MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY ------------------------------ LÊ THỤY PHƯƠNG TÂM THE EFFECT OF TRADE AND FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION ON INFLATION VOLATILITY Master thesis in Economic HO CHI MINH - 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY ------------------------------ LÊ THỤY PHƯƠNG TÂM THE EFFECT OF TRADE AND FINANCIAL LIBERALIZATION ON INFLATION VOLATILITY Major: Finance - Banking Major code: 60340201 MASTER THESIS IN ECONOMIC Supervisor: Đinh Thị Thu Hồng, Ph.D HO CHI MINH - 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Declaration of Originality I certify that this thesis is entirely my own work, based on my personal study and research and that I have acknowledged all material and sources used in its preparation, whether they be books, articles, reports, and any other kind of document. I also certify that this thesis has not previously been submitted for assessment in any form to the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City or to any other institution for any other purposes. Ho Chi Minh, 12 October 2017 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Table of Contents SUB COVER PAGE DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF TABLES LIST OF FIGURES ABSTRACT CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND RESEARCH QUESTION.
Inflation and Inflation Volatility. Trade Liberalization and Inflation Volatility. Financial Liberalization and Inflation Volatility. Inflation and Inflation Volatility.
Trade Liberalization and Inflation. Trade Liberalization and Inflation Volatility. Financial Liberalization and Inflation. Trade and Financial Liberalization simultaneously and Inflation.
DATA AND METHODOLOGY .28 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. LIBERALIZATION AND INFLATION VOLATILITY. Effect of trade and Financial Liberalization joinly. Adding further controls.
Varying the data frequency. Varying the Inflation Volatility using annual data. Varying the measurement for Financial Liberalization. IN REFERENCE TO VIETNAM.55 REFERENCES APPENDIX LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com List of Abbreviations CPI: Consumer Price Index FEM: Fixed effect model FO: Financial openness GDP: Gross Domestic Product GMM: Generalized method of moments GNP: Gross National Product GEXP: Government expenditure growth GROWTH: GDP per capita growth IFS: International Financial Statistic IMF: International Monetary Fund INF: Inflation OLS: ordinary least squares POP: Population REM: Random effect model RGDP: GDP per capita TO: Trade openness VINF: Inflation volatility VOL: GDP per capita volatility WDI: World Development Indicator WEO: World Economic Outlook WTO: World Trade Organization LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com List of Tables TABLE 3.2 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR MAIN VARIABLES.3 DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS FOR CONTROL VARIABLES USED IN ROBUSTNESS SECTION.4 CORRELATION MATRIX FOR MAIN AND CONTROL VARIABLES.1 REGRESSION RESULTS: TRADE OPENNESS AND INFLATION VOLATILITY.2 REGRESSION RESULTS: FINANCIAL OPENNESS AND INFLATION VOLATILITY.3 REGRESSION RESULTS: THE EFFECT OF TRADE OPENNESS AND FINANCIAL OPENNESS SIMULTANEOUSLY.4 ROBUSTNESS ANALYSIS: EFFECT OF TRADE AND FINANCIAL OPENNESS JOINTLY.5 ADDITIONAL CONTROLS: TRADE OPENNESS AND INFLATION VOLATILITY.6 ADDITIONAL CONTROLS: FINANCIAL OPENNESS AND INFLATION VOLATILITY.7 DIFFERENT DATA FREQUENCY: SIX-YEAR WINDOWS.8 DIFFERENT DATA FREQUENCY: SIX-YEAR ROLLING WINDOWS .9 INFLATION VOLATILITY USING ANNUAL CPI DATA.10 DE JURE MEASUREMENTS FOR FINANCIAL OPENNESS.1 REGRESSION RESULTS FOR VIETNAM.1 HAUSMAN TEST FOR THE FIRST MODEL WITH TRADE OPENNESS.2 HAUSMAN TEST FOR THE SECOND MODEL WITH FINANCIAL OPENNESS.3 CORRELATION MATRIX OF VARIABLES IN THE FIRST MODEL.4 CORRELATION MATRIX OF VARIABLES IN THE SECOND MODEL.5 MODIFIED WALD TEST FOR TRADE OPENNESS.6 MODIFIED WALD TEST FOR FINANCIAL OPENNESS.