Output Volatility in Emerging Market and Developing Countries: What Explains the “Great Moderation” of 1970-2003?

Output volatility and the size of output drops have declined across groups of nontransition countries studied in this paper over the past three decades, but have remained considerably higher in developing countries than in industrial countries. The paper employs a Bayesian latent dynamic factor model to decompose output growth into global, regional, and country-specific components. The favorable trends in output volatility and large output drops in developing countries are found to have resulted from lower country-specific volatility and more benign country-specific events. Evidence from cross-section regressions over the 1970–2003 period suggests that the volatility of discretionary fiscal spending and terms of trade volatility together with exchange rate flexibility were key determinants of volatility and large output drops.output volatility, output drops, fiscal policy, exchange rate policy, developing countries

Cointegration and Extreme Value Analyses of Bovespa and the Istanbul Stock Exchange

This paper investigates the long-term financial integration and bivariate extreme dependence between Bovespa and the Istanbul Stock Exchange. While a static cointegration test presents no evidence of long-term cointegration, the introduction of a structural break into the model shows that Bovespa and the ISE were cointegrated following the local crisis in Turkey in 2000. Dynamic cointegration tests and DCC-GARCH analysis also reveal that Bovespa and the ISE reacted strongly not only to systemic crises as expected, but also unexpectedly to local crises in each other. This shows that equity prices in two emerging markets in distant regions of the world can co-move in the absence of significant trade and financial linkages. This suggests that there are underlying processes that affect equity prices other than trade, financial linkages, macroeconomic ties, and FDI as the prior literature suggests. While episodic cointegration is found for Bovespa and the ISE, the extremes of these markets still possess asymptotic independence, suggesting diversification opportunities.cointegration, structural break, dynamic conditional correlations, bivariate extreme value, emerging markets, Turkey, Brazil

Are House Prices Characterized by Threshold Effects? Evidence from Developed and Post-Transition Countries

The authors use a nonlinear framework in order to explore house price determinants and adjustment properties. They test for threshold cointegration using a sample of four developed countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Ireland) and four transition countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Estonia). In addition to testing for nonlinearities, they explore house price determinants in these four transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Asymmetric house price adjustment is present in all transition countries and the USA, while no threshold effects are detected in developed European countries. In a threshold error correction framework, house prices are aligned with fundamentals, but house price persistence coupled with a slow and asymmetric house price adjustment process might have facilitated the house price boom in transition countries and the USA.house prices, threshold cointegration, transition

Transmission of Exchange Rate Shocks into Domestic Inflation: The Case of the Czech Republic

This paper aims at estimating the exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) for the Czech Republic. The existing empirical literature does not come to a consensus about the degree of pass-through to Czech inflation. Since there is no unique approach regarding how to measure ERPT, the author uses 11 specifications, including some along the distribution chain in the spirit of McCarthy (2007). She tries to explore the properties of exchange rate shock transmission by comparing impulse responses. In addition, she tries to account for possible variation in time. Finally, she explores how the pass-through differs between tradable (3 sub-groups) and non-tradable goods. She finds that the speed of exchange rate shock trans-mission to all prices is quite high. However, in absolute terms, ERPT does not exceed 25–30 %.exchange rate pass-through, inflation, VAR, VECM

Is There a Real Estate Bubble in the Czech Republic?

Real estate prices more than doubled in many countries of Central and Eastern Europe from 2003 to 2008. In this paper, I provide one of the first assessments of whether housing prices in this region correspond to rents, i.e. to cash-flows related to an apartment purchase. State-of-the-art panel data stationarity and Granger causality techniques are employed to test the implications of the standard present value model using regional data from the Czech Republic. Apartment prices are only slightly overvalued. In addition, changes in prices are helpful in predicting changes in rents and vice versa.Central and Eastern Europe, Czech Republic, panel data, unit root, bubble, house prices, rents

Monetary Policy in a Small Economy after Tsunami: A New Consensus on the Horizon?

