Willem Thorbecke

Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry | RIETI · Research

Japan exports sophisticated capital goods. Since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), Japanese companies have offshored the production of lower-end goods and parts and components to Asian countries. Because of this, several researchers argued that a weaker yen no longer stimulates machinery exports much because an increase in Japanese exports increas...

Many shocks, including COVID-19, wars, inflation, contractionary U.S. monetary policy, and oil price hikes, have recently buffeted the world economy. The literature has reported mixed results concerning how these shocks impact Malaysian stock returns. Some studies found that U.S. monetary policy mattered for Malaysia, while others reported that it...

Indonesia’s economic performance since 2000 has been respectable. It has not succeeded, however, at joining global value chains (GVC). Vietnam, on the other hand, is a key link in GVCs for electronics, textiles, and other sectors. This chapter recounts the experiences of Indonesia and Vietnam at attracting foreign direct investment, exporting, and...

The negative effect of a currency appreciation on a country's exports may be attenuated as its export basket becomes more sophisticated. This paper investigates whether exchange rate changes affect China's exports differently depending on their sophistication levels, as measured by the Product Complexity Index (PCI). We estimate exchange rate elast...

Inflation in 2021 and 2022 grew much faster than the Federal Reserve expected. The Fed downplayed inflation in 2021 and then increased the federal funds rate by 500 basis points between March 2022 and May 2023. This paper investigates how this unprecedented tightening has impacted the stock market. To do so, it estimates a fully specified multi-fac...

Inflation in 2021 and 2022 grew much faster than the Federal Reserve expected. The Fed downplayed inflation in 2021 and then increased the federal funds rate by 500 basis points between March 2022 and May 2023. This paper investigates how this unprecedented tightening impacted the stock market. To do so it estimates a fully specified multi-factor m...

The COVID-19 crisis battered the Japanese economy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the pandemic has left scars. To this end, it employs out-of-sample forecasting models and detailed stock market data for 30 sectors and disaggregated current account data for the 3 years after the first case occurred. The findings indicate that st...

The Turkish lira has depreciated by 200% between 2012 and 2022. We investigate how exchange rates affect Turkish imports and exports. Nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag results indicate that appreciations during appreciation episodes increase imports and exports but exchange rate changes during depreciation periods frequently do not affect tr...

The lion's share of smartphones, computers, televisions, semiconductor devices, and other electronics goods is made in East Asia. Final electronics goods are assembled in China, and sophisticated parts and components (P&C) such as semiconductor chips, image sensors, and ceramic filters in upstream Asian economies such as Japan, South Korea, and Tai...

The U.S. real effective exchange rate is at its highest level since 1985. In that year, the U.S. and its trading partners coordinated a depreciation of the dollar and the U.S. agreed to reduce its budget deficit. This paper reports that a dollar depreciation today would still improve U.S. trade imbalances with East Asia and the world. East Asian co...

News of aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan in late 2012 contributed to a 45 percent depreciation of the Japanese yen relative to the U.S. dollar. This paper investigates how the depreciation affected the Japanese economy. Exports responded much less than predicted, especially for sectors related to transportation equipment. Imports als...

We investigate how exchange rates affect the Japanese chemical industry. This industry exports sophisticated products to downstream firms. Since more complex products are less substitutable in international trade, we investigate whether they have lower price elasticities. We measure complexity using Hidalgo and Hausmann’s (2009) product complexity...

News of COVID-19 cases roiled the French stock market in 2020. Finance theory indicates that changes in returns across many assets are driven by economy-wide rather than firm-specific factors. To identify these factors, this paper investigates the time series exposure of 174 French assets to macroeconomic variables. It then uses these exposures to...

Tariffs, currency wars, and protectionism pose risks for Chinese firms. In theory tariff increases and exchange rate appreciations exert equivalent effects on export volumes. This paper estimates tariff and exchange rate elasticities for China’s exports. The results indicate that, while exchange rates matter, tariffs increases deter exports almost...

More complex products are less substitutable in international trade and may therefore have lower price elasticities. We investigate this issue using 960 types of manufactured exports from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to 190 partner economies disaggregated at the Harmonized System 4-digit level. We measure complexity using Hidalgo and Hausma...

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has become an important importer for many countries. This paper investigates how turbulence in the PRC can spill over to trading partners through the trade channel. Exports from several East and Southeast Asian countries to the PRC exceed 10% of their GDPs. To shed light on countries’ exposures to the PRC, this...

