Measuring External Risks for Peru: Insights from a Macroeconomic Model for a Small Open and Partially Dollarized Economy

Fei Han

doi:10.5089/9781498327220.001.A001

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Measuring External Risks for Peru

Insights from a Macroeconomic Model for a Small Open and Partially Dollarized Economy

Author: Mr. Fei Han¹

¹ 0000000404811396https://isni.org/isni/0000000404811396International Monetary Fund

Contributor Notes

Author’s E-Mail Address: fhan@imf.org

Publication Date:: 02 Sep 2014

eISBN:: 9781498327220

ISBN:: 9781498327220

Language:: English

Keywords:: WP; interest rate; exchange rate; monetary policy; inflation expectation; nominal exchange rate

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This paper quantifies the effects of external risks for Peru, with particular attention to two major external risks, China’s investment slowdown and the U.S. monetary policy tightening. In particular, a macroeconomic model for a small open and partially dollarized economy is developed and estimated for Peru to measure the risk spillovers, and simulate domestic macroeconomic responses in different scenarios with these two external risks. The simulation results suggest that Peru’s output is vulnerable to both risks, particularly the U.S. monetary policy tightening. Simulations also highlight the importance of higher exchange rate flexiblity and a lower degree of dollarization, which could help mitigate the negative spillover effects of these external risks.

Abstract

I. Introduction

As a small open economy, Peru is exposed to external shocks from its major trading partners, particularly China. China is one of Peru’s main trading partners, and the largest export destination country during 2011–12 (Figure 1a). In particular, 17 percent of Peru’s total exports went to China in 2012 (about 4 percent of GDP), of which 81 percent are metals (Figure 1b). According to data from the UN Commodity Trade Statistics, over a third of Peru’s copper exports, 64 percent of gold exports, and 22 percent of other mineral commodities went to China during 2008–12 (Figure 1c). However, China’s mineral imports from Peru including copper and gold are still at a relatively small share in its total mineral imports (Figure 1d).

As a partially dollarized economy, Peru is exposed to the monetary policy shocks in the U.S. By end-2013, about 38 percent of banking system liquidity and 42 percent of bank credit to the private sector in Peru were denominated in foreign currency, reflecting high financial dollarization (Figure 2a). Not surprisingly, Peru’s short-term interest rate denominated in U.S. dollars is highly correlated with the U.S. federal funds rate (Figure 2b).² Thus, U.S. monetary policy shocks that affect the federal funds rate might lead to significant impact on dollar-denominated domestic interbank interest rate and hence economic activity.

The IMF’s 2012 and 2013 Spillover Reports³ identified China’s investment slowdown and U.S. monetary policy normalization as two of the major global risks going forward. The 2012 Spillover Report found that China has significant spillover effects on its main trading partners and world prices, mainly through investment which has been a key driver of China’s economic growth and lower external surpluses. In particular, as mentioned in the 2012 Spillover Report, “a slowdown in China’s investment growth, while desirable to rebalance demand towards consumption in the medium term, could in the interim hit partners and world prices, especially if the adjustment were to be sharp and disorderly.” Furthermore, prompt normalization of U.S. monetary policy was also identified as one of the other main global spillover risks in the 2013 Spillover Report. As U.S. economy recovers, monetary policy should be tightened, and this will likely lead to capital flows into the U.S. and higher interest rates across the world, slowing economic growth. As a partially dollarized small open economy, Peru’s exposure to the U.S. monetary policy shock might be larger than that of a typical non-dollarized small open country.

There is limited literature on quantifying the exposure of Peru to China’s investment slowdown or U.S. monetary policy tightening. Salas (2010) proposed a simple macroeconomic model resembling the Quarterly Projection Model (QPM) developed by the Central Reserve Bank of Peru (BCRP), but no external shocks were considered. Ahuja and Nabar (2012) measured the spillover effects of China’s investment slowdown on main commodity exporters by estimating the direct trade exposures of each commodity exporter to China. However, as found in Annex IV of the IMF Staff Report for the 2013 Article IV Consultation with Peru (IMF, 2014), the main transmission channel of China’s spillovers to Peru is through its impact on world metal prices, and hence Peru’s terms of trade and economic activity (income effect), instead of the direct trade channel.

