Monetary policy, exchange rates and stock prices in the Middle East region

A structural vector autoregressive model is employed to investigate the impact of monetary policy and real exchange rate shocks on the stock market performance of Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. In order to identify the structural shocks both short run and long run restrictions are applied. Unlike previous literature the contemporaneous interdependence between the financial variables are left unrestricted to give a more accurate depiction of the relationships. The heterogeneity of the results reflect the different monetary policy frameworks and stock market characteristics of these countries. Mainly, monetary policy and the real exchange rate shocks have a significant short run impact on the stock prices of the countries that apply a relatively more independent monetary policy and flexible exchange rates

Small versus big-data factor extraction in Dynamic Factor Models: An empirical assessment

In the context of Dynamic Factor Models (DFM), we compare point and interval estimates of the underlying unobserved factors extracted using small and big-data procedures. Our paper differs from previous works in the related literature in several ways. First, we focus on factor extraction rather than on prediction of a given variable in the system. Second, the comparisons are carried out by implementing the procedures considered to the same data. Third, we are interested not only on point estimates but also on confidence intervals for the factors. Based on a simulated system and the macroeconomic data set popularized by Stock and Watson (2012), we show that, for a given procedure, factor estimates based on different cross-sectional dimensions are highly correlated. On the other hand, given the cross-sectional dimension, the Maximum Likelihood Kalman filter and smoother (KFS) factor estimates are highly correlated with those obtained using hybrid Principal Components (PC) and KFS procedures. The PC estimates are somehow less correlated. Finally, the PC intervals based on asymptotic approximations are unrealistically tiny.Financial support from the Spanish Government projects ECO2012-32854 and ECO2012-32401 is acknowledged by the first and second authors respectivel

Investments in recessions

We argue that the strategy literature has been virtually silent on the issue of recessions, and that this constitutes a regrettable sin of omission. A key route to rectify this omission is to focus on how recessions affect investment behavior, and thereby firms stocks of assets and capabilities which ultimately will affect competitive outcomes. In the present paper we aim to contribute by analyzing how two key aspects of recessions, demand reductions and reductions in credit availability, affect three different types of investments: physical capital, R&D and innovation and human- and organizational capital. We point out that recessions not only affect the level of investment, but also the composition of investments. Some of these effects are quite counterintuitive. For example, investments in R&D are more sensitive to credit constraints than physical capital is. Investments in human capital grow as demand falls, and both R&D and human capital investments show important nonlinearities with respect to changes in demand

Monetary policy and stock valuation: Structural VAR identification and size effects

his paper examines the relationship between the US monetary policy and stock valuation using a structural VAR framework that allows for the simultaneous interaction between the federal funds rate and stock market developments based on the assumption of long-run monetary neutrality. The results confirm a strong, negative and significant monetary policy tightening effect on real stock prices. Furthermore, we provide evidence consistent with a delayed response of small stocks to monetary policy shocks relative to large stocks

Can Europe recover without credit?

Data from 135 countries covering five decades suggests that creditless recoveries, in which the stock of real credit does not return to the pre-crisis level for three years after the GDP trough, are not rare and are characterised by remarkable real GDP growth rates: 4.7 percent per year in middle-income countries and 3.2 percent per year in high-income countries. However, the implications of these historical episodes for the current European situation are limited, for two main reasons. First, creditless recoveries are much less common in highincome countries, than in low-income countries which are financially undeveloped. European economies heavily depend on bank loans and research suggests that loan supply played a major role in the recent weak credit performance of Europe. There are reasons to believe that, despite various efforts, normal lending has not yet been restored. Limited loan supply could be disruptive for the European economic recovery and there has been only a minor substitution of bank loans with debt securities. Second, creditless recoveries were associated with significant real exchange rate depreciation, which has hardly occurred so far in most of Europe. This stylised fact suggests that it might be difficult to re-establish economic growth in the absence of sizeable real exchange rate depreciation, if credit growth does not return

The US stock market leads the Federal funds rate and Treasury bond yields

Using a recently introduced method to quantify the time varying lead-lag dependencies between pairs of economic time series (the thermal optimal path method), we test two fundamental tenets of the theory of fixed income: (i) the stock market variations and the yield changes should be anti-correlated; (ii) the change in central bank rates, as a proxy of the monetary policy of the central bank, should be a predictor of the future stock market direction. Using both monthly and weekly data, we found very similar lead-lag dependence between the S&P500 stock market index and the yields of bonds inside two groups: bond yields of short-term maturities (Federal funds rate (FFR), 3M, 6M, 1Y, 2Y, and 3Y) and bond yields of long-term maturities (5Y, 7Y, 10Y, and 20Y). In all cases, we observe the opposite of (i) and (ii). First, the stock market and yields move in the same direction. Second, the stock market leads the yields, including and especially the FFR. Moreover, we find that the short-term yields in the first group lead the long-term yields in the second group before the financial crisis that started mid-2007 and the inverse relationship holds afterwards. These results suggest that the Federal Reserve is increasingly mindful of the stock market behavior, seen at key to the recovery and health of the economy. Long-term investors seem also to have been more reactive and mindful of the signals provided by the financial stock markets than the Federal Reserve itself after the start of the financial crisis. The lead of the S&P500 stock market index over the bond yields of all maturities is confirmed by the traditional lagged cross-correlation analysis.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, 1 tabl