The last financial crisis significantly changed views concerning the relationship between monetary policy, asset prices and financial stability. We survey the pre-crisis opinions on the appropriate monetary policy reactions to financial market developments and delineate the new consensus which is currently emerging from the lessons taken. The new consensus is an amended model of flexible inflation targeting in which the central bank “should sometimes lean and can clean”. We try to add the small open economy context to the debate and demonstrate that the optimal reactions of monetary policy-makers in small open economies may differ and that sometimes the optimal solution may not even be available due to the policies of the key world central banks acting as price makers. In such instances, second-best policies have to be considered.monetary policy, financial stability, asset markets, macroprudential policy

Real Implications of Bursting Asset Price Bubbles in Economies with Bank Credit

We study the consequences of equity mispricing (a bubble) and the correction thereof (the bubble bursting) for real activity in a production economy. In our model, producers are financed by both bank debt and equity, and face a mix of systemic and idiosyncratic uncertainty. Positive/negative bubbles arise when prior public beliefs about the aggregate productivity of producers (business sentiment) become biased upwards/downwards. Economic activity in equilibrium is influenced by the bubble size in conjunction with agency problems caused by delegation of lending to relationship bankers. We explore the ability of a macroprudential policy instrument (a convex dependence of bank capital requirements on the quantity of uncollateralized credit) to dampen the consequences of a burst bubble. We find that macroprudential policies are more successful in suppressing equity price swings than moderating output fluctuations. At the same time, economic activity recoils substantially with the introduction of a macroprudential instrument, so that its presence is likely to entail tangible welfare costs. In this regard, fine-tuning capital charges as a function of corporate governance on the borrower side (specifically, by discouraging limited liability of borrowing firm managers) would be less costly than placing the full burden of prudential regulation on the lender side.bank, credit, asset price, bubble, macroprudential policy

Revisiting the Government Revenue-Expenditure Nexus: Evidence from 15 OECD Countries Based on the Panel Data Approach

This paper utilizes panel unit root, panel cointegration, and panel Granger causality test techniques to examine the inter-temporal relationship between government revenues and government expenditures in a panel of 15 OECD countries over the period 1992–2006. The authors find evidence of bidirectional causality between government revenues and government expenditures, supporting the fiscal synchronization hypothesis. The findings of this paper have important implications for fiscal policy decision-making in these 15 OECD countries after the signing of the EU Treaty in Maastricht on February 7, 1992.government revenues; expenditures; panel unit root; panel cointegration; panel Granger causality; tax-and-spend hypothesis; spend-and-tax hypothesis; fiscal synchronization hypothesis; institutional separation hypothesis

Modeling Comovement among Emerging Stock Markets: The Case of Budapest and Istanbul

A double world index model is proposed as an ideal way of characterizing the comovement among emerging stock markets, and applied to Budapest-Istanbul as an interesting case. An exclusive increase in the correlation between Budapest and Istanbul during the recent crisis period is documented. To decompose this correlation into information dynamics, a structural vector autoregression (SVAR) model is employed which controls for global indices that enter the system exogenously. Istanbul and Budapest contain incremental information for each other after controlling for global factors, in particular during and after the recent global crisis. Impulse response results suggest significant lagged responses, which imply predictability. Istanbul appears to respond to global information faster.comovement of stock markets; European emerging markets; structural VAR; world index model

Short-Term Forecasting of Czech Quarterly GDP Using Monthly Indicators

The authors evaluate the out-of-sample forecasting performance of six competing models at horizons of up to three quarters ahead in a pseudo-real time setup. All the models use information in monthly indicators released ahead of quarterly GDP. The authors estimate two models – averaged vector autoregressions and bridge equations – relying on just a few monthly indicators. The remaining four models condition the forecast on a large set of monthly series. These models comprise two standard principal components models, a dynamic factor model based on the Kalman smoother, and a generalized dynamic factor model. The authors benchmark their results to the performance of a naive model and the historical near-term forecasts of the Czech National Bank’s staff. The findings are also compared with a related study conducted by ECB staff (Barhoumi et al., 2008). In the Czech case, standard principal components is the most precise model overall up to three quarters ahead. However, the CNB staff’s historical forecasts were the most accurate one quarter ahead.GDP forecasting, bridge models, principal components, dynamic factor models, real-time evaluation