MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS, HO CHI MINH CITY FULBRIGHT ECONOMICS TEACHING PROGRAM --------------------------- Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen IS INFLATION TARGETING APPROPRIATE FOR VIETNAM? MASTER IN PUBLIC POLICY DISSERTATION Ho Chi Minh City, 2012 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS, HO CHI MINH CITY FULBRIGHT ECONOMICS TEACHING PROGRAM --------------------------- Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen IS INFLATION TARGETING APPROPRIATE FOR VIETNAM? Public Policy Major Code: 603114 MASTER IN PUBLIC POLICY DISSERTATION SUPERVISOR Dr. PINCUS Ho Chi Minh - 2012 i CERTIFICATION I certify that I wrote this thesis myself. I certify that the study has not been submitted for any other degrees. I certify that any help received and all sources used have been acknowledged in this thesis with the best of my knowledge.
The study does not necessarily reflect the views of the Ho Chi Minh City Economics University or Fulbright Economics Teaching Program. Author Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This master of public policy dissertation could not be completed if I have not received the help and encouragement from many people. First, I am very grateful to my supervisor, Dr. Pincus, who kept an eye on the progress of my work and was always helpful when I need his advice.
His advices, supports, criticisms and comments helped me to deeply understand the overall knowledge related my dissertation. I also convey a special thank to Dr. Vu Thanh Tu Anh, the first teacher who encourange me to begin this dissertation and many other teachers that were always support me during the time I studied in Fulbright Economic Teaching Programme. I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of FETP, without which this dissertation would not have been done.
I also express my thankfulness to my colleagues in the Monetary Policy Department, State Bank of Vietnam who are very helpful and enthusiastic colleagues, for their sharing experiences and data to complete the dissertation. I also would like to convey special thanks to Mr. Nguyen Xuan Thanh, Mrs. Nguyen Thi Kim Chau, Mr.
Tran Thanh Phong, Mr. Tran Thanh Thai, Mr. Truong Minh Hoa and Ms. Hoang Ngoc Lan, who assisted me a lot of things in terms of adminstration to stabilize the study here.
At the same time, I owe a large debt of gratitude to my parents and mother-in- law, who helped to arrange family works for me to study. Last, I thank my husband and daughters for their patience and support for me. iii CONTENTS CERTIFICATION. v LIST OF GRAPHS.
vi LIST OF TABLES. viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. 1 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL OVERVIEW ON I. Supporting ideas for I.
The model of I. Issues in the implementation of I. Global evidence on I. The prerequisites of I.
Experiences of inflation targeters .1 Experiences of industrial country inflation targeters.2 Experiences of developing country inflation targeters. 20 CHAPTER 3: THE MONETARY POLICY FRAMEWORK IN VIETNAM.1 Independence of SBV .2 Monetary policy implementation in Vietnam .2 Monetary policy transmission mechanism .3 The strategy of monetary policy .4 Monetary policy effectiveness .T PREREQUISITES FOR VIETNAM .1 A small, open economy with liberalized capital and trade .2 Dollarization and goldization .3 Exchange rate pass-through effect.2 Health of the financial system .3 Analytical capability of SBV .4 Central bank independence. 39 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS .2 REER monetary policy framework is also problematic. 47 v ABBREVIATIONS ADB Asian Development Bank CBI Central Bank Indepedence CPI Consumer Price Index FCD Foreign Currency Deposits FDI Foreign Direct Investment Fed Federel Reserve System FII Foreign Indirect Investment GDP Gross Domestic Products GSO General Statistics Office I.T Inflation Targeting IFS International Funds Statistics IMF International Monetary Fund MoF Ministry of Finance NCM New Concensus Macroeconomics NEER Nominal Effective Exchange Rate OECD Organization for Economic Coorperation and Development OLS Ordinary Least Square RER Real Exchange Rate REER Real Effective Exchange Rate SBV State Bank of Vietnam U.K United Kingdom USD United State Dollar VAR Vector Autoregression VND Vietnam Dong WB World Bank vi LIST OF GRAPHS Graph 3.1: Velocity of money in Vietnam .2: CPI, M2 and GDP growth rate of Vietnam .3: REER, NEER and Relative CPI of Vietnam .1: Trade deficit and openness of Vietnam economy.2: Capital inflow structure in Vietnam .3: USD/VND Exchange Rate .4 : Dollarization in Vietnam .5: Stock market capitalization in some countries .6 : Bond market development in Vietnam .7: Seigniorage to GDP in Vietnam .8: Real deposite rate in Vietnam .9: Fiscal balance to GDP in Vietnam.
42 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Exchange rate adjustment milestones of SBV .2: Total reserves in months of imports in Vietnam. 28 viii ABSTRACT Monetary policy is one of the most crucial macroeconomic policies in an economy in general and in Vietnam in particular. Considering the low effectiveness of monetary policy in Vietnam, many economists think that inflation targeting (I.T) is a best choice for the future. The dissertation takes a comprehensive look at the I.T framework in theoretical and empirical terms, the conditions as well as the global experiences in industrial and developing countries.
In theory, the I.T model does not mention other determinants of inflation such as real shocks, exchange rate movements and fiscal roots. It is surprising that although I.T is applied nearly everywhere but not all countries are successful and I.T is often not the key determinant of success. Other factors are also important, such as fiscal descipline, the economic structure, financial system strength, central bank indepedence and political support for the inflation target. The disseration also tests the conditions of Vietnam using some prerequisites for I.T suggested by the IMF and finds that Vietnam is not suitable for this framework because the country’s economic characteristics include a weak financial system and a lack of central bank indepedence.
