A VAR Analysis Of US-China Economic Linkages

Abstract

An increase in Chinese purchases of U.S. treasury securities in parallel with Chinas commitment to maintain the value of the Yuan have been blamed in recent years for the divergence of the U.S. long-term and short-term interest rates. Results of the VECM, variance decomposition and impulse response analyses provided support for the growing speculations that growing Chinese demand for U.S. securities played a significant role in keeping the 10-year Treasury bill rate low while keeping the Yuan weak relative to the U.S. dollar. As for the U.S. long-term and short-term interest rates, the causality was found to run from the 10-year Treasury bill yield to the s rate which helps to explain why rising short-term rate in the U.S. since mid-2004 had little or no impact on the long-term rate.