IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/35231.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Too much of a good thing? on the effects of limiting foreign reserve accumulation

Author

Listed:
  • Yan, Isabel K.
  • Kumhof, Michael

Abstract

Some emerging economies have recently experienced large government surpluses and accelerating foreign exchange reserve accumulation far in excess of what would be implied by the literature on optimal reserves. China in particular has repeatedly stressed that there may be an upper limit to how many reserves it is willing to hold. Using a dynamic general equilibrium model, we show that the credible expectation of such a limit would lead to a balance of payments anti-crisis, which is characterized by an economic boom, real appreciation, growing demand for domestic currency, and domestic inflation, in the period prior to the limit being reached.

Suggested Citation

  • Yan, Isabel K. & Kumhof, Michael, 2011. "Too much of a good thing? on the effects of limiting foreign reserve accumulation," MPRA Paper 35231, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:35231
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/35231/1/MPRA_paper_35231.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dani Rodrik, 2006. "The social cost of foreign exchange reserves," International Economic Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 253-266.
    2. Mr. David Hauner, 2005. "A Fiscal Price Tag for International Reserves," IMF Working Papers 2005/081, International Monetary Fund.
    3. Kumhof, Michael & Li, Shujing & Yan, Isabel, 2007. "Balance of payments crises under inflation targeting," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 242-264, May.
    4. Adams , Charles & Park, Donghyun, 2009. "Causes and Consequences of Global Imbalances: Perspective from Developing Asia," Asian Development Review, Asian Development Bank, vol. 26(1), pages 19-47.
    5. Krugman, Paul, 1979. "A Model of Balance-of-Payments Crises," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 11(3), pages 311-325, August.
    6. Alfaro, Laura & Kanczuk, Fabio, 2009. "Optimal reserve management and sovereign debt," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 23-36, February.
    7. Calvo, Guillermo A. & Vegh, Carlos A., 1999. "Inflation stabilization and bop crises in developing countries," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 24, pages 1531-1614, Elsevier.
    8. Calvo, Guillermo A, 1987. "Balance of Payments Crises in a Cash-in-Advance Economy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 19(1), pages 19-32, February.
    9. Olivier Jeanne, 2007. "International Reserves in Emerging Market Countries: Too Much of a Good Thing?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 38(1), pages 1-80.
    10. Mr. Romain Ranciere & Mr. Olivier D Jeanne, 2006. "The Optimal Level of International Reserves for Emerging Market Countries: Formulas and Applications," IMF Working Papers 2006/229, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Maurice Obstfeld & Jay C. Shambaugh & Alan M. Taylor, 2010. "Financial Stability, the Trilemma, and International Reserves," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 57-94, April.
    12. Michael P. Dooley & David Folkerts-Landau & Peter Garber, 2004. "The Revived Bretton Woods System: The Effects of Periphery Intervention and Reserve Management on Interest Rates & Exchange Rates in Center Countries," NBER Working Papers 10332, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Enrique G. Mendoza, 2005. "Real Exchange Rate Volatility and the Price of Nontradables in Sudden-Stop-Prone Economies," NBER Working Papers 11691, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Kuijs, Louis, 2005. "Investment and saving in China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3633, The World Bank.
    15. Mr. Robert P Flood & Ms. Nancy P. Marion, 2002. "Holding International Reserves in an Era of High Capital Mobility," IMF Working Papers 2002/062, International Monetary Fund.
    16. David Cook & James Yetman, 2012. "Expanding central bank balance sheets in emerging Asia: a compendium of risk and some evidence," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Are central bank balance sheets in Asia too large?, volume 66, pages 30-75, Bank for International Settlements.
    17. Enrique G. Mendoza, 2005. "Real Exchange Rate Volatility and the Price of Nontradable Goods in Economies Prone to Sudden Stops," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Fall 2005), pages 103-148, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kumhof, Michael & Yan, Isabel, 2016. "Balance-of-payments anti-crises," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 186-202.
    2. Joshua Aizenman & Brian Pinto, 2013. "Managing Financial Integration and Capital Mobility—Policy Lessons from the Past Two Decades," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(4), pages 636-653, September.
    3. Piersanti, Giovanni, 2012. "The Macroeconomic Theory of Exchange Rate Crises," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199653126.
    4. Olivier Jeanne & Romain Rancière, 2011. "The Optimal Level of International Reserves For Emerging Market Countries: A New Formula and Some Applications," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(555), pages 905-930, September.
    5. Aizenman, Joshua & Inoue, Kenta, 2013. "Central banks and gold puzzles," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 69-90.
    6. Mr. Sunil Sharma & Woon Gyu Choi & Maria Strömqvist, 2007. "Capital Flows, Financial Integration, and International Reserve Holdings: The Recent Experience of Emerging Markets and Advanced Economies," IMF Working Papers 2007/151, International Monetary Fund.
    7. Marcello Spanò, 2013. "Foreign Reserves as Hedging Instruments in Emerging Countries," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 60(2), pages 203-230, April.
    8. Marta Ruiz-Arranz & Milan Zavadjil, 2008. "Are Emerging Asia’s Reserves Really Too High?," IMF Working Papers 2008/192, International Monetary Fund.
    9. Marcello Spanò, 2012. "The Effect Of Openness On Foreign Reserves And Growth In The Emerging Economies," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1, pages 7-23, March.
    10. Pina, Gonçalo, 2015. "The recent growth of international reserves in developing economies: A monetary perspective," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 172-190.
    11. Frankel, Jeffrey, 2010. "Monetary Policy in Emerging Markets," Handbook of Monetary Economics, in: Benjamin M. Friedman & Michael Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Monetary Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1439-1520, Elsevier.
    12. Alfaro, Laura & Kanczuk, Fabio, 2009. "Optimal reserve management and sovereign debt," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 23-36, February.
    13. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Sengupta, Rajeswari, 2011. "Accumulation of reserves and keeping up with the Joneses: The case of LATAM economies," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 19-31, January.
    14. Ricardo Sabbadini, 2018. "International Reserves Management in a Model of Partial Sovereign Default," Working Papers, Department of Economics 2018_14, University of São Paulo (FEA-USP).
    15. Maurice Obstfeld & Jay C. Shambaugh & Alan M. Taylor, 2010. "Financial Stability, the Trilemma, and International Reserves," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 57-94, April.
    16. Mendoza, Ronald U., 2010. "Was the Asian crisis a wake-up call?: Foreign reserves as self-protection," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1-19, February.
    17. Renu Kohli, 2015. "Capital Flows and Exchange Rate Volatility in India: How Crucial Are Reserves?," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(3), pages 577-591, August.
    18. Dongwon Lee, 2023. "International cooperation in foreign reserve policies in the presence of competitive hoarding," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 389-412, May.
    19. Durdu, Ceyhun Bora & Mendoza, Enrique G. & Terrones, Marco E., 2009. "Precautionary demand for foreign assets in Sudden Stop economies: An assessment of the New Mercantilism," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 194-209, July.
    20. Prakash Kumar Shrestha, Ph.D., 2016. "Macroeconomic Impact of International Reserves: Empirical Evidence from South Asia," NRB Economic Review, Nepal Rastra Bank, Economic Research Department, vol. 28(1), pages 1-26, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Balance of payments anti-crises; foreign exchange reserves; foreign exchange intervention; inflation targeting; exchange rate targeting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E58 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Central Banks and Their Policies
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics
    • E63 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Comparative or Joint Analysis of Fiscal and Monetary Policy; Stabilization; Treasury Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:35231. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.