Abstract:
Macroeconomic volatility is a fundamental concern for developing countries that often face this serious problem due to economic, social, and political issues. The increase in the international reserve accumulation particularly in the emerging countries may be one of the important mechanisms to deal with macroeconomic volatility problem. The purposes of this study were to study the relationships between international reserve and macroeconomic volatility as well as the impacts of establishing regional financial safety nets (RFSNs) e.g. multilateral currency exchange arrangement and regional reserve fund on international reserve and macroeconomic volatility of the emerging markets. Using the data during 1970-2012 of 18 countries from 6 regions where RFSNs were established. The dynamic panel data model and system GMM estimator were applied. Empirical results suggest that international reserve and RFSNs played a significant role in dampening macroeconomic volatility. In addition, international reserve indirectly reduces the impact of financial crisis and volatility of various factors, such as capital flow, real exchange rate, inflation, terms-of-trade, and external demand on macroeconomic volatility. While the establishment of RFSNs may decrease the role of international reserve in dampening macroeconomic volatility because countries may lower their level of international reserve for self-insurance or precautionary saving that may damage economic confidence and basic crisis prevention ability. Moreover, the results show that banking crisis and volatility of capital flow, external demand, and real exchange rate are the important determining factors of increasing macroeconomic volatility in the emerging countries.