，当政府政策的未来存在不确定性时，投机性攻击更有可能发生。本项目关注的第二个问题是，为什么一些政策制定者让本国货币贬值或放弃盯住美元的政策，而另一些政策制定者则捍卫本国货币的价值？维护货币平价的决定要求政府（货币当局）：(1)动用外汇储备和/或(2)提高国内短期利率。这些政策变化具有政治影响，因为它们可能导致更高的失业率和政府债务，以及更低的投资和经济增长。该研究认为，当政策制定者面临贬值或捍卫其货币挂钩的决定时，影响其目标函数的关键因素是由该国的政治制度决定的。独裁国家的领导人在面临经济危机时不会面临巨大的政治损失风险。此外，在实行比例选举制度的国家，如果政客们未能采取行动降低失业率，就被迫提高利率，他们就有可能在政治/选举中失败。在实行多数主义选举制度的国家，政客们介于这两个极端之间。该研究使用二项式和多项概率来检验与这两个问题有关的一些假设，这些假设是在1970年至1998年期间对非经合组织国家的样本进行的，使用的是年度和月度数据。目前尚无关于发展中国家关于选举规则、选举机构、政党分门别类和每月立法变动的可比政治数据集。这些变量的收集来源包括Keesing的当代世界事件档案、经济学人智库的国家报告和国家概况、Lijphart选举档案和许多其他来源。

The speed and force with which capital crosses national borders has led scholars and policymakers alike to question both the usefulness and practicality of fixed exchange rate regimes. While fixed exchange rate regimes provide price stability and can act as a nominal actor for monetary policy, they are vulnerable to speculative attacks as evidenced by recent events in Europe. While scholarly investigations have models to explain and/or predict the occurrence of speculative attacks, these models fail to take political uncertainty and political preferences seriously.This research addresses two related questions regarding the political economy of exchange rate policy in the developing world. First, what role do political factors play in the process of a speculative attack? A casual glance at the political situations in East Asia provides some inductive evidence that markets react to political uncertainty. During the 1997-1998 period Korea and the Phillipines had elections and the political situation in Thailand was uncertain because the governing coalition was made up of six parts. Part of this research involves collecting data to measure political uncertainty including: the timing of elections; a change in government leadership; the effective number of parties in the legislature; electoral volatility; and, government cohesion. The researchers hypothesize that speculative attacks are more likely when there is uncertainty regarding the future of government policies.The second question attended to in this project asks why do some policymakers devalue or abandon their currency peg while others defend its value? The decision to defend a currency's parity requires the government (monetary authority) to (1) spend foreign exchange reserves and/or (2) raise domestic short-term interest rates. These policy changes have political implications in that they may lead to higher unemployment and government debt and lower investment and economic growth. The research argues that the key factors influencing a policymaker's objective function when confronted with the decision to devalue or defend their currency's peg are determined by the country's political institutions. Leaders in a dictatorship do not face as great a risk of political loss if confronted with economic crisis. Further, politicians in countries with proportional electoral systems risk political/electoral defeat if they are forced to raise interest rates if they fail to take actions to reduce unemployment. Politicians in countries with majoritarian electoral institutions fall between these two extremes.The research uses binomial and multinomial probit to test a number of hypotheses related to these two questions on a sample of non-OECD countries over the period 1970-1998 using yearly and monthly data. No data set currently exists that contains comparable political data on developing countries covering electoral rules, electoral institutions, party fractionalization and legislative volatility on a monthly basis. These variables are collected from sources such as Keesing's Contemporary Archive of World Events, the Country Reports and Country Profiles of the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Lijphart Elections Archive, and numerous other sources.