How does public information on central bank intervention strategies affect exchange rate volatility ? the case of Peru

Intervention operations in the foreign exchange market are used by the Banco Central de Reserva del Peru to manage both the level and volatility of their exchange rates. The Banco Central de Reserva del Peru provides information to the market about the specific hours of the day interventions would take place and the total amount of intervention. It consistently buys and sells on the foreign exchange market to avoid large appreciations and depreciations of the Peruvian nuevo sol against the U.S. dollar (Sol/USD), respectively. The estimates in this paper indicate that past information on interventions has moved the sol in the intended direction but only during the time the Banco Central de Reserva del Peru has announced it would be active in the foreign exchange market. The authors also find that the expectation of future interventions by the Banco Central de Reserva del Peru decreases the volatility of the sol when it intervenes to avoid an appreciation of the sol; however, the opposite occurs when the intervention takes place to defend the sol from depreciation. Indeed, the sol has been less volatile during periods when the Banco Central de Reserva del Peru has intervened than otherwise.Debt Markets,Emerging Markets,Economic Stabilization,Currencies and Exchange Rates,Macroeconomic Management

Moral Hazard Effects of Bailing out under Asymmetric Information

With a four-stage sequential game model, we study how bailouts ameliorate the effects of liquidation on fundamentals, reduce the likelihood of currency crises and affect the financial sector's (non-observable) effort. In stage 1, exchange rate regime is announced and all agents receive probabilistic information that a shock may occur in stage 4. Here, the government can commit to an optimal bailout or may wait until stage 4 when a bad shock may occur. The private sector in stage 2 forms exchange rate expectations, and decides on investments and effort. In stage 3, the government faces costs due to expectations of devaluation and liquidation, and may decide to pre-emptively abandon its exchange rate policy. We show that commitment decisions have very important implications for the agents' optimal decisions.

A Risk Allocation Approach to Optimal Exchange Rate Policy

We derive the optimal exchange rate policy for a small open economy subject to terms-of-trade shocks. Firm owners and workers are risk averse but workers more so. Wages are given or partially indexed in the short run, and capital markets are imperfect. The government sets the exchange rate to allocate risk between workers and owners. With less risk-averse firms, and greater difference in risk aversion between workers and firms, the optimal exchange rate should vary little with pure terms-of-trade shocks but more with general shocks to prices. Optimal exchange rate variation is greater with indexed wages, but is smaller when firms behave monopolistically and when wage taxes (profit taxes) change procyclically (countercyclically) with export prices (import prices). The model gives policy rules for determining optimal variations of the exchange rate, and indicates when it is, and is not, optimal to join a currency union with trading partners, implying zero exchange rate variation.currency band, monetary union, price volatility, optimal risk allocation

Monitoring, liquidity provision and financial crisis

This paper analyzes central bank policies on monitoring banks in distress when liquidity provisions are conditional on performance and a bad shock occurs. A sequential game model is used to analyze two policies: one in which the central bank acts with discretion and the second in which the optimal monitoring policy rule is made public. The results show that banks exert less effort and take higher risks with discretionary monitoring policy. With public information about monitoring rules, there is more central bank monitoring and less need to provide emergency financing. Public information about monitoring resolves the multiple equilibria that arise with discretion and a unique equilibrium emerges where the probability of banking crisis is reduced.Monitoring; bailouts; banking crises; commitments; conditionality

Remittances, Financial Market Development, and Economic Growth: The Case of Latin America and the Caribbean

Within a theoretical framework, the author analyzes the effects that both workers' remittances and financial intermediation have on economic growth. It is found, among other things, that remittances can have significant positive long-run effects on growth. The author confronts the implications of the theoretical model proposed with panel data for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. After considering the effect of long-run investment and demographic variables, and controlling for fixed time and country effects, the empirical analysis indicates that financial intermediation tends to increase the responsiveness of growth to remittances. The overall conclusion is that making financial services more generally available should lead to even better use of remittances, thus boosting growth in these countries. Copyright � 2009 The Author. Journal compilation � 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Corporate investment, cash flow level and market imperfections: The case of Norway

We analyze firms’ investment behavior, differentiating firms according to the cash flow levels they experience during their lifecycles. We consequently consider the firm as the basic unit and not firm-year observations. Firms with persistent positive cash flow show higher investment-cash flow sensitivity than firms with persistent negative cash flow. Independent of the industry they belong to, older firms with positive cash flow show a weaker sensitivity than younger firms with positive cash flow. Firms with persistent negative cash flow are neither younger nor smaller than their counterparts, and their cash flow coefficient can be positive, negative or statistically insignificant. Thus, classifying firms by age or size may not yield a group of firms with similar financial structures.Financial constraints; internal funds; investment-cash flow sensitivity

A risk allocation approach to optimal exchange rate policy

We derive the optimal exchange rate policy for a small open economy subject to terms-of-trade shocks. Firm owners and workers are risk averse but workers more so. Wages are given or partially indexed in the short run, and capital markets are imperfect. The government sets the exchange rate to allocate risk between workers and owners. With less risk-averse firms, and greater difference in risk aversion between workers and firms, the optimal exchange rate should vary little with pure terms-of-trade shocks but more with general shocks to prices. Optimal exchange rate variation is greater with indexed wages, but is smaller when firms behave monopolistically and when wage taxes (profit taxes) change procyclically (countercyclically) with export prices (import prices). The model gives policy rules for determining optimal variations of the exchange rate, and indicates when it is, and is not, optimal to join a currency union with trading partners, implying zero exchange rate variation. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.