Southeast Asian monetary integration : New evidences from fractional cointegration of real exchange rates

This paper examines generalized purchasing power parity theory (G-PPP) among the ASEAN-5 countries. Implementing both the rank analysis and the regression-based analysis of the cointegrating system's, we identify several weak fractional cointegration relationships. Accordingly, cointegrating errors of real exchange rates (RERs) are highly persistent but mean-reverting. Our findings contrast with all previous studies that restrict their investigations to the traditional I(1)/I(0) cointegration. Since RERs are tied through a long memory process, empirical models of G-PPP theory that ignore such a feature should be misspecified. Finally, our results support further monetary integration among different sub-groups of the ASEAN-5 countries as they share long-run comovements.