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 中国外汇储备超过9千亿美元 : good news or bad? |
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dck
加入时间: 2004/04/02
文章: 2801
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作者：dck 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
中国外汇储备超过9千亿美元
2006.06.14
上海消息：据法新社星期三报道，中国的外汇储备已经超过了9千亿美元，居世界首位。
报道引述中国财经界的消息来源说，到今年年底，中国的外汇储备可能还要再增加1千亿美元。
The Increasing Cost of Foreign Reserve Holdings to Developing Nations
Reserve holdings carry a considerable cost. A dollar held as reserves is essentially a dollar of foregone investment for a developing nation. If these nations had not increased their reserve holdings, they could have used this money to support investment in physical or human capital. The cost of the build-up of reserves is then the difference between the return on investment in developing nations and the small returns (typically 1-2 percent real returns) available on the assets held as reserves.
2/11/2000
. . .
Money for Nothing: The Increasing Cost of Foreign Reserve Holdings to Developing Nations
Executive Summary
A striking development of the last decade has been the rise in reserve holdings among developing nations. The rise in the ratio of reserve holdings to GDP has occurred in every region of the world, and has been especially rapid in the years since the East Asian financial crisis. As a result, some countries, such as Taiwan and Malaysia, now hold an amount of reserves that exceeds 30 percent of their GDP.
Reserve holdings carry a considerable cost. A dollar held as reserves is essentially a dollar of foregone investment for a developing nation. If these nations had not increased their reserve holdings, they could have used this money to support investment in physical or human capital. The cost of the build-up of reserves is then the difference between the return on investment in developing nations and the small returns (typically 1-2 percent real returns) available on the assets held as reserves.
This paper uses World Bank data to document the rise in the ratio of reserve holdings to GDP. It finds:
- there has been a large rise in the ratio of reserves to GDP in every region from the 1960's to the 1990's, with a further increase following the East Asian financial crisis.
- the largest increases were in the East Asian region and the Middle East, with the average reserve holdings rising by more than 10 percentage points of GDP in each case from the sixties to the nineties, with the East Asian region experiencing an additional increase of more than 2 percentage points in the late nineties.
- South Asia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa all experienced a rise in the ratio of reserves to GDP of at least 4 percentage points from the sixties to the nineties, with both Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa experiencing increases of close to 8 percentage points using data from the last three years of the decade.
- the implied cost of this rise in reserve holdings is 0.4-1.0 percent of annual GDP in South Asia, and between 1.0 and 2.1 percent of annual GDP in East Asia. The cumulative costs of a decade of reserve holdings at late nineties levels (compared to the cost of sixties levels of reserve holdings), could exceed 20 percent of current GDP in East Asia and would be close to 10 percent of current GDP for nations in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. This would be equivalent to a loss of between 1 and 2 trillion dollars in the United States.
There is no widely accepted explanation for the rise in reserve holdings, but it is likely that an increase in the instability of the world financial system has played a major role. The data in this paper suggest that the growing instability of the international financial system has imposed a large cost on developing nations in recent years. This increase in instability, in spite of the developments in technology and economic theory, constitutes a serious failure by the architects of the current financial system.
Introduction
A striking, but little noted, phenomenon of the last four decades has been the increase in the amount of foreign reserves held by central banks throughout the world. In every region of the world central banks are holding far larger reserves, relative to the size of their economy, than they did in the sixties. In fact, in the developing world, the average ratio of reserve holdings to GDP has more than doubled between the sixties and the nineties. Some developing nations, such as Taiwan and Malaysia, now hold an amount of reserves that exceeds 30 percent of their GDP. A comparable sum in the United States would be $3 trillion.
This increase in reserve holdings has received remarkably little attention from economists and policy analysts. The lack of attention is striking because there are large costs associated with holding reserves. Essentially, the cost of holding reserves is the investment that these nations must forego in order to accumulate reserves. In other words, the dollars that developing nations must hold as reserves are dollars that cannot be spent on health care and education, on physical infrastructure, or on the promotion of private investment. By diverting resources from more productive uses, the dramatic rise in reserve holdings over the last four decades has significantly impeded economic and social progress in developing nations.
