Book Description

This dissertation is a compilation of three essays I wrote during my investigation of China's foreign exchange markets. I list the abstract of each in the following paragraphs. Essay 1: Anomaly in China's Dollar--RMB Forward Market Newly-established data on onshore deliverable US dollar--RMB forwards and the Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate from October 2006 to April 2009 reveal significant violations of covered interest rate parity. This paper hypothesizes that these violations are caused by an increase in US dollar-to-RMB conversion restrictions. Given that Chinese monetary authorities want to prevent market participants from taking advantage of the predictable appreciation of the RMB, China's State Administration of Foreign Exchange has to tighten up the control on US dollar-to-RMB conversions. Under the tightened conversion restrictions, similar deviations will resurface in the forward market whenever hot money inflow increases. One way to avoid covered interest rate parity violations in the forward market is to decrease hot money inflow into China by maintaining a stable and credible exchange rate policy. Essay 2: Convertibility Restriction in China's Foreign Exchange Market and its Impact on Forward Pricing Different from the well established markets such as the dollar-Euro market, recent CIP deviations observed in the onshore dollar-RMB forward market were primarily caused by conversion restrictions in the spot market rather than changes in credit risk and/or liquidity constraint. This paper proposes a theoretical framework under which the Chinese authorities impose conversion restrictions in the spot market in an attempt to achieve capital flow balance, but face the tradeoff between achieving such balance and disturbing current account transactions. Consequently, the level of conversion restriction should increase with the amount of capital account transactions and decrease with the amount of current account transactions. Such conversion restriction in turn places a binding constraint on forward traders' ability to cover their forward positions, resulting in the observed CIP deviation. More particularly, the model predicts that onshore forward rate is equal to a weighted average of CIP-implied forward rate and the market's expectation of future spot rate, with the weight determined by the level of conversion restriction. As a secondary result, the model also implies that offshore non-deliverable forwards reflect the market's expectation of future spot rate. Empirical results are consistent with these predictions. Essay 3: The Global Credit Crisis and China's Exchange Rate The case for stabilizing China's exchange rate against the dollar is strong. Before 2005 when the yuan/dollar rate was credibly fixed, it helped anchor China's domestic price level. But gradual RMB appreciation from July 2005 to July 2008 created a "one-way-bet" that disordered China's financial markets in two respects: (1) no private capital outflows to finance China's huge trade surplus leading to an undue build up of official exchange reserves and erosion of monetary control, and (2) a breakdown of the forward exchange market in 2007-08 so that exporters could no longer get trade credit—probably worsening the severe slump in Chinese exports. But after July 2008, the credit crunch induced an unexpected unwinding of the dollar carry trade leading to a sharp appreciation in the dollar's effective exchange rate. The People's Bank of China (PBC) then stopped RMB appreciation against the dollar. China's forward exchange market was restored and monetary control regained. Now the PBC can better support the fiscal stimulus by promoting a parallel expansion of bank credit. But, since March 2009, the fall in the dollar (with the RMB tied to it) again threatens to undermine the yuan/dollar rate and China's monetary stability.