Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics

Joshua Aizenman · Gazi Salah. Uddin · Tianqi Luo · Ranadeva Jayasekera · Donghyun Park ·NBER Working Paper Series ·2022 ·JEL: E52,E58,F42

This paper examines whether prudential policies help to reduce sovereign bond vulnerability to global spillover risk in ASEAN-4 countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand). We measure sovereign vulnerability within a risk connectedness network among sovereign bonds. The direct effect is that markets with tighter prudential policies have significantly smaller spillovers from the Treasury yield shocks of other regional and global economies. The sum of indirect and direct effects indicates that prudential policies reduce sovereign spillover risk in the long term. These findings suggest prudential policies have dual efficiency in sovereign risk regulation and Treasury internationalization.

Basem Ertim · Tamat Sarmidi · Norlin Khalid · Mohd Helmi Ali ·Asian Economics Letters ·2022

In an attempt to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, the Malaysian government imposed the Movement Control Order (MCO). To address the adverse impacts of the MCO policy, the Malaysian government initiated a series of recovery plans for both fiscal and monetary measures. This study aims to assess the government’s various policy measures on Malaysia’s leading macroeconomic indicators. Regardless of the differences in the gross domestic product (GDP) components, the real impacts on GDP growth are almost identical between Malaysia and a control group. This result is partly explained by the increase in total and domestic investment and private consumption.

Evan Lau · Alvina Lee Syn-Yee ·Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia ·2018

As with most of the world economy, the 2008/09 global financial crisis has brought massive impacts on Southeast Asian economies. The debt/GDP ratios in most economies rose significantly, thus putting the spotlight again on fiscal sustainability. This article aims to distinguish the reaction of the primary balance/GDP to changes in the debt/GDP to assess the fiscal sustainability of Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. In investigating how the respective governments react to the accumulation of debt, the article estimates the fiscal reaction function, initiated by Bohn (1998), using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Vector Autoregression (VAR). The empirical analysis reveals that, based on past behaviour, fiscal policy in Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines remains sustainable.

Y. Amjad · N.A.M Naseem · W.N.W. Azman-Saini · Tajul Ariffin Masron · K. Kriskkumar ·Jurnal Ekonomi Malaysia ·2018

Export has been considered as main contributor to economic growth in which also known as export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis. The purpose of this study is to identify the export-led growth nexus in Malaysia. Specifically, this study focuses on disaggregated level of exports such as export of goods and manufactured sectors. By using ARDL co-integration technique for data that covers from 1980 to 2015, the result discovers that exports have positive impact on economic growth, particularly at disaggregated levels of exports namely exports of goods and export of manufactured sectors. This further supports the validation of the export-led growth hypothesis, especially in small, open and dynamic economy like Malaysia. From policy point of view, Malaysia policy makers should give special focus to search for better catalyst of exports promotion strategy to continuously and effectively promote long-term economic growth.

Adam Abdullah ·Journal of King Abdulaziz University: Islamic Economics ·2020 ·JEL: E12, E31, E42, E52

The purpose of this study is to contrast two recent monetary reform proposals involving the neo-chartalist Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and the metallist Islamic Monetary Theory of Value (IMTV). Money is the common denominator for all economic transactions and yet, under the fiat standard, we have witnessed an exponential increase in prices and 425 instances of monetary, debt, and financial crises. Therefore, genuine monetary reform must protect the store of value function of money over the long term to protect wealth from confiscation by inflation thereby ensuring monetary and economic stability. This study adopts an MMT sectoral balance analysis of Malaysian macroeconomic data, as well as an IMTV analysis of Malaysian macroeconomic and gold price data to evaluate the effect on nominal and real prices. It finds that MMT provides no new insights about monetary theory, while making unsubstantiated claims about macroeconomic policy that would merely extend the highly inflationary monetary policies experienced under a centralized debt-based monetary system. Conversely, this study empirically establishes that a de-centralized monetary system based on the IMTV and the intrinsic value of pure gold (or silver), maintains its p

Chai-Thing Tan · Azali Mohamed · Muzafar Shah Habibullah · Lee Chin ·South Asian Journal of Macroeconomics and Public Finance ·2020 ·JEL: E52, E58, E62, C01

This article analyses the impact of monetary and fiscal policies on economic growth in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand from 1980:Q1 to 2017:Q1. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach is employed to determine the long-run relationship. Further, a range of econometric models, such as fully modified least squares method (FMOLS), canonical cointegration regression (CCR) and dynamic ordinary least squares method (DOLS), are applied to check the robustness. The results are stable and robust as all the models yield consistency result. The main findings in this study demonstrate that: (a) interest rate had a negative impact on economic growth in three selected countries.