This paper uses a new-Keynesian macroeconomic model for a small open and partially dollarized economy to estimate and simulate Peru’s macroeconomic and policy responses to a temporary slowdown in China’s investment growth and a continued tightening of U.S. monetary policy. In particular, this paper develops a simple new-Keynesian type macroeconomic model consisting of an aggregate demand equation (or IS curve), an expectations-augmented Phillips curve, a Taylor-type monetary policy rule, and an uncovered interest parity (UIP) condition based on a similar model proposed by Salas (2010). We consider a temporary slowdown in China’s investment growth (henceforth, China’s investment slowdown) and a continued tightening of U.S. monetary policy (henceforth, U.S. monetary policy tightening) as the external shocks to be consistent with the 2012 and 2013 IMF Spillover Reports. In the model, Chinese and U.S. variables are treated exogenously.⁴ In addition, the model assumes that the spillovers from China’s investment slowdown are mainly transmitted through global metal prices and trade linkages, and the spillovers from U.S. monetary policy tightening are mainly transmitted through Peru’s short-term interest rate denominated in U.S. dollars and trade linkages. The model is then estimated to quantitatively measure these spillover channels, and simulated under different scenarios to generate the macroeconomic and policy responses.

China’s investment slowdown has significantly negative impact on world metal prices, and hence Peru’s terms of trade, economic growth and other core macroeconomic variables. More specifically, the model estimates suggest that a decrease in China’s investment growth by one standard deviation is likely to reduce Peru’s terms of trade (in gap terms) and output gap by about 2 and 0.2 percentage points, respectively, over the year after the shock cumulatively. The effect dies out in about three years.

The U.S. monetary policy tightening has significantly negative and long-lasting spillover effects on Peru’s U.S. dollar-denominated short-term interest rate, and hence economic growth and other core macroeconomic variables. In particular, simulations using the estimated model suggest that, depending on the magnitude and persistence of the U.S. monetary policy shock, the costs to Peru’s economic activity might be larger and more persistent than those from China’s investment slowdown, partly due to the non-temporary feature of the shock.

Higher exchange rate flexibility is likely to mitigate the impact of both external shocks. By allowing more room for the exchange rate to fluctuate, Peru can better use it as the first line of defense against external shocks, and significantly reduce their adverse impact. Simulations with the macroeconomic model suggest that, a more flexible nominal exchange rate (caused by, for instance, less foreign exchange intervention) is likely to reduce the spillover effects of the two external shocks on Peru’s output gap, particularly over the first year after the shock.⁵

A lower degree of dollarization can reduce the exposure of Peru to U.S. monetary policy tightening, and might be even more effective than a more flexible exchange rate. Considering the potential balance sheet effects of a more flexible exchange rate,⁶ macroprudential policies aiming at reducing credit dollarization, such as reserve requirements on foreign-currency denominated deposits and short-term external liabilities, might be more desirable for policy makers. Our model simulations with less dollarization suggest that these macroprudential measures could be even more effective than allowing the nominal exchange rate to fluctuate more widely.

This paper is organized as follows. The next section presents the macroeconomic model. Section III describes the data and estimation strategy of the model, and presents the estimation results. Section IV discusses the simulation exercises conducted in three scenarios, i.e. a baseline scenario, China scenario (where China’s investment growth slows down temporarily), and China and U.S. shock scenario (where, on top of the China scenario, the U.S. short-term interest rate rises permanently). In addition, more simulation exercises are conducted to examine the roles that exchange rate flexibility and dollarization can play. The final section concludes the paper.

