Analysis on β and σ Convergences of East Asian Currencies

This paper focuses on recent events which include the RMB reform in China and the global financial crisis to investigate statistically recent diverging trends among East Asian currencies. For the purpose, their weighted average value (Asian Monetary Unit: AMU) and their deviations (AMU Deviation Indicators) from benchmark levels are used to analyze both β and σ convergences of East Asian currencies. Our analytical results show that the monetary authority of China has still kept stabilizing the exchange rate of the Chinese yuan against only the US dollar even though it announced its adoption of a managed floating exchange rate system with reference to a currency. Analytical results on β and σ convergences show that deviations among the East Asian currencies have been diverging in recent years, especially after 2005. The widening deviations reflect not the RMB reform but recent international capital flows and the global financial crisis. In addition, it is important as its background that the monetary authorities of the countries are adopting a variety of exchange rate systems. In other words, a coordination failure in adopting exchange rate systems among these monetary authorities increases volatility and misalignment of intra-regional exchange rates in East Asia.