Abdelkader O.El Alaoui · Hashim Bin Jusoh · Sheila Ainon Yussof · Mohamed Hisham Hanifa ·Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance ·2019

This paper, for the best of our knowledge, is the first attempt to assess the role of money in the Malaysian economy using wavelet techniques. To do so, a macroeconomic model-based policy rules has been formulated. In relation with the recurring financial crises, we analyse the relationship between the quantity of money, interest rate, inflation, exchange rate, index of industrial production and equity indices, in the case of Malaysia. In this analysis, UK economy aggregates are taken as benchmark. Therefore, the relationships between monetary policy variables and macroeconomic variables are evolving with time and have non-homogeneous trends across different time scales. Some strong correlations have been found in regard to Malaysian Monetary Policy using, major monetary aggregates; the quantity of Money, the interest rate and the exchange rate inducing some lead-lag interactions between those key variables. In addition, we analyse the effect of LIBOR on Malaysian interest rate (KLIBOR). We found that the KLIBOR is lagging behind the LIBOR in most of the time. In the end, some lessons will be drawn for the monetary policy in Malaysia, in terms of the high impact of the role of money and the expected implications regarding an effective Islamic monetary policy.

Tai-Hock Kuek · Chin-Hong Puah · M. Affendy Arip ·Journal of Central Banking Theory and Practice ·2020 ·JEL: C11, C32, C58, E44, G01

This study attempts to develop a financial vulnerability indicator serving as a composite indicator for the state of financial vulnerability. The indicator was constructed from 10 variables of macroeconomic, financial and property market by extracting a common vulnerability component through the dynamic approximate factor model. On the feedback and amplification effects, the outcome revealed that financial vulnerability shock catalysed significant negative effects on economic activity in a high-vulnerability regime, while the impact was negligible in periods of low vulnerability. This study highlighted the usefulness of composite indicators as an early warning mechanism to gauge vulnerabilities in the Malaysian financial system.

Sakiru Adebola Solarin · Shawkat Hammoudeh · Muhammad Shahbaz ·Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money ·2018 ·JEL: C58; E42; E43; G01; G21

This paper contributes to the existing empirical literature on savings and Islamic banking systems by comprehensively examining the determinants of Islamic banking deposits in Malaysia. Initially, we examine the factors affecting the deposits in Islamic banking by types, which include investment deposits, demand deposits, savings deposits, ringgit Tawarruq deposits, dollar Tawarruq deposits and negotiable instrument deposits. Additionally, we investigate the determinants of deposits in Islamic banking by holders including household deposits, business deposits, financial institution deposits, federal government deposits, state government deposits and statutory agency deposits. We also examine the factors affecting the total deposits in the Islamic banking system. After confirming that the variables are stationary in the first difference through the use of the residual augmented least squares (RALS) procedure of Meng et al. (2014), we use the break-augmented cointegration methods of Johansen et al. (2000) and Giles and Godwin (2012) to check the cointegrating relationships and generate the long run coefficients of the variables. The results show that industrial production index, real interest rates on fixed and savings deposits have positive impacts on several components of Islamic banking deposits and the total deposits of Islamic banks, while real interest rates on deposits in commercial banks have a negative impact. However, the roles of both the Shariah index and the real exchange rate are mixed.

Chee-Hong Law ·Applied Economics Letters ·2018 ·JEL: F21; F31; F40

Some observations have suggested that international reserves contribute to trilemma policy convergence in emerging countries. Nonetheless, this hypothesis needs more solid empirical evidence to determine its validity. This article tests this hypothesis by examining the relationships among the index of policy dispersion, international reserves and trade openness in a threshold model in Malaysia. As a small open economy, Malaysia has accumulated a relatively large amount of international reserves since the mid-1990s. The results indicate that the positive impact of international reserves on reducing policy dispersion or achieving policy convergence is found only if the international reserves are above a threshold. Hence, this conclusion supports the need to hold a relatively high level of international reserves in Malaysia.