人民币国际化与中国企业的汇率风险

RMB Internationalization and China's Corporate Exchange Rate Exposure

有序推进人民币国际化的过程中要统筹发展与安全。本文基于微观企业视角,评估了人民币国际化的成败得失,研究发现,人民币国际化能够显著降低中国企业的汇率风险,主要体现为对非美元货币的汇率风险,对美元汇率风险的暴露程度则会随着人民币国际化推进而提升。本文的结果在控制宏观经济变量、考虑工具变量以及一系列其他稳健性检验后仍然成立。研究表明,在美元依然处于国际货币体系核心位置时,人民币国际化可以通过非大宗商品计价和对冲工具供给帮助企业缓解其面临的汇率风险,但依然要对美元汇率波动给予高度重视。异质性分析发现,人民币国际化的作用在异质性强的产品、低市场话语权的企业、高国际竞争强度的行业中更为显著。本文的研究在理论上丰富了人民币国际化成本和收益的讨论,拓展了宏观因素如何影响企业汇率风险的相关文献,还在实践上为新时期人民币国际化的推进提供了来自微观企业的证据。

RMB internationalization is a long journey expedited by opportunities and punctuated by challenges.It is necessary to coordinate development and security during the process of prudently promoting RMB internationalization.Nowadays,huge budget deficits in America and a floundering Euro offer a golden opportunity for RMB internationalization.Existing research mainly focuses on the factors influencing RMB internationalization,but few scholars investigate how RMB internationalization affects corporate operations and reflect on RMB internationalization from the viewpoint of firms.Based on the 2010—2021 data from all Chinese listed firms and the RMB internationalization index developed by International Monetary Institute,Renmin University of China,this paper empirically examines the relationship between RMB internationalization and exchange rate exposure.Specifically,we model the extent of a firm's exposure in quarter t as a function of RMB internationalization,as well as a set of controls in quarter(t-1).Empirical evidence shows that RMB internationalization has a negative and statistically significant effect on exchange rate exposure.Every 1%of increase in RMB internationalization leads to a decrease of 0.0396 in exchange rate exposure,corresponding to 12%of the sample average.The estimated coefficient is extremely striking in the settings of non-US dollar currencies,and becomes positively significant when we employ US dollar to RMB as an alternative measure.Next,this paper provides evidence that RMB invoicing in non-commodity trade and RMB foreign exchange derivatives can act as the potential channels for reducing the corporate exchange rate exposure.Furthermore,it finds that strong product heterogeneity,low market power and high international competition are particularly important to consolidate RMB internationalization's impact on exchange rate exposure.This paper contributes existing research in the following three aspects.First,previous literature mainly focuses on the costs and benefits of RMB internationalization,while this paper studies RMB internationalization and corporate exchange rate exposure.Second,the influence of macro factors on corporate activities turns out to be hot topic.The Chinese economic and corporate activities are attributed to macro policies,and the magnitude effect is substantial.Thus,this paper contributes to assessing and simulating the policy effects of RMB internationalization.Third,this paper confirms the success of RMB internationalization in the past decade for its positive function in reducing corporate exchange rate exposure.However,the Chinese government and firms should be alerted to the potential risks caused by the fluctuation of the US dollar exchange rate providing that the US dollar still occupies the core of the international monetary system.