The Effectiveness of Foreign Exchange Intervention: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam

This study uses monthly data from January 2009 to December 2020 to examine the effectiveness of foreign currency intervention and its influence on monetary policy in Vietnam using a Hierarchical Bayesian VAR model. The findings suggest that foreign exchange intervention has little influence on the exchange rate level or exports, but it can significantly minimize exchange rate volatility. As a result, we can demonstrate that the claim that Vietnam is a currency manipulator is false. As well, the forecast error variance decomposition results reveal that interest rate differentials mainly determine the exchange rate level instead of foreign exchange intervention. Moreover, the findings suggest that foreign exchange intervention is not effectively sterilized in Vietnam. Inflation is caused by an increase in international reserves, which leads to an expansion of the money supply and a decrease in interest rates. Although the impact of foreign exchange intervention grows in tandem with the growth of international reserves, if the sterilizing capacity does not improve, rising foreign exchange intervention will instead result in inflation. Finally, we use a rolling window approach to examine the time-varying effect of foreign exchange intervention.