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In this paper, we investigate responses of East Asian currencies to the US dollar depreciation in the near future. First, we show that a significant depreciation of the US dollar will be necessary in order to reduce the current account deficits. Second, we show that the responses of the East Asian currencies to a sudden and sharp depreciation of the US dollar will differ with countries because of the different degree of linkages of the East Asian currencies to the US dollar. Based on the above analyses, a regional coordination of the exchange rate policy is necessary to the East Asian countries to response appropriately to a possible depreciation of the US dollar in the near future.

The United States have been faced with the increasing current account deficits in the recent years. Its current account deficits were recorded over 6% of GDP in 2005. We remember that the current account deficits were over 3% of GDP in the mid of 1980s when the US dollar made a large depreciation after the Plaza Accord in September 1985. It is regarded that the recent current account deficits are going beyond a dangerous level by comparing the recent situation with that in the mid of 1980s. Some researchers question whether the current account deficits of the United States are sustainable in the current level of the exchange rates of the US dollar because the current account deficits began to increase again and have reached to 6% of GDP.1 Now, we might need another “Plaza Accord” once again. However, we have already observed the recent appreciations of the euro, the Japanese yen, and some East Asian currencies which are floating against the US dollar, and the simultaneous depreciation of the other East Asian currencies, which are fixed with dollar, against the above currencies. The asymmetric responses to the US dollar depreciation were pointed out by Ogawa (2004). In this paper, we show that some depreciation of the US dollar against the other currencies is necessary in order to reduce the US current account deficits from the current level to the permissible range, say 2 or 3% of GDP. Then, we make estimation of the linkages between the East Asian currencies and the US dollar to point out that the US dollar depreciation will have asymmetric effects on the East Asian currencies.2 This paper contains the following analyses. First, we estimate the vector autoregression (VAR) models which contain the exchange rates of the US dollar and the current account components in the next section.3 Second, we conduct the regressions a laFrankel and Wei (1994) to estimate linkages of the East Asian currencies to the US dollar with considering the effects of the infrequent revaluation in Section 3. Then we discuss the implications to the exchange rate regimes of the East Asian region. Based on the above analyses, we conclude this paper in the last section.

In this paper, we investigate whether the US dollar depreciation is necessary to reduce the US current account deficits and how the depreciation of the US dollar influences the East Asian currencies. First, this paper shows that a significant depreciation of the US dollar will be necessary in order to reduce the current account deficits. We obtain the robust results that the current account hardly responses to the exchange rate shock from both the views of international trade and the view of domestic saving–investment balance. Accordingly, a sharp depreciation of the US dollar is necessary in order to reduce the US current account deficits to a permissible level.7 Second, we show that the responses of the East Asian currencies to a sudden and sharp depreciation of the US dollar will differ with countries because the linkages of the East Asian currencies to the US dollar are different among the East Asian countries. From our analysis, the Chinese yuan, the Hong Kong dollar, the Vietnamese dong still have very high linkages to the US dollar while the Singapore dollar and the Brunei dollar began to decrease the linkages to the US dollar and its level is relatively low. Based on the above analyses, a regional coordination of the exchange rate policy is necessary to the East Asian countries to response appropriately to a possible depreciation of the US dollar in the future.8 The Chinese monetary authority announced its exchange rate system reform, which include adoption of a managed float system with reference to a currency basket on July 21, 2005. Implementation of the reform should make sense for the regional coordination because it is pointed out that a currency basket system is desirable for East Asian countries. Moreover, the implementation might lead to solution of “coordination failure” in choosing exchange rate system among the East Asian countries.