Volatility Regimes in Central and Eastern European Countries’ Exchange Rates

The author investigates changes between volatility regimes in five Central and Eastern European countries to analyze whether these changes are consistent with changes in the official exchange rate arrangements. The analysis merges two approaches, the GARCH model (Bollerslev, 1986) and the Markov switching model (Hamilton, 1989). The author discovers switches between high- and low-volatility regimes consistent with policy settings for Hungary, Poland, and, to a lesser extent, the Czech Republic, whereas Romania and Slovakia do not show a clear picture. Furthermore, he checks the robustness of the model regarding the choice of the error distribution and finds that heavy-tailed conditional distributions substantially improve the results.CEEC, exchange rate volatility, regime switching GARCH, Markov switching model, transition economies

Are exporting firms always a good hedge against currency risk? Evidence from Central and Eastern European Countries

This paper analyzes the exchange rate exposure of exporting firms in (the so far rarely addressed) largest Eastern European transition economies, i.e. Russia and three EU accession countries (CEEC-3). It also controls for possible effects of different exchange rate regimes. Substantially improving the results from the existing literature we find for more than 80% of firms in our sample a significant exchange rate exposure. However, the magnitude and direction of firms’ exposure depends on the particular exchange rate and clearly differs between Russia and the CEEC-3. We find that share prices increase with a depreciation of the domestic currency and only against the US Dollar in Russia, but decrease with a depreciation and only against the Euro in the CEEC-3. Such substantial differences may result from a differing dominance of exposure channels in the respective economies, such as the country-specific export structure and foreign debt. Finally, the switch from a pegged to a flexible exchange rate regime appears to be less important for exposure

The role of the real exchange rate in credit growth in central and eastern European countries : a bank-level analysis

This study analyzes the effects of macroeconomic and bank-level variables on the loan growth of banks in Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) for the period between 1999 and 2010. Differences between private, state, domestic and foreign banks are analyzed by using the ownership structures of banks. We show that, unlike macro-economic factors and other bank-level variables, leverage growth and equity growth have consistently significant effects on the loans of both domestic and foreign banks. The real exchange rate turns out to be a significant factor only for foreign banks. The latter result is important in understanding the transmission of global shocks to domestic credit. The results are robust to different specifications

Interest rate convergence in the EMS prior to European Monetary Union

In this paper we analyze the convergence of interest rates in the European Monetary System (EMS) in a framework of changing persistence. This allows us to estimate the exact date of full convergence from the data. A change in persistence means that a time series switches from stationarity to non-stationarity, or vice versa. It is often argued that due to the specific historical situation in the EMS the interest rate differential was non-stationary before the full convergence of interest rates was achieved and stationary afterwards. Our empirical results suggest that the convergence date has been very different for Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Italy and are in line with the conclusions one would draw from a narrative approach. We compare three different estimators for the convergence date and find that the results are quite robust. Our results therefore stress the importance of credibility for monetary policy

Political connection heterogeneity and firm value in Vietnam

The observation of firms’ political connections (PCs) in both types of ascribed and acquired PCs has raised the question of their benefits to firms’ operation. Based on 1,365 Vietnamese listed firm-year observations from 2010 to 2014, we find that although firms with both ascribed and acquired PCs have lower firm value (FV) than firms without any PCs, firms with acquired PCs exhibit better FV than those with ascribed PCs. The paper also reveals that concentrated ownership (CO) has a mediation impact on the association between acquired PCs and FV while it can help firms with acquired PCs in improving FV

Bank Lending and Asset Prices in the Euro Area

We examine the dynamics of bank lending to the private sector for countries of the Euro area by applying a Markov switching error correction model.We identify for Belgium, Germany, Ireland and Portugal stable, mean reverting regimes and unstable regimes with no tendency to return to the long term credit demand equation, whereas for some other countries there is only weak evidence. Furthermore, for these as well as for other countries we detect in the less stable regimes a strong co-movement with the development of the stock market. We interpret this as evidence for constraints in bank lending. In contrast, the banks’ capital seems to have only marginal impact on the lending behaviour.Credit demand, credit rationing, asset prices, credit channel

Macroeconomic announcements, communication and order flow on the Hungarian foreign exchange market

We investigate the relation between the intradaily HUF/EUR exchange rate on the one hand and news announcements and order flow on the other hand. We extend the existing literature on foreign exchange market microstructure by considering a small open transition economy. We find that the intradaily exchange rate depends on both news announcements and order flow. We conclude that news on the HUF/EUR market are transmitted directly via immediate reactions to news announcements as well as indirectly via order flow. We decompose the news’ total effect on exchange rate and find that order flow accounts for approximately three quarters, compared to one quarter for direct news impact. Although the HUF is pegged to the EUR, the exchange rate reacts very qualitatively very similarly to exchange rates of major currencies as reported in the literature, whereas it quantiatively differs: the importance of indeirect news transmission is remarkably higher on the HUF/EUR market. Furthermore, we extend the commonly used news to communication of central bankers significantly improving the explanatory power of the estimates. Central bank communication is an important determinant for the HUF/EUR rate