The Turning Tide: How Vulnerable are Asian Corporates?

Bo Jiang and Tahsin Saadi Sedik ()

No 2019/093, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Using a new firm-level dataset with comprehensive information on Asian firms’ FX liabilities, we show that Asia’s nonfinancial corporate sector is vulnerable to a tightening of global financial conditions. Higher global interest rates and exchange rate depreciation increase the probability of default of Asian firms. A 30 percent currency depreciation is associated with a two-notch downgrade in the corporate credit rating (e.g., from A to BBB+), resulting in 7 percent of Asian firms falling into bankruptcy. But the impact is nonlinear—as the firms’ FX liability increases, the balance sheet channel of exchange rate offsets, then dominates, the competitiveness channel. The balance sheet channel offsets the competitiveness channel when the share of U.S. dollar debt is between 10 and 20 percent. We also find that currency depreciation increases firm-level investment on average, but for firms with the share of FX liabilities above 20 percent, investment contracts with depreciation.

Keywords: WP; firm; FX liability; dollar; exporter; Asian Emerging Markets; Corporate Debt; Corporate Distress; Global Finacnial Conditions; Exchange Rate Depreciation; balance sheet information; firm level; balance sheet condition; foreign currency; credit constraint; Exchange rates; Currencies; Financial statements; Depreciation; Global; Asia and Pacific (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47
Date: 2019-05-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=46733 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2019/093

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().