South Korea has proven resilient through crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Korea has used testing and contact tracing to keep the number of cases per capita far below those in the U.S. and Europe. This paper uses sectoral stock returns to gauge the impact of the pandemic on the Korean economy. The results indicate that industrial machinery stoc...

Rogoff predicted that the U.S. dollar will depreciate and that exchange rate volatility will return. The coronavirus crisis has also roiled the world economy. This paper investigates the exposure of French and Korean firm stock returns to exchange rate appreciations and the pandemic. Both France and Korea are major exporters, but Korea has managed...

The coronavirus crisis has damaged the U.S. economy. This paper uses the stock returns of 125 sectors to investigate its impact. It decomposes returns into components driven by sector-specific factors and by macroeconomic factors. Idiosyncratic factors harmed industries such as airlines, aerospace, real estate, tourism, oil, brewers, retail apparel...

Japan has experienced several appreciation episodes. These appreciations may squeeze profit margins and lower export volumes. This paper investigates whether firms can weather appreciation periods by producing differentiated rather than commoditized products. To do this it investigates different sectors within the Japanese transportation equipment...

The Indonesian rupiah depreciated 50% between July 2011 and February 2020. Blanchard et al. (Are capital inflows expansionary or contractionary? Theory, policy implications, and some evidence. NBER Working Papers 21619, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, 2015) showed that capital outflows from emerging markets can reduce output by...

This paper investigates how expansionary monetary policy after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) has affected the U.S. banking sector. In response to the GFC, the Federal Reserve first lowered the overnight federal funds rate from 5.25% in August 2007 to zero in December 2008. It then turned to quantitative easing, purchasing housing agency debt, m...

Intricate trading networks have emerged in East Asia. They are associated with technology transfer, mushrooming productivity growth, and tumbling prices for final goods. This chapter recounts the emergence and evolution of manufacturing production networks in the region. It then documents the burgeoning surpluses between Asia and the rest of the wo...

Does a country’s export structure impact the way that exchange rates affect trade? Do more sophisticated products exhibit lower demand elasticities? Using panel data for major exporters over the 1992–2016 period and dynamic ordinary least squares techniques, we find that price elasticities are higher for low-technology goods such as textiles and fo...

Japanese electronic parts and components (ep&c) exports fell in value during and after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) while Taiwan and South Korea's ep&c exports soared. This paper reports that the yen appreciation between 2007 and 2011 reduced yen ep&c export prices by 28%. The results also indicate that yen appreciations led to small declines...

Trade wars are threatening East Asian economies. Exchange rate appreciations would be less disruptive than protectionism. This paper reports dynamic ordinary least squares findings indicating that appreciations in Asian supply chain countries reduce exports and increase imports. However, despite large current account surpluses, there has been littl...

Using three identification strategies, this paper finds that supply-driven oil price increases lowered U.S. stock returns in many sectors before the shale oil revolution but not after. It also reports that oil prices are a priced factor in a multi-factor asset pricing model both before and after the shale revolution. While oil prices mattered in bo...

Oil prices have been volatile. To investigate how oil price swings affect Asian economies, this paper examines how they affect industry and aggregate stock returns. Economic theory implies that there is a strong link between a sector's stock return and its economic activity. Evidence presented here indicates that sectors such as airlines, food, and...

Safe haven capital inflows and other factors have caused the Swiss franc to appreciate and posed challenges for policymakers. We find that these exchange rate changes do not affect the volume of exports from Switzerland's most advanced sectors, pharmaceuticals and watches, but do matter for exports of medium-high-technology products such as capital...

Safe asset demand and currency manipulation increase the dollar and the U.S. current account deficit. Deficits in manufacturing trade cause dislocation and generate protectionism. Dynamic OLS results indicate that U.S. export elasticities exceed unity for automobiles, toys, wood, aluminum, iron, steel, and other goods. Elasticities for U.S. imports...

In 2008 U.S. demand collapsed and triggered deflation. The Fed employed large‐scale asset purchases (LSAP) to fight deflation. How did news of LSAP affect inflationary expectations? If investors believed that LSAP would raise inflation, they would sell assets exposed to inflation and purchase inflation hedges. This would lower the prices of assets...

Exporting has contributed to technological assimilation and development in ASEAN. This paper investigates ASEAN's electronics and labor-intensive exports. The results indicate that more foreign direct investment, weaker exchange rates, and other factors deepen the electronics value chain in ASEAN countries. The findings also indicate that, since 20...

China’s trade surplus remains huge. Researchers reported that China’s exports decimate manufacturing job abroad and stoke protectionist pressures. China’s surplus is concentrated in the electronics sector. Much of the value-added of China’s exports of smartphones, tablet computers, and consumer electronics goods comes from processors, sensors, and...

