The Effects of Financial and Real Shocks, Structural Vulnerability and Monetary Policy on Exchange Rates from the Perspective of Currency Crises Models

Is there any factor that is not analyzed in the literature but is important for preventing currency crises? What kind of shock is important as a trigger of a currency crisis? Given the same shock, how does the impact of a currency crisis differ across countries depending on the degree of each country’s structural vulnerability? To answer these questions, this paper analyzes currency crises both theoretically and empirically. In the theoretical part, I argue that exports are an important factor to prevent currency crises that has not been frequently analyzed in the existing theoretical literature. Using the third generation model of currency crises, I derive a simple and intuitive formula that captures an economy’s structural vulnerability characterized by the elasticity of exports and repayments for foreign currency denominated debt. I graphically show that the possibility of currency crisis equilibrium depends on this structural vulnerability. In the empirical part, I use unbalanced panel data comprising 51 emerging countries from 1980 to 2011. The results obtained here are consistent with the prediction of the theoretical models. First, I found that monetary tightening by the central banks can have a significant effect on exchange rates. Second, I found that both productivity shocks in the real sector and shocks to a country’s risk premium in the financial markets affect exchange rate dynamics, while productivity shocks appeared more quantitatively important during the Asian currency crisis. Finally, the structural vulnerability of the country plays a statistically significant role for propagating the effects of the shock.