Exchange Rate Regimes, Foreign Exchange Volatility and Export Performance in Central and Eastern Europe: Just Another Blur Project?

This paper attempts to analyze the direct impact of exchange rate volatility on the export performance of ten Central and Eastern European transition economies as well as its indirect impact via changes in exchange rate regimes. Not only aggregate but also bilateral and sectoral export flows are studied. To this end, we first analyze shifts in exchange rate volatility linked to changes in the exchange rate regimes and second, use these changes to construct dummy variables we include in our export function. The results suggest that the size and the direction of the impact of forex volatility and of regime changes on exports vary considerably across sectors and countries and that they may be related to specific periods.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40168/3/wp782.pd

Equilibrium Exchange Rates in Southeastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey: Healthy or (Dutch) Diseased?

This paper investigates the equilibrium exchange rates of three Southeastern European countries (Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania), of two CIS economies (Russia and Ukraine) and of Turkey. A systematic approach in terms of different time horizons at which the equilibrium exchange rate is assessed is conducted, combined with a careful analysis of country-specific factors. For Russia, a first look is taken at the Dutch Disease phenomenon as a possible driving force behind equilibrium exchange rates. A unified framework including productivity and net foreign assets completed with a set control variables such as openness, public debt and public expenditures is used to compute total real misalignment bands.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40156/3/wp770.pd

Interest Rate Pass-Through in Central and Eastern Europe: Reborn from Ashes Merely to Pass Away?

In this study, we seek to better understand the interest rate pass-through in five Central and Eastern European countries -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, the CEE-5. Our pass-through estimates for several retail rates are generally lower than those reported in the literature, given the absence of cointegration between policy rates and long- or even short-term market rates. In addition, the pass-through has been declining over time in the CEE-5, and we argue that it is likely to decrease further in the future. Finally, the pass-through appears similar in the CEE-5 than in Spain and is higher than in core euro area countries. Hence, euro adoption by the CEE-5 would not further increase heterogeneity within the euro area with regard to the interest rate passthrough. However, substantially more research is needed to establish commonalities and differences between the CEE-5 and the euro area with respect to the reaction of prices and output to monetary policy action.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/57231/1/wp851 .pd

Global influences on UK manufacturing prices: 1970-2000

This paper presents substantial new evidence on the competitive process that links together industrial economic and international economics. Our time-series data base concerns manufactured product prices and their domestic and international determinants. We identity cointegrating relationships, using single equation and multivariate methods. We find that both market imperfections, largely ignored in international economics, and international factors, mostly neglected in industrial economics, should be jointly incorporated into pricing analysis. The significance of global factors varies markedly: differentiated-product sectors respond little to foreign price signals. Our findings are relevant to many fields within economics, including the transmission of inflation

Counterfactual analysis in macroeconometrics: an empirical investigation into the effects of quantitative easing

This paper is concerned with ex ante and ex post counterfactual analyses in the case of macroeconometric applications where a single unit is observed before and after a given policy intervention. It distinguishes between cases where the policy change affects the model’s parameters and where it does not. It is argued that for ex post policy evaluation it is important that outcomes are conditioned on ex post realized variables that are invariant to the policy change but nevertheless influence the outcomes. The effects of the control variables that are determined endogenously with the policy outcomes can be solved out for the policy evaluation exercise. An ex post policy ineffectiveness test statistic is proposed. The analysis is applied to the evaluation of the effects of the quantitative easing (QE) in the UK after March 2009. It is estimated that a 100 basis points reduction in the spread due to QE has an impact effect on output growth of about one percentage point, but the policy impact is very quickly reversed with no statistically significant effects remaining within 9-12 months of the policy intervention

Combination Forecasts of Bond and Stock Returns: An Asset Allocation Perspective

We investigate the out-of-sample forecasting ability of the HML, SMB, momentum, short-term and long-term reversal factors along with their size and value decompositions on U.S. bond and stock returns for a variety of horizons ranging from the short run (1 month) to the long run (2 years). Our findings suggest that these factors contain significantly more information for future bond and stock market returns than the typically employed financial variables. Combination of forecasts of the empirical factors turns out to be particularly successful, especially from an an asset allocation perspective. Similar findings pertain to the European and Japanese markets