The PRC has become an important importer for many countries. We investigate how turbulence in the PRC can spill over to trading partners through the trade channel. Exports from several East Asian and Southeast Asian countries to the PRC exceed 10% of their gross domestic products. To shed light on economies’ exposures to the PRC, this paper estimat...

We provide evidence from the electronics industry in East Asia supporting Kojima's (1973) hypothesis that FDI moves from capital-exporting countries' disadvantaged industries into host countries' advantaged industries. These results imply that FDI and trade are complementary, unlike in Mundell's (1957) model where they are substitutes. The results...

China's surplus in processing trade, correctly measured, approaches half a trillion dollars year after year. Processed exports are final goods produced using parts and components imported from East Asia. Cointegration evidence indicates that processed exports depend, not only on the renminbi exchange rate, but also on exchange rates in East Asian s...

China's consumption imports per capita in 2012 equaled $36, much less than comparable countries’ imports. This paper investigates the determinants of consumption imports. Evidence from panel dynamic ordinary least squares estimation and imports from 20 leading trading partners over the 1992–2012 period indicates that GDP growth and renminbi appreci...

This paper investigates whether China's exports to the U.S. are an outlier. Gravity model results indicate that these exports have been more than $100 billion greater than predicted in every year since 2005, and that both processed exports produced within regional value chains and ordinary exports produced using domestic inputs far exceed predicted...

There has been an explosion in the amount of parts and components traded within East Asian production networks. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has emerged as the final assembly point for the goods produced. These goods then flow primarily outside of the region. When the global financial crisis (GFC) occurred, the decrease inWestern demand led...

Japan is the leading supplier of sophisticated capital goods to East Asian countries. These goods embody advanced technologies and facilitate learning and productivity growth. Capital goods also represent 30–40% of Japan's exports. This paper investigates the determinants of these exports. Results from dynamic ordinary least squares estimation indi...

Hausmann et al. found that countries that export more sophisticated products tend to subsequently grow more rapidly. We examine the sophistication of Asia's exports using Hausmann et al.'s and Kwan's measures. Japan remains the technology leader in Asia, but not in the world. In 2012, Japan's exports competed with those of South Korea and Taiwan an...

This chapter argues that Asian economies should move away from growth strategies driven by exports to developed economies. Rebalancing should take place on both the demand side and on the supply side. Well-targeted policies that increase the productivity on the supply side and by targeting regional consumers on the demand side are necessary. To inc...

China's surplus in processing trade remains large. Processed exports are final goods produced using parts and components that are imported duty free. Because much of the value‐added of these exports comes from East Asia, exchange rates throughout the region should affect their foreign currency prices. This paper presents data on value‐added exchang...

Social protection programmes have expanded rapidly in the developing world in recent years. In Southeast Asia, the experience of the Asian Financial Crisis of the 1990s heightened awareness of vulnerability to poverty and the role of government in protecting households from a sudden loss of employment and income, or from contingencies such as ill-h...

China's trade surplus is entirely in processing trade. Processed exports are final goods produced using parts and components coming from supply chain countries. Many claim that because much of the value added of China's processed exports comes from other countries, the renminbi should not affect China's processed exports. To investigate these issue...

The Japanese yen in 2012 remained 25 percent above its value in 2007. Exports, industrial production, and stock prices crashed after 2007 and had yet to regain their pre-crash values five years later. This paper investigates the contribution of the yen appreciation to this economic disaster. Evidence from Johansen maximum likelihood and dynamic ord...

Estimating the price elasticity of China's imports is difficult because many imports are used to produce exports and because the real effective exchange rate has remained fairly stable. To circumvent the first problem, we control for re-exports, and to increase the discriminatory power of the tests, we employ a panel data set including imports from...

In last few decades, Asian production networks have contributed significantly toward the rapid trade expansion and economic growth in East Asia. Developed Asia produces technology-intensive intermediate goods and capital goods and ships them to the People Republic of China (PRC) and ASEAN for assembly by lower-skilled workers. The finished products...

This paper provides an analytical description of East Asian supply chains. The data indicate that they have become more and more centered on China. In a value-added sense, though, East Asia as a whole is running surpluses against the West. The paper then surveys evidence from a variety of sources indicating that an appreciation throughout East Asia...

The value of Japanese electronics exports has tumbled since the advent of the Global Financial Crisis, largely because export prices have fallen. This paper presents evidence that the appreciation of the yen between 2007 and 2011 caused yen export prices for electronics goods to fall by more than 20%. Yen export prices fell much more then yen costs...

