Collaborative Research: The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Regimes: Managing the Middle in an Era of Global Capital

尽管过去十年里国际货币危机频发，原因很多，但许多经济学家指出，使用盯住汇率是最重要的因素之一。在真正的固定汇率和弹性汇率之间做出这种妥协，是战后布雷顿森林体系建立的国际货币体系的标志之一，但随着国际资本流动性的增强，固定汇率对各国政府来说变得越来越难以捍卫。这导致了“空心化”或“中间不稳定”假说--即汇率制度将继续被推向“角落解决方案”--由相对自由的浮动汇率或硬性固定汇率组成的安排，如货币发行局、货币联盟和美元化。然而，这一假设有两个版本。其中一个被大多数经济学家接受的观点很简单，那就是各国将被赶出死角--布雷顿森林体系式的窄幅可调整的盯住汇率。另一种更具争议性的说法是，为了避免危机，各国必须走到一个极端或另一个极端。持不同政见者认为，像爬行乐队这样的较小动作是可行的。倡导者可以举出此类机制运作良好的例子，而批评者可以指出其他机制不奏效的例子。现存文献中缺失的是对不同类型的中间汇率机制与货币危机之间关系的大规模研究。这一点尤其重要，因为有充分的理由相信，许多国家将努力避免陷入绝境。最优货币区理论的一个重要含义是，只有少数国家可能成为固定汇率或高度灵活汇率的理想候选国，这一点没有得到足够的重视。对于非常大的国家，灵活的利率往往是可取的，而对于非常小的国家，固定利率通常更好。然而，有一个广泛的中等范围的国家，其中任何一个都不太可能是最佳的。这个项目将特别关注政治和政治机构在管理中间汇率制度方面的作用。从这个角度来看，宏观经济政策往往反映了政策制定者的愿望，而不是经济模型的均衡解决方案。在资本流动性日益增强的世界里，政策制定者必须在汇率刚性和货币政策自主性之间做出选择。因此，中间汇率制度构成了一个中间地带，政策制定者可以在其中拥有一定的汇率灵活性和一定的货币政策自主权。然而，如果这两项政策没有以一致的方式相互关联，那么很可能会导致货币危机。经济学文献正确地强调了资本的高度流动性使这类管理变得更加困难。我们将进行一项政治经济学分析，展示政治考量如何也大大增加了管理此类中间汇率制度的难度。在这个项目中，我们将研究不同类型的汇率制度在多大程度上容易发生危机，并调查一些经济、政治和制度考虑因素如何与制度选择相互作用，以增加或减少危机的可能性。我们将对(I)汇率制度类型及其与货币危机的联系，(Ii)汇率制度必须在多大程度上从中间价转向中间价以降低发生危机的可能性，以及(Iii)有效地“管理”中间价所需的政策进行大N统计研究。我们将高度重视各种类型的中间汇率制度的分类，并将制定一种新的行为衡量标准，以与制度性分类进行比较。

While many factors contributed to the rash of international currency crises over the past decade, many economists point to the use of pegged exchange rates as one of the most important. Such compromises between genuinely fixed and flexible exchange rates were one of the hallmarks of the post war international monetary system established at Bretton Woods, but as international capital mobility has grown pegged rates have become increasingly difficult for governments to defend. This has given rise to the "hollowing out" or "unstable middle" hypothesis -that exchange rate regimes will continually be driven towards "corner solutions" -arrangements comprised of either relatively free floats or hard fixed rates such as currency boards, currency unions, and dollarization. There are two versions of this hypothesis, however. One, accepted by most economists, is simply that countries will be driven away from dead center -the Bretton Woods type narrow band adjustable peg. The other, more controversial, version is that to avoid crises, countries must go all the way to one extreme or the other. Dissenters argue that smaller movements such as to crawling bands would be viable. Advocates can point to examples where such regimes have worked well while critics can point to others where they haven't. What is missing from the extant literature is a large-scale study of the relationships between different types of intermediate exchange rate regimes and currency crises. This is particularly important because there are good reasons to believe that many countries will try to avoid corner solutions. An important and under appreciated implication of the theory of optimum currency areas is that only a minority of countries are likely to be good candidates for firmly fixed or highly flexible exchange rates. For very large countries flexible rates tend to be preferable and for very small ones fixed rates are usually superior. There is a broad middle range of countries, however, where neither is likely to be optimal. This project will pay special attention to the role of politics and political institutions when it comes to managing middle exchange rate regimes. From this point of view macroeconomic policy more often than not reflects the desires of policymakers and not the equilibrium solution of economic models. In a world of increasing capital mobility, policymakers have to choose a mixture of exchange rate rigidity and monetary policy autonomy. Intermediate exchange rate regimes thus constitute a middle ground where policymakers can have some exchange rate flexibility and some monetary policy autonomy. However, if the two policies are not related to each other in a consistent manner then currency crises are likely to result. The economic literature correctly stresses how high capital mobility makes such management more difficult. We will develop a political economy analysis that shows how political considerations also add importantly to the difficulty of managing such intermediate exchange rate regimes. In this project we will examine the extent to which different types of exchange rate regimes are crisis prone and investigate how a number of economic, political, and institutional considerations interact with regime choice to increase or reduce the likelihood of crisis. We will undertake a large-N Statistical study of (i) the exchange rate regime types and their connection with currency crises, (ii) the degree to which regimes have to move away from to middle to decrease the likelihood of crisis, and (iii) the policies required to effectively "manage" the middle. We will pay considerable attention to the classification of various types of intermediate exchange rate regimes and will develop a new behavioral measure to compare with institutionally based classifications.