US Trade Deficit, a Reality Check : New Evidence Incorporating Asymmetric and Nonlinear Effects of Exchange Rate Dynamics

In the context of the debate on the global imbalances, this study investigates the determinants of US trade balance in a Non-linear ARDL framework which accounts for the asymmetric and nonlinear effects of real effective exchange rate dynamics. Drawing on the data from 1994Q1 to 2018Q1, our key empirical findings suggest significant evidence of short and long-run asymmetries in the relationship between the real effective exchange rate, US trade balance and its determinants. An asymmetric cumulative dynamic multiplier analysis shows evidence of an asymmetric J-curve. Furthermore, we find that the price stability, productivity, domestic savings and fiscal deficit/discipline are crucial for the US trade balance in the short to long term. Empirical findings of this study contribute to the contemporary debate on the US trade deficit and have profound policy implications for the competitiveness of the US economy and its external balance

Research on futures-commodities, macroeconomic volatility and financial development

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThis thesis consists of eight studies that cover topics in the increasingly influential field of futures- commodities, macroeconomic volatility and financial development. Chapter 2 considers the case of Argentina and provides a first thorough examination of the timing of the Argentine debacle. By applying a group of econometric tests for structural breaks on a range of GDP growth series over a period from 1886 to 2003 we conclude that there are two key dates in Argentina's economic history (1918 and 1948) that need to be inspected closely in order to further our understanding of the Argentine debacle. Chapters 3 and 4 investigated the time-varying link between financial development and economic growth. By employing the logistic smooth transition framework to annual data for Brazil covering the period 1890-2003 we found that financial development has a mixed (either positive or negative) time- varying effect on growth, which depends on trade openness thresholds. We also find a positive impact of trade openness on growth while a mainly negative one for the various political instability measures. Chapter 5 studied the convergence properties of inflation rates among the countries of the European Monetary Union over the period 1980-2013. By applying recently developed panel unit root/stationarity tests overall we are able to accept the stationarity hypothesis. Similarly, results from the univariate testing procedure indicated a mixed evidence in favour of convergence. Hence next we employ a clustering algorithm in the context of multivariate stationarity tests and we statistically detect three absolute convergence clubs in the pre-euro period, which consist of early accession countries. We also detect two separate clusters of early accession countries in the post-1997 period. For the rest of the countries/cases we find evidence of divergent behaviour. For robustness check we additionally employ a pairwise convergence Bayesian framework, which broadly confirms our findings. Finally, we show that in the presence of volatility spillovers and structural breaks time-varying persistence will be transmitted from the conditional variance to the conditional mean. Chapter 6 focuses on the negative consequences that the five years of austerity (2010-2014) imposed on the Greek economy and the society in general. To achieve that goal we summarize the views of three renowned economists, namely Paul De Grauwe, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz on the eurozone crisis as well as the Greek case. In support of their claims we provide solid evidence of the dramatic effects that the restrictive policies had on Greece. Chapter 7 analyzes the properties of inflation rates and their volatilities among five European countries over a period 1960-2003. Unlike to previous studies we investigate whether or not the infl ation rate and its volatility of each individual country displayed time-varying characteristics. By applying various power ARCH processes with structural breaks and with or without in-mean effects the results indicated that the conditional means, variances as well as the in-mean effect displayed time-varying behaviour. We also show that for France, Italy and Netherlands the in-mean effect is positive, whereas that of Austria and Denmark is negative. Chapter 8 examines the stochastic properties of different commodity time series during the recent fi nancial and EU sovereign debt crisis (1997-2013). By employing the Bai-Perron method we detect five breaks for each of the commodity returns (both in the mean and in the variance). The majority of the breaks are closely associated with the two aforementioned crises. Having obtained the breaks we estimated the power ARCH models for each commodity allowing the conditional means and variances to switch across the breakpoints. The results indicate overall that there is a time-varying behaviour of the conditional mean and variance parameters in the case of grains, energies and softs. In contrast, metals and soya complex show time-varying characteristics only in the conditional variance. Finally, conducting a forecasting analysis using spectral techniques (in both mapped and unmapped data) we find that the prices of corn remained almost stable while for wheat, heating oil, wti and orange juice the prices decreased further, though slightly. In the case of natural gas, coffee and sugar overall the prices experienced significant defl ationary pressures. As far as the prices of oats, platinum, rbob, cocoa, soybean, soymeal and soyoil is concerned, they showed an upward trend. Chapter 9 examines the effect of health and military expenditures, trade openness and political instability on output growth. By employing a pooled generalised least squares method for 19 NATO countries from 1993 to 2010 we fi nd that there is a negative impact of health and military expenditures, and political instability on economic growth whereas that of trade openness is positive