For the last 15 years, computers and electronic goods have been the leading export categories from East Asia to the rest of the world. They are produced within regional production and distribution networks. Japan, South Korea and Taipei, China, construct technology-intensive parts and components and ship them to China and ASEAN for processing by lo...

Current account deficits in the United States (US) and current account surpluses in East Asia are an enduring part of the global economic landscape. They are supported by low saving in the US and by reserve accumulation in Asia. This paper argues that this strategy is causing macroeconomic problems for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Inflatio...

This paper investigates how exchange rates affect Japanese exports. This is difficult because many of Japan’s exports are used to produce goods for re-export. An appreciation in the importing country that decreases exports can decrease its imported inputs from Japan. To correct for this bias the authors examine consumption exports. Using a panel da...

The authors recount East Asia’s experience with foreign direct investment (FDI). They document that, contrary to the Rybczynski theorem, capital flows in the region cause the host country’s labor-intensive industry to expand and its capital-intensive industry to decline. They also present narrative evidence that sheds light on how FDI is affected b...

Many argue that the renminbi needs to appreciate to rebalance China’s trade. However, empirical evidence on the effects of an RMB appreciation on China’s exports has been mixed for the largest category of exports, processed exports. Since much of the value-added of these goods comes from parts and components produced in Japan, South Korea, and othe...

This paper discusses the appropriate policy mix for China in the post crisis period. As is well known, China has achieved a remarkable economic growth rate over the last 30 years using an export-led growth strategy. To implement this strategy, the Chinese authorities have pegged their currency to the US dollar and accorded favorable treatments to l...

This paper investigates import demand in East Asia. Estimating exchange rate elasticities for countries in the region is difficult because many imports are used to produce goods for re-export. An exchange rate appreciation that reduces East Asian exports will also reduce the demand for imported inputs that are used to produce exports. To correct fo...

This paper investigates the factors affecting the demand for ASEAN's labor-intensive exports. Results obtained using a panel data set including exports to 25 countries indicate that an appreciation in ASEAN countries would substantially reduce exports of clothing, furniture, and footwear. In addition, an increase in foreign income and an appreciati...

This paper traces the effects of the "East Asian Miracle", the 1997-1998 Asian Crisis, the recovery, and the 2008-2009 global financial crisis on ASEAN countries. It also considers how ASEAN countries can sustain growth by leveraging production networks to facilitate technology transfer. To achieve this, ASEAN countries need to maintain an environm...

The Federal Reserve currently has two legislated goals: price stability and full employment. The original Federal Reserve Act of 1913 contained no macroeconomic goals. Rather it instructed the Fed to prevent financial panics and bank runs by providing loans to the banking system. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Employment Act of 1946...

China's global current account surplus equaled 9% of Chinese GDP in 2006 and 11% of GDP in 2007. Many argue that a renminbi appreciation would help to rebalance China's trade. Using a panel dataset including China's exports to 33 countries we find that a 10% renminbi (RMB) appreciation would reduce ordinary exports by 12% and processed exports by l...

Many argue that the yuan needs to appreciate to rebalance the People’s Republic of China’s trade. However, empirical evidence on the effects of a CNY appreciation on the People’s Republic of China’s exports has been mixed for the largest category of exports, processed exports. Since much of the value-added of these goods comes from parts and compon...

This paper investigates the role that exchange rate changes can play in rebalancing transpacific trade. It presents evidence from a gravity model indicating that the exports from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the United States (US) are a key outlier in the global economy and that imbalances between the PRC and the US have remained large d...

Enormous trade surpluses are problematic for the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the rest of the world. They primarily stem from processing trade. This paper investigates how exchange rate changes would affect the PRC's imports for processing and processed exports. The results indicate that an appreciation throughout East Asian supply chain co...

Chinese policy-makers fear that an RMB appreciation will reduce low technology exports. We investigate this issue using data on China's exports to 30 countries. We find that an appreciation of the RMB would substantially reduce China's exports of clothing, furniture and footwear. We also find that an increase in foreign income, an increase in the C...

The U.S. functioned as an engine of growth until the financial crisis. Now, U.S. imports have plummeted. This paper considers whether East Asia can be an engine of growth. Using data on consumption imports from 27 countries, the results indicate that income increases in East Asian countries would cause large increases in imports. The evidence also...

Trade imbalances between Japan and the U.S. could cause the yen to appreciate against the dollar. Evidence presented here indicates that this could increase the U.S. trade deficit with Japan. An appreciation of the yen against the dollar would also cause the yen to appreciate against the RMB and other currencies in East Asia with heavily managed ex...

