The coefficients for inflation gap and output gap are highly significant and of smaller
magnitude in the dynamic GMM estimators for both the IT and non-IT groups. Both
the IT and non-IT countries respond significantly to the output gap more than the
inflation gap in setting the interest rates. This implies that the output gap offers more
information than the inflation gap; hence, the real term is more important than the
nominal term. This implies that the output gap is more important than the inflation gap.
Table 5 reports the coefficients for the dummy variables, along with the associated
t-stats values. There are six rows of results in Table 5, in which the first is the default
estimation, followed by five rows of robustness checks. The default specifications are
tested by successively dropping all four control variables, namely log PPP-adjusted real
GDP per capita, log population, current account and log openness. Results reveal that the
coefficient for the default estimation is negative and not significantly different from 0. All
coefficients for the robustness checks show negative coefficient values. This result is
consistent with Rose’s (2007) findings that show that all coefficients for the regression
estimation for exchange rate volatility are negative, indicating that the exchange rate
volatility is indeed lower for IT countries compared with non-IT countries in the
ASEAN, although all the coefficient values are not significantly different from 0. This
implies that the adoption of IT as the primary monetary policy does not seem to come
at a cost to the domestic economy in the form of higher exchange rate volatility.