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.7 REGRESSION WITH DRISCOLL-KRAAY STANDARD ERRORS FOR TRADE OPENNESS.8 REGRESSION WITH DRISCOLL-KRAAY STANDARD ERRORS FOR FINANCIAL OPENNESS.9 UNIT-ROOT TEST FOR VINF .10 UNIT-ROOT TEST FOR TO .11 UNIT-ROOT TEST FOR FO .12 UNIT-ROOT TEST FOR RGDP .13 UNIT-ROOT TEST FOR GEXP .14 UNIT-ROOT TEST FOR VINFT1. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com List of Figures FIGURE 1.1 INFLATION FROM 1991 TO 2014.2 EXPORTS, IMPORTS AND FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS FROM 1991 TO 2014.1 SCATTER PLOTS BETWEEN TRADE OPENNESS AND INFLATION VOLATILITY.2 SCATTER PLOTS BETWEEN FINANCIAL OPENNESS AND INFLATION VOLATILITY.1 INFLATION, TRADE AND FINANCIAL OPENNESS IN VIETNAM .53 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Abstract This thesis provides evidence for the relationships between trade liberalization and inflation volatility, and between financial liberalization and inflation volatility. Using a set of dynamic panel data for 142 emerging market and developing countries over the period of 1991-2014, this research finds statistically significant associations between each openness variables and inflation volatility. The robustness analyses also consider other control variables, different time windows and different measurements for inflation volatility as well as financial liberalization.
The same result is consistently observed for both trade and financial openness, suggesting that trade and financial liberalization are associated with lower inflation volatility. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Introduction and Research Question 1. Introduction Inflation and its volatility are some of the most important figures which have received lots of attention from economic experts as they affect economic stability and development.
Economists and monetary policy practitioners generally recognize that low levels of inflation and its volatility would render efficient and grown economy. Bruno and Easterly (1998) suggests that high inflation is harmful to the economy. In addition, many previous studies reveal the adverse effects of high inflation such as declines in real wage, discouragement to investment, decreases in competitiveness, and reduction in the value of savings in the economy. While the belief that inflation is detrimental to the economy is strong, the topic of inflation volatility has also received great interests from scholars.
Elder (2004) and Fatás and Mihov (2005) suggest that high volatile rate of inflation can weaken economic growth throughout their studies. In fact, some other studies have suggested certain disturbing effects inflation volatility may impose on an economy (Golob, 1994 and Friedman, 1977) which will be discussed in more detail in the later sections. Because the impacts inflation and inflation uncertainty put on real things (e. investments and returns), controlling for both inflation and its uncertainty is critical to macroeconomic policies.
In the past decades, the world has experienced two distinctive economic trends. First, on average, many countries have seen signs of disinflation over the years. Second, countries have liberalized their trade policies so that they are engaged in more trades across the globe. Beside the rises in liberalization of trade, increases in international capital flows have also been observed recently (Ball, 2006).
Lane and Milesi-Ferretti (2006) observe a rapid expansion of both foreign portfolio investment (FPI) and foreign direct investment (FDI) since the 1990s. Data taken from the World Economic Outlook (WEO) database is used to illustrate the mentioned trends.1 represents the percentage change in inflation while LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 shows volume of exports and imports as well as net financial transactions. As can be seen from figure 1.1, inflation for the world on average shows a downward trend. A trend line, drawn for inflation in emerging market and developing countries, also show a strong decreasing trend.2 illustrates considerable increasing trends in exports, imports and financial transactions for emerging market and developing countries.