II. A Macroeconomic Model for a Small Open and Partially Dollarized Economy

A new-Keynesian macroeconomic model for Peru is developed to analyze the macroeconomic responses in the context of a small open and partially dollarized economy. The model is based on a general equilibrium and rational expectations model developed by Salas (2010) and Berg et al. (2008), which can be characterized by a core set of behavioral equations. Since the model is relatively small compared to the traditional dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models and yet has a well-grounded economic interpretation (Berg et al., 2008), it has been used by the BCRP for policy making. The model has four building blocks, namely: (i) an IS curve or aggregate demand equation; (ii) an expectations-augmented Phillips Curve or aggregate supply equation; (iii) a Taylor-type monetary policy rule for the short-term interest rate; and (iv) an uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) condition. Three features of the model are worth noting. First, in the context of a small open economy, terms of trade and foreign output are included as exogenous variables in the aggregate demand equation. Second, in a partially dollarized economy, agents can take loans in U.S. dollars, thus the U.S. dollar-denominated short-term interest rate also enters the aggregate demand equation as an exogenous variable. Third, to capture the foreign exchange interventions conducted by the central bank, a backward-looking behavior in the determination of the exchange rate expectations is considered in the model.⁷

Aggregate demand. The aggregate demand or IS curve describing the dynamics of the output gap (y_t) is characterized in equation (1).

\begin{matrix} y_{t} = a_{y} y_{t - 1} + a (β_{r} r_{t} + β_{r^{$}} r_{t}^{$}) + a_{t o t} [β_{t o t} T o T_{t} + (1 - β_{t o t}) T o T_{t - 1}] + a_{q} q_{t} + a_{y^{*}} y_{t}^{*} + ɛ_{t}^{y} & (1) \end{matrix}

In this equation, r_t is the real interest rate in local currency, and $r_{t}^{$}$ is the real interest rate in U.S. dollars. Their effects on output gap are affected by a common coefficient a_r and idiosyncratic coefficients, or weighting parameters, β_r and β_r$. ToT _t is the terms-of-trade gap, i.e. the gap of international relative prices⁸, and this captures the indirect spillover channel from China to Peru. It is assumed that both contemporaneous and lagged terms of trade could directly affect current output gap, and β_tot is the weighting parameter for current terms-of-trade gap. q_t is the gap of real effective exchange rate (REER).⁹ The external demand measured by foreign output gap, $y_{t}^{*}$ , is also considered. We assume that Peru, as a small open economy, does not affect its terms or trade or external demand. In other words, terms of trade and external demand in equation (1) are exogenous variables. Finally, the disturbance term $ε_{t}^{y}$ denotes a demand shock. Appendix 1 provides a detailed description of the data.

Expectations-augmented Phillips curve. A standard new-Keynesian aggregate supply equation or expectations-augmented Phillips curve characterizing inflation (π_t) is specified in equation (2).

\begin{matrix} π_{t} = b_{π} π_{t - 1} + b_{π^{e}} E_{t} (π_{t + 1}) + b_{y} y_{t} + b_{m} (π_{t}^{m} + s_{t} - s_{t - 1}) + ɛ_{t}^{π} & (2) \end{matrix}

In this equation, inflation has both backward- and forward-looking behaviors, indicated by the two components, π_t−1 and E_t(π_t+1), respectively, where E_t(π_t+1) is the inflation expectation. $(π_{t}^{m} + s_{t} - s_{t - 1})$ is the imported inflation measured in local currency, computed as the sum of imported inflation $π_{t}^{m}$ (measured in U.S. dollars), and the nominal exchange rate variation, (s_t − s_t−1). The disturbance term $ε_{t}^{π}$ represents a supply shock.

Monetary (interest rate) policy rule. A Taylor-type monetary policy rule characterizing the determination of the short-term nominal interest rate (i_t) is specified in equation (3).

\begin{matrix} i_{t} = c_{i} i_{t - 1} + (1 - c_{i}) {\bar{i} + c_{y} y_{t} + c_{π} (π_{t} - \bar{π}) + c_{π^{e}} [E_{t} (π_{t + 1}) - \bar{π}]} + ɛ_{t}^{i} & (3) \end{matrix}

In this equation, ī is the steady-state nominal interest rate or the neutral rate, and $\bar{π}$ is the inflation target. Following Barro (1989), an interest rate smoothing is considered when the central bank determines the interest rate, as indicated by its first lag, i_t−1. In addition, interest rate also responds to output gap y_t and the deviations of inflation π_t and expected inflation E_t(π_t+1) from the inflation target $\bar{π}$ . Thus, the interest rate has a forward-looking behavior as both inflation and inflation expectations are anchored by this policy rule. The disturbance term $ε_{t}^{i}$ denotes a monetary policy shock.