The farm decision role of price information from commodity exchanges: an ex-ante evaluation using quasi-rational price expectations in Ethiopia

Farmers use different information to predict future returns upon which they base current decisions. In designing information systems, knowledge about the information set used by farmers is relevant to have insight into the necessary information that should be made available for farmers. Using quasirational forecasting regression analysis to represent producer price expectation formation, the usefulness of disseminating real time information about the central wholesale prices discovered by the Ethiopian commodity exchange was tested. The results showed that the information about central wholesale prices can help farmers to make unbiased price forecasts. Effective dissemination of real time price information discovered through the Ethiopian commodity exchange was fully supported by the empirical insights from this study

Energy consumption, CO2 emissions and the economic growth nexus in Bangladesh: cointegration and dynamic causality analysis

The paper investigates the existence of dynamic causality between the energy consumption, environmental pollutions and economic growth using cointegration analysis for Bangladesh. First, we tested whether any long run relationship exist using Johansen bi-variate cointegration model which is complemented with auto-regressive distributed lag model introduced by Pesaron for the results robustness. Then, we tested for the short run and the long causality relationship by estimating bi-variate vector error correction modeling framework. The estimation results indicate that a unidirectional causality run from energy consumption to economic growth both in the short and the long run; a bi-directional causality from electricity consumption to economic growth in long run but no causal relationship exists in the short run. A uni-directional causality run from CO2 emissions to energy consumption in the long run but it is opposite in the short run. CO2 granger cause to economic growth both in the short and in the long run, which is conflicting to the familiar environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Our results are different from existing analysis for electricity consumption and economic growth, however. The result of dynamic linkage between energy consumption and economic growth significantly reject the ‘neo-classical’ assumption that energy use is neutral to economic growth. Hence clearly an important policy implication, energy can be considered as a limiting factor to the economic growth in Bangladesh and conservation of energy may harm economic spurs. Therefore, it is a challenge for the policy makers to formulate sustainable energy consumption policy to support smooth energy supply for sustainable economic growth

The effect of transitioning to renewable energy consumption on the Nigerian oil and gas exports:an ARDL approach

PurposeNet energy importing countries (NEICs) pursue strategic policies to reduce the consumption of energy from conventional sources and increase that of renewable energy to attain energy security and sustainable development. However, net energy exporting countries (NEECs) rely substantially on the proceeds realised from oil and gas exports to mainly NEICs to finance government activities. This paper aims to investigate the effect of increased consumption of renewable energy in developed NEICs on the Nigeria’s oil and gas exports.Design/methodology/approachThe study was undertaken by analysing macro-economic annual time-series data set (1980-2014) using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach.FindingsBoth the short-run and the long-run results of the ARDL modelling reveal that renewable energy consumption in developed NEICs is affecting Nigeria’s oil and gas exports negatively, thereby causing significant decrease in the amounts of revenue being generated therefrom.Research Limitations/implicationsLike most empirical studies, the conduct of this research has encountered some challenges. Thus, the use of rather small sample in terms of period covered (1980-2014), annual frequency of data and focus on one NEEC (Nigeria) are the key limitations of this paper. While the first two challenges were dealt with by using ARDL, future research can focus on other NEECs to extend the study.Practical ImplicationsThe findings have several policy implications, including the need for Nigeria to focus on developing internal market trajectories to increase domestic utilisation of its conventional energy rather than depending on external markets. The results also suggest the need for public policymakers to develop a strategic plan that will effectively address the external economic threat arising from the influence of global energy transition.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper represents the first effort to empirically examine the effect of renewable energy consumption by developed NEICs on the Nigeria’s oil and gas exports. The paper contributes to the literature by providing insight into and documenting evidence that the world is taking transitioning to cleaner energy sources very seriously