Although the experience in some successful countries like Chile and South Korea show that those conditions are not wholly met in these countries, at least Chile and South Korea had good fiscal discipline and central bank independence. In Vietnam, fiscal dominance exists with continuous fiscal deficits. Thus, to improve the prevailing monetary policy framework, I.T may not be the best choice for Vietnam. REER targeting is an alternative but it is also problematic.
Vietnam is a highly open economy with a high pass-through effect and dollarization. The dissertation recommends that at first Vietnam should improve institutional conditions for monetary policy and strengthen financial markets, and at the same time restructure the economy and impose fiscal discipline on the government.T or REER targeting or another monetary framework will depend on political considerations and the desired balance between growth and price stability. 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Monetary policy is one of the most important macroeconomic policies in an economy. The prevailing monetary policy framework in Vietnam now is a mix exchange rate peg and monetary framework.
But the effectiveness of monetary policy in Vietnam is not easy to estimate as the central bank must target several objectives, including low inflation, rapid growth and exchange rate stability. Besides, inflation has returned to Vietnam in recent years and makes many economists think of I.T as the best choice but it related many choices and conditions. These are the dynamics for me to carry out this dissertation to answer the following questions: First, is inflation targeting (I.T) appropriate for Vietnam? Why and why not? And second, what are the implications for Vietnam’s monetary policy framework? The dissertation uses institutional analysis of monetary policy, case studies, descriptive statistics and results of other qualitative researchs to answer research questions. The secondary data used are macroeconomics fundamentals and finance data in Vietnam in the period 2000-2010.T is applied in many industrial as well as developing countries and the adoption of I.T based on specific theoretical framework and some key assumptions regarding institutional prerequisites to using the inflation rate as a nominal anchor.
There are very few research mentioning adoption I.T in Vietnam (Le Anh Tu Packard, 2007; Mai Thu Hien, 2007) and most of them gave general suggestions only. The objectives of the dissertation is to comprehensively look at the theoretical and empirical evidence on I.T to see if I.T is a really superior monetary policy regime for central banks, then examine the prerequisites, experiences of inflation targeters and the conditions in Vietnam in order to give policy implications for Vietnam. The dissertation finds that I.T is not a perfect regime in both theory and practice, the success of I.T depends on the institutional and economic conditions in individual country. The most common feature in successful developing inflation targeters like Chile and Korea is the strict fiscal rule and central bank independence.
However, the institutional conditions in Vietnam shows that Vietnam does not yet meet the requirements for adopting I. Therefore, the dissertation finds that Vietnam’s monetary policy need transparency, accountability, coherence and communication first. Then, the dissertation recommends institutional reforms before adopting I.T or any other monetary policy 2 regime. After the conditions for conducting monetary policy have improved, the adoption of I.T will depend on political considerations, in other words, whether the government is willing to target inflation even at the cost of slower economic growth, exchange rate volatility and high interest rates.
3 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL OVERVIEW ON I.T starts from the simple premise that the primary goal of monetary policy is to achieve and maintain a low and stable rate of inflation (Masson et al.T became popular in 1990s it actually appeared much earlier. 8) notes that price targets can be traced back to the last century – to Marshall (1887) and Wicksell (1898), Fisher (1911) and Keynes (1923). In the 1990s, there was a wave of countries trying to adopt I.T as a monetary policy framework. This section will discuss the theoretical foundations of I.T, and then summarize the global evidence on the implementation and evaluation of I.
Supporting ideas for I.T So far, there is much research and debate on I.T as a monetary policy framework. One supporting idea is that inflation is very costly and monetary policy is neutral in the medium and long run, or monetary policy affects only the price level, and not output and unemployment. (Friedman, 1967, quoted in Mishkin, 1997, p. 5) famously made the case that there is no Phillips curve trade-off between unemployment and inflation in the long run because inflation expectations counter-act the effects of monetary and fiscal policy.
Expectations can shift the Phillip curve upward, and hence there is no long run trade-off between inflation and unemployment. An unemployment rate below the natural rate of unemployment cannot be realized with permanently high inflation. In his Nobel prize address (1967), Milton Friedman says that in the long run, higher inflation leads to higher unemployment and the Phillip curve may be upward sloped. Another supporting opinion (Mishkin, 1997, pp.
2-9) is that expansionary monetary policy can not reduce unemployment whenever it increases above the “full- employment level” because complicated macroeconomics models can not accurately predict the impact of monetary policy on aggregate economy because of some problems. First among these is the long lags associated with monetary policy. Indeed, the effects of monetary policy are highly uncertain so using expansionary monetary policy to affect the economy can even be counterproductive. Most politicians focus on the short run and tend to fall into the trap of over-manipulating policy levers as they always want policy to 4 have immediate impact on the economy.
The result is overheating and inflationary pressure on the economy. Second is the time-inconsistency problem. A common way for making policy decisions is to assume that expectations are formed at the time the policy is made. In fact, firms and workers not only change their expectation but also wages and prices.
Thus output may not increase but actual inflation does. In short, these economists think that I.T as monetary policy framework can be a good choice for central banks. The model of I.T In terms of theoretical foundations, I.