This paper documents the rise in reserve holdings over the last four decades and provides preliminary estimates of the costs attributable to this increase. These estimates indicate that the costs are quite large, on the order of 1.0-2.0 percent of annual GDP for most nations. Taken over the course of a decade, the cumulative costs could run as high as 15 to 25 percent of GDP. To put this in context, for the U.S. economy this would mean a cumulative cost over the course of a decade of between $1.5 and $2.5 trillion, or between $5,000-$8,000 for every person living in the country.
Before detailing the rise in reserve holdings over the last four decades, it is worth clarifying the mechanism through which reserve holdings impose costs on developing nations. This is the topic of the first section. The second section briefly examines possible explanations for the rise in reserve holdings. The third section presents the data on reserve holdings from the sixties through the nineties, and the cost of the increase in the ratio of reserve holdings to GDP. This is followed by a brief conclusion.
Why Reserve Holdings Are Expensive
The fact that nations now have a much higher ratio of reserve holdings to GDP would not be of much consequence, if there were no cost to holding reserves. However, the cost is in fact quite substantial. As Neely (2000) and Ben-Basset and Gottlieb (1992) have pointed out, the opportunity cost of reserve holdings is the marginal product of capital in the nation holding the reserves.[1]
This point can be seen by examining the process through which nations acquire reserves. In order to increase its holdings of reserves, a nation must manage to run a balance of payments surplus. The net increase in reserve holdings is the extent to which the total amount a nation receives in foreign currency - whether from trade, factor income flows, direct investment, portfolio investment, or aid - exceeds the total amount it pays out for these purposes.[2] Put another way, the increase in reserves is equal to the surplus of national savings over investment, plus the net inflow of foreign investment and aid. A dollar that is added to reserves is a dollar that could otherwise be spent on investment.
This can be demonstrated most clearly by taking an extreme case. A nation could, in principle, contract with a foreign firm to construct a factory or other facility, with the money it is accumulating as reserves. As a practical matter, there may always be leakages going from one form of saving (reserves) to investment, but, in principle, the entire value of a nation's reserves correspond to savings that could otherwise have been invested in physical or human capital.
The return on physical capital varies depending on the time period and the country. The before-tax return in the United States has averaged close to 10 percent over the post-war period (Baker 1996).[3] The returns in developing nations will generally be considerably higher to compensate for the greater degree of risk. It is likely that the return to capital exceeds 20 percent in many of the poorer developing nations. There is evidence that public investment in infrastructure or education, two other alternative uses of assets held as reserves, may provide even higher rates of return than physical capital (e.g. Munnell 1994; Holtz-Eakin and Schwartz 1994).
In calculating the cost of holding reserves, it is important to recognize that reserves do provide some return. The cost of holding is therefore the difference between the opportunity cost and the real return on reserves. The portion of reserves held as interest bearing deposits, or as the short-term government debt of the United States and other nations that supply reserve currencies, will typically earn a small positive real rate of interest. In the post-war period this has averaged between 1.0-2.0 percent. Reserves held as gold, currency, or in non-interest bearing accounts will provide no real return, on average. Given the mix of assets held as reserves, the average return can be assumed to be in this range of 1.0-2.0 percent, although probably closer to 1.0 percent than 2.0 percent.
This analysis presents two sets of estimates of the cost to developing nations of holding reserves in order to construct a plausible range. The low end estimate assumes that the cost of holding reserves is 10 percent[4]. This assumption implies that the return to physical or human capital in developing nation is only slightly higher than in the United States, the difference being equal to the real return on reserve assets. The high end estimate assumes that the cost of holding reserves in the developing nations is 20 percent, implying a relatively high rate of return on human or physical capital. Since the return to capital (both physical and human) will differ across nations, the actual opportunity cost of holding reserves will vary. It is reasonable to assume that the opportunity cost in richer developing nations will be closer to low end of this range, while it will be nearer to the high end of the range in the poorest nations.
It is also worth noting that the costs to developing nations are benefits to the nations that supply reserve currencies. When developing nations increase their holdings of foreign reserves in the form of reserve currencies, they are effectively providing low interest loans to the nations (primarily the United States) that supply reserve currencies. This allows the suppliers of reserve currencies to import goods and services without having to pay for them in the present.
Explanations for the Rise in Reserve Holdings
There are two main explanations that could be put forward for the rise in the ratio of reserve holdings to GDP in the last four decades. The first is simply that trade
http://www.france.attac.org/article.php3?id_article=2866
作者：dck 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
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