Uncovered interest rate parity condition. The nominal exchange rate is determined by the uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) as expressed in equation (4).

\begin{matrix} 4 [E_{t} (s_{t + 1}) - s_{t}] = i_{t} - i_{t}^{*} + ɛ_{t}^{s} & (4) \end{matrix}

In equation (4), the expected quarterly exchange rate variation [E_t(s_t+1) − s_t] is multiplied by 4 to be transformed into an annual term, which is equal to the differential between the interest rate in local currency and the interest rate in foreign currency (or U.S. dollars in this paper) plus an error term $ε_{t}^{s}$ . Following Salas (2010), we assume that the exchange rate expectation E_t(s_t+1) is determined by a weighted average of a backward-looking component (s_t−1) and a forward-looking component (s_t+1), as specified in equation (5), which is in line with the authorities’ objective of interventions to reduce the excess volatility of the exchange rate.

\begin{matrix} E_{t} (s_{t + 1}) = γ s_{t - 1} + (1 - γ) s_{t + 1} + ɛ_{t}^{e} & (5) \end{matrix}

The parameter γ (between 0 and 1) implicitly measures the extent to which the exchange rate is smoothed by the central bank’s foreign exchange interventions. More specifically, the higher γ, the higher the degree of exchange rate smoothing.

In addition, following Salas (2010), REER (in gap terms) in equation (1) is determined by its first lag, nominal exchange rate variation, and the differential between domestic and foreign inflation, as specified in equation (6).

\begin{matrix} q_{t} = d_{q} q_{t - 1} + d_{s} (s_{t} - s_{t - 1}) + d_{π} (π_{t}^{*} - π_{t}) + ɛ_{t}^{q} & (6) \end{matrix}

$π_{t}^{*}$ is the foreign inflation, and the disturbance term $ε_{t}^{q}$ denotes a shock to the REER.

Finally, the real interest rates r_t and $r_{t}^{$}$ in the aggregate-demand equation (1) are linked to the domestic nominal interest rates i_t and $i_{t}^{*}$ in local currency and U.S. dollars, respectively, by the Fisher equation.

r_{t} = i_{t} - E_{t} (π_{t + 1})

r_{t}^{*} = i_{t}^{*} + E_{t} (s_{t + 1}) - E_{t} (π_{t + 1})

External shocks. Terms of trade, external demand, and interest rate in U.S. dollars are the main exogenous variables in this model and the main channels that external shocks spillover to Peru.

We assume that the terms-of-trade gap follows an AR(1) process with world metal prices as an exogenous variable.

\begin{matrix} T o T_{t} = ρ_{t o t} T o T_{t - 1} + ρ_{m} M_{t} + ɛ_{t}^{t o t} & (7) \end{matrix}

In equation (7), M_t is the world metal price (in gap terms), and $ε_{t}^{t o t}$ is the disturbance term or the terms-of-trade shock stripping out the shocks to world metal prices.

We also assume that the domestic nominal interest rate in U.S. dollars, $i_{t}^{*}$ , follows an AR(1) process with the U.S. federal funds rate FFR_t as an exogenous variable, as presented in equation (8).¹⁰

\begin{matrix} i_{t}^{*} = ρ_{i} i_{t - 1}^{*} + ρ_{f} F F R_{t} + ɛ_{t}^{i *} & (8) \end{matrix}

External demand $y_{t}^{*}$ is approximated by a trade-weighted average of Peru’s top three trading partners’ output gaps, including the U.S., China, and the euro area, as specified in equation (9).

\begin{matrix} y_{t}^{*} = w_{t}^{U S} y_{t}^{U S} + w_{t}^{E A} y_{t}^{E A} + w_{t}^{C H N} y_{t}^{C H N} & (9) \end{matrix}

In equation (9), y_t is the output gap of each of these three economies, and w_t is the trade weight between each of the three economies and Peru (summing up to 1).

