The ASEAN dollar standard in the post-crisis era: A reconsideration

This paper examines the role of global currencies in ASEAN exchange rate regimes. The investigation considers the post-crisis era from January 1, 1999 through December 31, 2007 and focuses on the five original members of ASEAN (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand) plus Vietnam. Unlike most papers that use classical regression analysis of logarithmic data in first differences to detect the influence of various foreign currencies on particular Asian currencies, this paper considers modern time series analysis more seriously. In particular, this paper finds evidence of cointegration among individual ASEAN currencies and some of the global currencies, indicating a long-run relationship. Examination of the cointegrating vectors yields four main findings. First, there is a notable absence of a clear US dollar standard. Second, the yen is downright unimportant, suggesting that ASEAN currencies are quite far from a yen standard. Third, ASEAN currencies are also quite far from a euro standard. Fourth, and most surprisingly, the UK pound is very important. These results are at odds with the traditional (short-run) regressions which suggest that ASEAN is on a dollar standard, although it is not a perfect dollar standard because coefficients are not at unity and various other currencies are significant in different equations. Hence, the overall conclusion from this research is that there is a wide variety of influences on ASEAN exchange rates in both the long run and the short run. This suggests that ASEAN, as a group, is not pursuing - and is in fact not ready for - a global-currency standard.