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用性和实用性提出了质疑。尽管固定汇率制度提供了价格稳定，并可以充当货币政策的名义参与者，但它们很容易受到投机性攻击，欧洲最近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，但这些模型没有认真对待政治不确定性和政治偏好。本研究解决了关于发展中国家汇率政策的政治经济学的两个相关问题。首先，政治因素在投机性攻击过程中扮演了什么角色？随便看一眼东亚的政治局势，就能提供一些归纳证据，证明市场对政治不确定性的反应。在1997-1998年期间，韩国和菲律宾举行了选举，泰国的政治局势不确定，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；政府领导层的更迭；立法机构中政党的有效数量；选举的波动性；以及政府的凝聚力。研究人员假设，当政府政策的未来存在不确定性时，投机性攻击的可能性更大。本项目涉及的第二个问题是，为什么一些政策制定者贬值或放弃盯住美元的汇率，而另一些政策制定者则捍卫其价值？维护一种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本国货币盯住美元的决定时，影响其目标函数的关键因素是由该国的政治机构决定的。如果面对经济危机，独裁国家的领导人不会面临那么大的政治损失风险。此外，在实行比例选举制的国家，如果不采取行动降低失业率，被迫加息，政客们将面临政治/选举失败的风险。多数选举制度国家的政治家介于这两个极端之间。该研究使用二项式和多项概率对1970-1998年期间非经合组织国家的样本中与这两个问题相关的一些假设进行了检验，并使用年度和月度数据。目前尚不存在包含发展中国家可比政治数据的数据集，这些数据涵盖选举规则、选举机构、政党分裂和每月的立法波动。这些变量来自基辛的当代世界事件档案馆、经济学人信息部的国家报告和国家概况、利法特选举档案馆和许多其他来源。

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.