East Asia is characterized by intricate production and distribution networks that allow fragmented production blocks to be allocated across countries based on comparative advantage. These networks have produced enormous efficiency gains. Exchange rate volatility, by increasing uncertainty, may reduce the locational benefits of cross-border fragment...

Business cycles in different regions of the United States tend to synchronize. This study investigates the reasons behind this synchronization of business cycles and the consequent formation of a national business cycle. Trade between regions may not be strong enough for one region to "drive" business cycle fluctuations in another region. This stud...

In 2005 55% of China's exports were "processed exports" produced using intermediate goods that came from other countries. The lion's share of the volume of imports for processing and of the value-added of processed exports came from other East Asian countries. We investigate how a unilateral appreciation of the RMB and a joint appreciation of count...

East Asia is characterized by intricate production and distribution networks. Higher skilled workers in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan produce sophisticated technology-intensive intermediate goods and capital goods and ship them to China and ASEAN for assembly by lower skilled workers and reshipment throughout the world. These networks have promote...

The U.S. trade deficit with China exceeded $200 billion in 2005. Many blame these imbalances on the value of the renminbi. This paper investigates how an appreciation of the RMB would affect the U.S. trade balance with China. Johansen MLE and dynamic OLS results indicate that the long run real exchange rate coefficients for nominal exports and impo...

This paper investigates how monetary policy affects bank lending in Turkey. Kashyap and Stein (20003. Kashyap , A and Stein , J . 2000. What do a million observations on banks say about the transmission of monetary policy?. American Economic Review, 90: 407–28. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references) show that if contractionary monetar...

In the United States, the primary institutions of trade protection are the congress, the president, and the bureaucracy. Within the interest group theory of politics, these institutions play the role of brokers (see Rowley et al., 1995). Voters and special interests demand protection, offering the brokers votes and campaign contributions in exchang...

Inflation targeting has become an increasingly popular strategy for setting monetary policy during the last decade.While no countries had formal inflation targets before 1990, currently 22 countries use inflation targeting. One notable exception is the United States, where the Federal Reserve has a dual mandate to pursue both price stability and fu...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) passed Congress amidst contentious debate in 1993. Detractors argued that it would produce an exodus of jobs while proponents argued that it would create jobs. We examine the economic effects of NAFTA. The evidence indicates that while the employment effects have been small, NAFTA has caused an explos...

Krugman used the Bernanke-Gertler model to explain the Asian Crisis. This model implies that macroeconomic shocks can decrease credit creation by reducing firms' creditworthiness or by eroding bank capital. Foreign banks in Indonesia should be less likely to restrict credit following macroeconomic shocks because they employ better risk management p...

Kitchen examines how US budget deficit news affects asset prices and concludes that news of lower deficits reduces the inflation risk premium. This paper constructs narrative histories of several deficit-reduction laws to identify when markets learned that deficits would fall. It then estimates a multi-factor model that allows the inflation risk pr...

The Federal Reserve currently pursues both price stability and full employment. Congress is debating whether to make price stability the overriding goal of monetary policy. This paper argues against such a change for several reasons. First, under the current mandate the U.S. has experienced low inflation and low unemployment, while many inflation-t...

There are solid theoretical reasons, based on concepts such as “ladder effects”, to believe that disinflationary monetary policy disproportionately burdens low-income individuals. Minority groups in the U.S. tend to have lower incomes than whites. An implication of this wage gap is that the burden of contractionary monetary policy should fall on mi...

Stock and bond prices plummeted in early 1994. These losses occurred while the Fed was raising interest rates. Campbell (1995) argues that the Fed could have triggered the losses either by increasing the risk premium associated with monetary policy uncertainty or by communicating information about incipient inflation. This paper uses a multi-factor...

Without Abstract

The performance of the U.S. economy between 1994 and 1998 was so good that some pundits began to call for the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates to depress economic activity and reduce asset prices. Using a combination of methods the author argues that slowing the economy to stabilize asset prices would have adverse distributional effects....

We use a multi-factor asset pricing model to investigate whether fluctuations in industry stock returns are due to industry stock returns are due to industry-specific shocks or to monetary and other macroeconomic factors. We find that common factors explain a substantial portion of the variation in stock returns, indicating that economic fluctuatio...

Macroeconomists traditionally focus on the aggregate consequences of disinflationary monetary policy, not its distributional effects. This paper considers these distributional effects. The evidence indicates that contractionary monetary policy harms interest rate-sensitive industries by depressing output and employment and increasing the cost of ca...