earticle

영어

This paper aimed to review the structural change in the foreign exchange market and to explores the stabilizing policies of exchange rate. The foreign exchange market in Korea is experiencing three important changes in the post-crisis period, which deserve special attentions for their implications on the government exchange rate policy. First, with the adoption of the free floating exchange rate system, exchange rate volatility has increased in the market. Accordingly, ensuring stable exchange rates has emerged as one of the top priorities for the exchange rate policy. The foreign exchange intervention is a useful policy instrument for reducing exchange rate volatility. The vocal intervention is an useful policy if the foreign market is a high level of transparency and confidence. Second, the capital account liberalization in Korea introduced by the government in 2005: the overseas investment promotion plan and the expiration of sunset clauses for capital account transactions. These two liberalization measures are expected to mitigate the excess supply of the U.S. dollar in the domestic foreign exchange market, which would in turn lessen policy burdens of the Korea government in managing the macro-economy. In addition, the would enhance the convertibility of the Korean won and the credibility of th Korean Economy in the global financial market. Due to these measures, however, the Korean economy may become more susceptible to speculative attack and a sudden reversal of capital inflow. Furthermore, monitoring and supervision of foreign exchange transactions are likely to be weakened. Third, like ECU of EMS, the common currency basket composed of currencies of East Asian countries should be taken as key currency for the sake of stability of regional exchange rate. The exchange rate ban should be enlarged so that we can change basic exchange speculation on the currency market. In addition, the intramarginal intervention is desirable in order to keep stable exchange under the enlarged exchange rate band.