China’s investment slowdown is transmitted through its impact on China’s output and world metal prices. There are mainly two channels for the transmission of this shock in the model. First, as discussed above, China’s investment slowdown directly affects China’s growth and output gap $y_{t}^{C H N}$ , and thus the external demand $y_{t}^{*}$ according to (9) (the direct channel). Second, China’s investment slowdown puts downward pressures on world metal prices M_t and deteriorating Peru’s terms of trade according to (7) (the indirect channel).

U.S. monetary policy tightening is transmitted through its impact on Peru’s dollar-denominated nominal interest rate. This is mainly characterized by equation (8). It should be noted that, for simplicity, the second-round impact of U.S. monetary tightening on Peru through its impact on its own output is not considered in this paper. While this is a shortcoming of the model, this assumption is motivated by the fact that the U.S. only accounts for less than 20 percent of Peru’s total trade during 2011–12. If this second-round adverse impact were to be taken into account, the actual spillovers might be even larger than our model estimates.¹¹

III. Data and Estimation

The model is estimated with quarterly data over the sample period 2000:Q1–2013: Q3.¹² It has six endogenous variables, namely, output gap, inflation, interbank interest rate in local currency, nominal exchange rate (quarterly rate of change), REER gap, and terms-of-trade gap. All the gap variables are computed with the Hodrick-Prescott (HP) filter. The expected inflation E_t(π_t+1) is proxied by the one-year-ahead inflation expectation, obtained from the BCRP’s macroeconomic expectation survey.¹³ The inflation is computed as the seasonally-adjusted annualized rate, and the inflation target $\bar{π}$ = 2 according to the BCRP.¹⁴ The Appendix provides a detailed description of the data and their sources. Finally, the model is estimated as a system using the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), and the endogenous variables are instrumented by their first lags in the estimation to avoid the endogeneity problem. The weighting parameters β_r, β_r$, and β_ToT are not estimated but calibrated following Salas (2010): β_r = 0.3, β_r^$ = 0.15, and β_tot = 0.48.¹⁵

Estimation results are presented in Tables A1–A4. Since the level of dollarization has been trending down and the share of Peru’s exports to China has increased more notably since mid-2000s (Figure 1a), we also use a sub-sample 2005:Q1–2013:Q3 in the estimation as a robustness check to the full-sample estimates, whereas the results are qualitatively similar. Several points are worth mentioning. First, the coefficient estimates all have the expected signs, and are in line with Salas (2010). Second, world metal prices are statistically significant in terms of driving Peru’s terms-of-trade dynamics, which confirms other empirical findings.¹⁶ Third, the U.S. federal funds rate has a significant impact on Peru’s dollar-denominated nominal interest rate, which is consistent with the high correlation between these two series as shown by the chart in the introduction section. Four, although local currency-denominated and dollar-denominated interest rates seem to have insignificant impact on Peru’s output gap, the impact becomes significant if more observations are included.¹⁷ This suggests a downward sloping IS curve for Peru, and thus implies that the U.S. monetary policy tightening is likely to have a significant impact on Peru’s real economy. Last but not least, similar to Salas (2010), we also find a significantly high degree of exchange rate smoothing, which might be partly due to the BCRP’s foreign exchange interventions.

IV. Scenarios and Simulations

This section conducts simulations using the estimated model to examine the macroeconomic responses in three different scenarios over 2013:Q4–2018:Q4. The first scenario is a baseline scenario with the IMF’s baseline projections.¹⁸ The second one is the China scenario where the investment growth rate of China declines temporarily by one standard deviation from the baseline in Q1 2015.¹⁹ The third scenario is the China and U.S. shock scenario where on top of the China scenario, the U.S. federal funds target rate starts to rise since Q2 2015 following the projections made by Carpenter et al. (2013)²⁰. The simulation horizon is 2013:Q4–2018:Q4.

Assumptions of the external variables in the baseline scenario mainly come from the IMF projections, except China’s real GDP growth and the U.S. federal funds rate. We assume that the annual growth rate of Chinese real GDP stays at 7½ percent and the federal funds target rate remains unchanged at 0.15 percent p.a. throughout the simulation horizon. The other external variables including world metal prices, foreign inflation (proxied by world inflation), and the output gaps of the U.S. and euro area are obtained from the World Economic Outlook (WEO) projections of the IMF, and imported inflation (measured in U.S. dollars) and expected inflation are obtained from the projections included in IMF (2014).

