Real exchange rates in latin america: The ppp hypothesis and fractional integration

This paper tests for PPP in a group of seventeen Latin American (LA) countries by applying fractional integration techniques to real exchange rate series. Compared to earlier studies on these economies, this approach has the advantage of allowing for non-integer values for the degree of integration, and thus for the possibility of PPP not holding continuously but as a long-run equilibrium condition. Further, breaks in the series are endogenously determined using a procedure based on the least-squares principle. This is particularly crucial in the Latin American countries, which have been affected by several exchange rate crises and policy regime changes. The results, based on different assumptions about the underlying disturbances, are in the majority of cases inconsistent with PPP, even more so when breaks are incorporated: Argentina is the only country for which clear evidence of mean reversion is found in the model including a break, albeit only in the second subsample

Stock market and economic growth: Evidence from three CEECs

This paper estimates a bivariate VAR-GARCH(1,1) model to examine linkages between stock market and economic growth in three CEEC countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland). The empirical findings suggest that there is unidirectional causality running from stock markets to growth in the levels, this linkage becoming stronger following the EU accession, which appears to be beneficial, presumably as a catalyst for institutional building and development. The same holds in most cases for volatility spillovers as well. In addition, Germany is confirmed to act as a locomotive for these countries, and a tight monetary policy is found to affect both economic and stock market growth adversely

Stock prices and monetary policy: An impulse response analysis

This paper analyses the relationship between monetary policy and the stock market with the aim of gaining new insights into the transmission mechanism of monetary policy. The empirical findings shed light on the importance of stock prices for money demand and therefore provide useful nformation to monetary authorities deciding on policy actions. A technique developed by Wickens and Motto (2001) for identifying shocks by estimating a VECM for the endogenous variables is employed. The reported evidence suggests that stock markets play a significant role in the money demand function

Non-normality and recursive unit root test for PPP: Solving the PPP puzzle?

In this paper we carry out unit root tests on real exchange rates recursively as in Caporale et al (2003), but, following Arghyrou and Gregoriou (2007), we adjust the residuals for non-normality using a wild bootstrap method. The results are striking: the correction for non-normality dramatically increases the rejection percentages of the unit root null, and attenuates the erratic behaviour of the t-statistic, thus providing strong evidence in favour of PPP, and suggesting that such a correction might at least go some way towards solving the “PPP puzzle”

Fiscal spillovers in the Euro area

Copyright @ 2011 Brunel UniversityThis paper analyses the dynamic effects of fiscal imbalances in a given EMU member state on the borrowing costs of other countries in the euro area. The estimation of a multivariate, multi-country time series model (specifically a Global VAR, or GVAR) using quarterly data for the EMU period suggests that euro-denominated government yields are strongly linked with each other. However, financial markets seem to be able to discriminate among different issuers. Consequently, fiscal imbalances in Italy and in other peripheral countries should be closely monitored by their EMU partners and the European institutions

Consumption, wealth, stock and housing returns: Evidence from emerging markets

Copyright @ 2011 Brunel UniversityIn this paper, we show, using the consumer's budget constraint, that the residuals of the trend relationship among consumption, aggregate wealth, and labour income should predict both stock returns and housing returns. We use quarterly data for a panel of 31 emerging economies and find that, when agents expect future stock returns to be higher, they will temporarily allow consumption to rise. Regarding housing returns, if housing assets are complementary to stocks, then investors react in the same way. If, however, the increase in the exposure through risky assets is achieved by lowering the share of wealth held in the form of housing (i.e., when stock and housing assets are substitutes), then they will temporarily reduce their consumption

Panel Data Tests Of PPP: A Critical Overview

This paper reviews recent developments in the analysis of non-stationary panels, focusing on empirical applications of panel unit root and cointegration tests in the context of PPP. It highlights various drawbacks of existing methods. First, unit root tests suffer from severe size distortions in the presence of negative moving average errors. Second, the common demeaning procedure to correct for the bias resulting from homogeneous cross-sectional dependence is not effective; more worryingly, it introduces cross-correlation when it is not already present. Third, standard corrections for the case of heterogeneous cross-sectional dependence do not generally produce consistent estimators. Fourth, if there is between-group correlation in the innovations, the SURE estimator is affected by similar problems to FGLS methods, and does not necessarily outperform OLS. Finally, cointegration between different groups in the panel could also be a source of size distortions. We offer some empirical guidelines to deal with these problems, but conclude that panel methods are unlikely to solve the PPP puzzl

Banking consolidation in Nigeria, 2000-2010

This study examines the Nigerian banking consolidation process using a dynamic panel for the period 2000-2010. The Arellano and Bond (1991) dynamic GMM approach is adopted to estimate a cost function taking into account the possible endogeneity of the covariates. The main finding is that the Nigerian banking sector has benefited from the consolidation process, and specifically that foreign ownership, mergers and acquisitions and bank size decrease costs. Directions for future research are also discussed

The euro and inflation uncertainty in the European Monetary Union

In this paper, we investigate empirically the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty in twelve EMU countries. We estimate a time-varying parameter model with a GARCH specification for the conditional volatility of inflation in order to distinguish between short-run (structural and impulse) and steady-state uncertainty. We then introduce a dummy variable to model the policy regime shift which occurred in 1999 with the introduction of the Euro, and its effects on the links between inflation and inflation uncertainty. We find that steady-state inflation has generally remained stable (with the important exception of Germany, where the trend has become positive), steady-state inflation uncertainty and inflation persistence have both increased, and the relationship between inflation and inflation uncertainty has broken down in many countries. These findings cast doubt on the optimistic view taken by the ECB concerning its success in controlling inflation, and suggest the need for improvements in its analytical framework

Are PPP tests erratically behaved? Some panel evidence

This paper examines whether, in addition to standard unit root and cointegration tests, panel approaches also produce test statistics behaving erratically when applied to PPP. We show that if appropriate tests (which are robust to cross-sectional dependence and more powerful) are used, any evidence of erratic behaviour disappears, and strong empirical support is found for PPP. It appears therefore that recent advances in panel data econometrics might enable us to settle the PPP debate