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TWN Info Service on Finance and Development
(Jan11/02) Right exchange rate indicator key to tackle
global imbalances Geneva, 13 Jan (Kanaga Raja) -- A Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) based on unit labour costs is better suited to grasp changes in competitiveness than one based on consumer price inflation, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has argued. In its latest policy brief (No. 19, January 2011), UNCTAD said that an REER based on consumer price inflation misses out important elements of the catching-up process of developing countries and may result in significant misinterpretation for some important emerging economies such as China. UNCTAD noted that in December 2010 in Seoul, the G-20 leaders acknowledged the need for a coordinated multilateral response to global trade imbalances and asked for "indicative guidelines composed of a range of indicators" which "would serve as a mechanism to facilitate timely identification of large imbalances that require preventive and corrective action to be taken" (paragraph 9 of the Seoul Summit Declaration). UNCTAD said that this is very much in line with its recent proposals. It has recommended the use of the REER as a practical and effective indicator to differentiate between sustainable and unsustainable trade imbalances. According to the policy brief, UNCTAD has argued in recent years for the rule of Real Effective Exchange Rates as a simple and viable system for averting exchange rate misalignment and the prevention of carry trade based on currencies. The REER rule would be enforced by multilateral agreement on the appropriate pattern of exchange rates and by direct central bank action to maintain this pattern. The policy brief draws attention to at least two important technical problems that need to be addressed in order to implement such a scheme. A central problem is the determination of the level and range of nominal exchange rates as a starting point of this mechanism. Determining the appropriate "original equilibrium exchange rate", will require a detailed investigation into the absolute purchasing power of all currencies. UNCTAD said that it will develop a proposal to address this question in due course. The policy brief on the other hand focuses on the second problem - identifying the right indicator to be used as the basis for the real exchange rate calculation. The policy brief says that there can be significant differences in the measurement of the real exchange rate, depending on whether it is calculated on the traditional basis of changes in the consumer price index (CPI) or on changes in unit labour costs (ULC). Depicting these two indicators for the four biggest countries in terms of economic power as measured by GDP, using 1995 (a year with low trade imbalances among the G-20) as the base year, the policy brief finds that on both counts, the real exchange rates of Japan and Germany indicate a significant gain of competitiveness compared to the base year. Despite the persistent surpluses of these two economies and the recent nominal appreciation of the Japanese Yen, their real exchange rates did not significantly appreciate in the subsequent years, it notes. On the other hand, said UNCTAD, the US dollar
appreciated sharply in real terms between 1995 and 2001, together with
high and further rising current account deficits. Although the For these three countries, the two measures move more or less in tandem, indicating that urgent policy action is required to reduce imbalances by realigning nominal exchange rates to the domestic cost level. The policy brief notes that for UNCTAD said that to some extent this trend may have been influenced by the different weights used to calculate the Chinese CPI, which some observers believe require updating. By contrast, however, the ULC-based REER appreciated sharply since 1994. It rose consistently and strongly between 2000 and 2010, indicating an overall loss of competitiveness of some 40 percent in these years. Stressing that while the data used for this exercise does not cover the whole of the Chinese labour force, the policy brief says that there are strong indications from several sources that wages in the Chinese economy have risen quickly in recent years. An important gauge of this trend is booming private consumption, which would not have been possible without strongly rising nominal and real wages. The divergence between the two indicators has
to be fully understood before Based on the ULC-REER, The brief notes that this discrepancy is less
surprising when the particularities of More than 60 per cent of all Chinese exports emanate
from affiliates of foreign firms. Most of them use This combination warrants extraordinarily high profit margins and allows companies using this production hub to conquer global markets by means of lower costs and prices, says the policy brief. Even if nominal and real wages and the ULC rise
strongly, as they did in The brief explains that a huge amount of so-called greenfield-investment in fixed capital is searching for cheap factors of production, and in particular cheap labour. This kind of FDI moves technologies with a high capital intensity, or at least a capital intensity much higher than hitherto applied in the low-wage countries. If labour in these countries is mobile or wages are set centrally and are following the domestic productivity trend, the overall level of wages in the country of destination is influenced by the import of this kind of FDI slowly, namely to the extent of the impact that an individual investment has on the overall level of productivity. In this case, the brief adds, unit labour costs for a single production unit applying the new imported technology will normally drop remarkably. For example, an average industrial production
site in Even if the productivity of the imported plant
is not as high as in According to the policy brief, this implies that products can be either sold on the world market at very low prices or at "normal" prices, realized with high profit margins. If more and more intermediate products are relocated to the low wage country, the overall cost level will drop significantly to reach its maximum once the whole production chain is relocated. UNCTAD stressed that as unit labour costs are the most important determinant of competitiveness between countries and regions with less mobile labour, the monopoly rents or the gains in market shares that the foreign investor is able to realize by cutting prices up to the full extent of the possible cost reduction are extraordinary. In However, even in such cases the monopoly position of the foreign investor recedes only slowly as the process of catching-up takes many years or even decades, given the low original level of wages and the low domestic capital stock compared to the most advanced economies. The absolute competitive advantage enjoyed by foreign investors who are able to combine high technology with low wages in a low-wage environment is an advantage vis-a-vis those competitors with the same level of capital equipment in advanced economies and vis-a-vis those competitors enjoying low prices of labour in developing economies but having no access to high level technology, said UNCTAD. Consequently, says the brief, the strategy of some early catching-up developing countries in Asia (Japan and Korea) and of China to combine the advantage of having a well educated but low-paid labour force with imported high technology (in China, mainly driven by FDI, in the other countries, by industrial policy) is without parallel. Undervaluation is not a necessary complement for the success of such a strategy. UNCTAD underscored that accusations against "Real effective exchange rate changes are the most reliable measure to estimate the impact of domestic costs on trade flows and imbalances." Even if some uncertainty concerning the validity
of the data is taken into account, Given the special circumstances of If, as occurred in If the REER based on a price index remains unchanged, the economic situation of producers who choose to accept falling profit margins to maintain their trade volumes deteriorates, said UNCTAD. To "find a mechanism to facilitate timely identification of large imbalances that require preventive and corrective action" is crucial for the future of world trade. Trade cannot be made an effective tool to foster growth and reduce poverty if the global community fails to find such a mechanism, which must be based on sober theory and thoughtful analysis, the policy brief concludes. +
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