The China scenario assumes a one-standard-deviation (temporary) decline in China’s investment growth compared to the baseline scenario in Q1 2015.²¹ This shock has negative impact on world metal prices and China’s output gap as expected (Figure A1). First, we estimate the impact on world metal prices using a simple Vector Autoregression with exogenous variables (VARX), which includes the growth of China’s real investment in fixed assets (FAI) and world metal price inflation as endogenous variables and U.S. and euro area real GDP growth as exogenous variables. The estimates suggest that a one-standard-deviation decline in China’s real FAI growth is likely to reduce world metal prices by 3¼ percent over a year, similar to the finding in the IMF’s 2012 Spillover Report and Ahuja and Nabar (2012).²² World metal price inflation returns to its baseline level after about two years. Second, to estimate the impact of this shock on China’s output gap, we estimate another simple VARX model with China’s real FAI and GDP growth as endogenous variables, and U.S. and euro area real GDP growth as exogenous variables. The estimates suggest that the shock reduces China’s real GDP growth by 0.3 percentage points cumulatively after one year.²³ Finally, the assumptions for the other external variables remain the same as those in the baseline scenario.

The China and U.S. shock scenario assumes that, besides the assumptions in the China scenario, the federal funds target rate starts to rise gradually since Q2 2015, following the projections made by Carpenter et al. (2013). In this scenario, the federal funds target rate is assumed to increase linearly by 107 basis points over the first year 2015:Q2–2016:Q2 and another 107 basis points over the second year 2016:Q2–2017:Q2, and plateau when it reaches 4 percent p.a. in Q4 2018 (Figure A1). With these dynamics, the impact on Peru’s dollardenominated interest rate is significant (almost one to one) and long lasting.

China scenario

Simulation results suggest that a one-standard-deviation negative shock to China’s investment growth is likely to reduce Peru’s output gap by about 0.6 percentage points cumulatively over the simulation horizon. The simulated dynamics for the main endogenous variables (in deviations from the baseline scenario) are shown in the Figure A2. The shock is estimated to reduce Peru’s terms-of-trade gap by about 4 percentage points over the simulation horizon, and thus widen Peru’s negative output gap mainly through the income effect.²⁴ The output gap returns to its baseline level about three years after the shock.

The shock has negligible impact on inflation, nominal interest rate, and exchange rate. The year-on-year inflation declines by only 0.03 percentage points at the peak over the simulation horizon, reflecting the well-anchored inflation expectation. Nominal interest rate in local currency is lowered by 6 basis points at the peak, as a response to the widened negative output gap. In particular, exchange rates (both nominal and real) only depreciate slightly, reflecting a high degree of exchange rate smoothing which is similar to the finding of Salas (2010). This might be partly due to the foreign exchange interventions conducted by the BCRP.

China and U.S. shock scenario

In this scenario, Peru’s output gap is reduced significantly by about 2½ percentage points cumulatively over the simulation horizon and continues to widen. The shock is estimated to raise Peru’s dollar-denominated interest rate by about 100 basis points one year after the shock, and thus reduce Peru’s output gap significantly in terms of both magnitude and persistence. The output gap does not return to its baseline level within the simulation horizon, partly due to the long-lasting feature of this federal-funds-rate shock (Figure A1).

The shock has a much larger impact on inflation, nominal interest rate, and exchange rate than the shock to China’s investment slowdown. In particular, exchange rates (both nominal and real) depreciate substantially according to the UIP and much more than in the China scenario.²⁵ As a result of the shock and these relatively large depreciations, inflation first declines and then starts to rise two years after the shock. However, the impact on the year-on-year inflation is still limited (the peak impact is less than 0.2 percentage points), partly due to the well-anchored expected inflation. Nominal interest rate in local currency is lowered further by 3 basis points at the peak compared to the China scenario due to a larger (negative) output gap.