Volume of trade and net financial transactions are calculated in U. Even though the graph shows various fluctuations, the trend lines do show increases in trades and financial transactions.1 Inflation from 1991 to 2014.1 Scatter plots with smoothing lines for the percentage change in inflation based on average consumer prices for emerging market and developing countries, advanced economies and the World from 1991 to 2014. The linear trend line is also shown for emerging market and developing economies. Data source: The World Economic Outlook database, April 2017 edition.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Exports, Imports and Financial transactions from 1991 to 2014.2 Scatter plots for the volume of total export and import and net financial transactions for emerging market and developing countries from 1991 to 2014. Data is in billions of U. Data source: The World Economic Outlook database, April 2017 edition. Despite the existence of this recent phenomenon, empirical studies in the past have mostly focused on the effect of trade liberalization, but not on financial liberalization.
In this thesis, the main objective is to examine the relationship between economic liberalization and inflation volatility aiming to confirm if the three mentioned trends are indeed related. Particularly, it is of interest to investigate the influences of trade and financial liberalization on inflation volatility for emerging market and developing countries. There exist several studies that relate inflation to other variables such as political instability (Aisen and Veiga, 2007), central bank independence (Cukierman et al, LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 1992), exchange rate regimes (Bleaney and Fielding, 2002) and fiscal policies (Rother, 2004). The relation between economic openness and inflation remains one of the most widely researched topics.
Many researchers find that trade openness leads to lower inflation figures when it is expanded (Romer, 1993 and Lane, 1997). Romer finds that in a more open economy, government generates more revenue from a given tariff so that governments become less dependent on other sources of revenue such as seignorage. As a result, the costs of inflation would be larger in more open economies, thus reduce inflationary shocks generated by policy makers. Empirically, previous finding with regards to this relationship is contrasting.
While Romer (1993), Lane (1997), Gruben and McLeod (2004) support negative links, Narayan, Narayan and Mishra (2011) propose a positive effect. Alfaro (2005) and Shambaugh and Klein (2010) did not find any statistically significant effect of trade liberalization on inflation. In regards to financial openness (capital flow openness), financial openness brings possibilities for risk reduction by diversifying portfolio and consumption smoothing. Besides, it may have an effect on policy makers’ decisions to undertake better monetary policies.
As pointed out by Bartolini and Drazen (1997), they suppose that capital flow openness provides more access to foreign capital, increases the elasticity of demand for money, reduces the incentive to print money excessively and decreases inflation rate. In the beginning of 1990s, there was a general belief that relaxation of capital controls brings benefits similar to relaxation of trade barriers (Gupta, 2008). After the financial crisis, the relationship between financial openness and inflation became questionable since worst affected countries were the ones that adopt financial liberalization. Empirical studies have also showed ambiguous findings.
In particular, Gruben and McLeod (2002) and Tytell and Wei (2004) present that capital account openness tends to reduce inflation. Rodrik (1998) concludes that there is no proof of association. McKinnon and Mathieson (1981), in contrast, suggested that the imposition of capital controls reduces inflation. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 On the one hand, the relation between openness and inflation volatility has been studied by some economists, nevertheless the number of the studies is not abundant.
Most of their studies focus on the relation between trade openness and inflation volatility (Granato, 2006 and Bowdler and Malik, 2015). Bowdler and Malik (2015) find an evidence for a negative impact of trade openness on volatility of inflation. On the other hand, it is difficult to find a study about the effect of financial openness on inflation volatility. To the best of my knowledge, there have been very few studies which examine the effect of both trade and financial liberalization on inflation.
Ghosh (2014) used both de jure and de facto measurements to show how inflation is influenced by openness and exchange rate regimes. Badinger (2008) provides evidence on the link between inflation and globalization, referred to as trade and financial liberalization. This thesis aims to close the literature gap by conducting a research about the effect of both trade and financial liberalization on inflation volatility. This will give information on the ultimate relationship between openness and inflation volatility.
In this thesis, a dynamic panel model using a dataset spanning 142 countries, which are emerging market and developing countries, in the world from 1991 to 2014 is used. The results indicate that liberalization of trade and financial are associated with lower inflation volatility.