外文翻译---资本流入亚洲：货币政策的作用

中文2950字

本科毕业论文外文翻译

外文题目：Capital Flows to Asia: The Role of Monetary Policy

出处：International Monetary Fund, 700 19th Street N.W., Washington, DC 20431, U.S.A.

作者：TIMOTHY JAMES BOND

原文：

Capital Flows to Asia: The Role of Monetary Policy

Abstract.Monetary policy played an important role in the Asian experience with capital inflows.Central banks used monetary policy to contain the threat of overheating, but the resulting increases in interest rates attracted additional inflows. Empirical measurement of these links shows that tight monetary policy was an important source of inflows to Indonesia and Thailand in recent years, and that the independence of monetary policy decreased during the inflow period.

Key words: Capital inflows, monetary policy.

I. Introduction

The magnitude of private capital inflows to developing countries increased sharply in recent years. Due to the macroeconomic pressures that these inflows generate,economists have devoted substantial attention to the issue of designing an appropriate policy response. The Asian experience with capital inflows offers some important lessons in this area. This paper reviews the capital inflow episode in Asia, and focuses in more detail on the experience of two countries: Indonesia and Thailand. Monetary policy played a key role in these countries, both as a response to capital inflows, when sterilization was used to limit the expansion of monetary aggregates, and as a cause, when increases in interest rates to counter overheating attracted additional inflows. For this reason, and because the importance of monetary policy has been underemphasized in the literature,1 the paper analyzes the relationship between monetary policy and capital flows in some detail. It concludes that the Asian

experience with capital inflows illustrates the difficulty of maintaining monetary independence with an exchange rate target and an open capital account. Under these conditions, monetary policy will decline in usefulness as capital mobility rises, and macroeconomic management will become more difficult.Consequently, countries should develop other means of responding to capital flows, such as fiscal policy or increased exchange rate flexibility.

The Asian experience with capital inflows can provide valuable lessons to policymakers in other countries, for several reasons. First, capital inflows began earlier in Asia, and have endured longer. In Thailand, for example, the capital inflow episode has lasted nearly a decade. Inflows to Asia showed little tendency to slow after the 1994 crisis in Mexico, in contrast to the pattern of capital flows to many Latin American countries. This experience offers valuable evidence to countries in which capital inflows have only recently begun. Second, inflows to Asian countries have been strong – Thailand has experienced average inflows of nearly 10 percent of GDP per year since 1988. The causes and effects of inflows of this magnitude are often more readily apparent. Third, faced with strong capital inflows, the countries considered here fashioned strong policy responses. They adopted conventional policies, such as tightening the fiscal stance, as well as unconventional policies, such as innovative means of monetary management, measures to limit credit growth, and measures to raise the cost of short-term capital movements. Fourth, and possibly as a result of the strong policy response, Asian countries avoided some of the concerns associated with large capital inflows. In particular, the inflows had a limited impact on inflation and the real exchange rate; and most importantly, the inflows financed a surge in investment rather than consumption.The effect of capital inflows was not completely benign, however, as many of these countries now face higher levels of external debt, as well as concerns over the intermediation of external borrowing through the domestic financial system.

The Asian experience demonstrates an additional, extremely important point: that in countries with pegged exchange rates, an increase in capital flows complicates monetary management. Although over a longer horizon, policymakers were concerned with the potential effects of inflows on final targets such as economic