The role of exchange rate flexibility

Higher exchange rate flexibility is likely to mitigate the impact of external shocks on output, but a large depreciation might put an upward pressure on inflation. In order to better examine the role of exchange rate flexibility in the model, we make the nominal exchange rate (EXR) in the model exogenous by replacing the UIP condition (4) and the formation of exchange rate expectation (5) with exogenously specified dynamics of the EXR. Purchasing power parity is assumed to hold over the simulation horizon; the projected EXR is taken as our baseline. We then contrast this baseline EXR with a more-depreciated EXR path where the EXR converges exponentially towards its historical average during 2002–13.²⁶ Compared to the endogenous EXR in the China and U.S. shock scenario (Figure A2), this “depreciated EXR” path assumes more rapid depreciations at the beginning but slower depreciations later on (Figure A3). Simulation results based on these two exogenous EXR paths are presented in Figure A3. Three observations are worth mentioning. First, due to a relatively large depreciation in Q1 2015, output gap starts to rise at the beginning but turns negative as the shocks unwind. Second, a more depreciated EXR path can reduce the loss of output gap by about 0.4 percentage points cumulatively over the simulation horizon in both scenarios. Third, inflation is under pressure in the first year after the shocks due to the “front-loaded” depreciation,²⁷ and as a response, interest rate in local currency shoots up by about 25 basis points at the same time.

The role of dollarization

A lower degree of dollarization significantly reduces the adverse impact of the shock to U.S. federal funds rate, without inducing substantial inflationary pressures. The parameter β_r$ can be interpreted as a rough measure of the degree of dollarization. In an extreme case where β_r$ = 0, the model becomes a standard macroeconomic model for a small open economy without dollarization, and there is no direct impact of federal funds rate on domestic economic activity. Based on this observation, we can lower the degree of dollarization by assigning a smaller value to β_r$. A simulation exercise is done with β_r$ = 0.075, a half of the calibrated value (Figure A4). Three points are worth noticing. First, the lower degree of dollarization does not affect the China scenario. Second, the loss of output gap in the China and U.S. shock scenario is significantly reduced by about 1 percentage point cumulatively over the simulation horizon, and output gap starts to converge towards its baseline level. Second, the depreciations of both nominal and real EXRs are similar to those in Figure A2. Third, the year-on-year inflation is slightly higher than in the high dollarization case, but is only 0.2 percentage points above the baseline scenario at the peak. As a result, interest rate in local currency does not decrease as much as in the high dollarization case.

V. Concluding Remarks

This paper finds that Peru’s economic activity is vulnerable to both China’s investment slowdown and U.S. monetary policy tightening, with a larger and long-lasting impact from the latter. A macroeconomic model for a small open and partially dollarized economy is developed and estimated to simulate the impact of these two external risks. The simulation results suggest that: (1) a one-standard-deviation temporary decline in China’s investment growth is likely to reduce Peru’s output gap by about 0.2 percentage points cumulatively one year after the shock; and (2) a rising federal funds rate since Q2 2015 (increasing by some 100 basis points per year) might have substantial and persistent effects on Peru’s output.

Higher exchange rate flexibility or less dollarization could enhance Peru’s resilience against the external risks. Simulations with a more flexible exchange rate produce smaller negative spillovers to Peru for both external risks. One of the findings of this paper and some other literature such as Salas (2010) is the significant exchange rate smoothing, achieved by the BCRP’s frequent interventions in the foreign exchange market. Thus, less foreign exchange intervention might lower the degree of exchange rate smoothing and increase the flexibility of exchange rate. Furthermore, we find that a lower degree of dollarization can reduce the negative spillovers of the U.S. monetary policy tightening more effectively than higher exchange rate flexibility. The macroprudential policy aiming to reduce credit dollarization, such as reserve requirements on foreign-currency denominated deposits and short-term external liabilities, might be more desirable for policy makers in terms of reinforcing Peru’s resilience against external interest rate shocks.

Table A1.

Estimation Results: Aggregate Demand Equation

y_{t} = a_{y} y_{t - 1} + a_{r} (β_{r} r_{t} + β_{r^{$}} r_{t}^{$}) + a_{t o t} [β_{t o t} T o T_{t} + (1 - β_{t o t}) T o T_{t - 1}] + a_{q} q_{t} + a_{y^{*}} y_{t}^{*} + ε_{t}^{y}