International capital flows : do short-term investment and direct investment differ?

The authors examine the behavior of four major components of international capital flows in 15 developing and industrial countries. Striking differences in the behavior of the component flows arise in general specifications that allow the flows to interact. For example, the behavior of international short-term investment appears to be sensitive to changes in all the other types of international capital flows, including direct investment, but direct investment appears to be insensitive to such changes. In finding that short-term investment appears to respond more dramatically to disturbances in other capital flows and in other countries than does direct investment, the authors provide empirical support for the conventional notion that short-term investment is"hot money"and direct investment is not.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Capital Markets and Capital Flows,Financial Intermediation,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Banks&Banking Reform,Capital Flows

A decomposition of the increased stability of GDP growth

Since 1984, the U.S. economy has grown at a remarkably steady pace. An analysis of this increased stability shows that every major component of GDP has exhibited smoother growth. However, two components--inventory investment and consumer spending--are responsible for the bulk of the decline in overall volatility.Gross domestic product ; Capital investments ; Inventories ; Consumption (Economics)

Do european business cycles look like one _?\_?

This paper analyzes if each European country presents business cycles that are similar enough to validate what some authors call the European cycle. Contrary to the majority of papers on business cycles, we concentrate on the appearance of the cycle, not on the synchronization. We provide a robust methodology for dating and characterizing business cycles and their phases and adopt the model-based cluster analysis to test the existence of an unique cluster (a common cycle) against more than one. We nd evidence against a common cycle. Finally, we nd no clear relation between similarities in business cycle appearance and synchronization across countries.

Markov-switching dynamic factor models in real time

© 2018. This document is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This document is the submitted version of a published work that appeared in final form in International Journal of Forecasting.We extend the Markov-switching dynamic factor model to account for some of the specificities of the day-to-day monitoring of economic developments from macroeconomic indicators, such as mixed sampling frequencies and ragged-edge data. First, we evaluate the theoretical gains of using data that are available promptly for computing probabilities of recession in real time. Second, we show how to estimate the model that deals with unbalanced panels of data and mixed frequencies, and examine the benefits of this extension through several Monte Carlo simulations. Finally, we assess its empirical reliability for the computation of real-time inferences of the US business cycle, and compare it with the alternative method of forecasting the probabilities of recession from balanced panels

The Great Recession. Worse than ever?

© 2018. This document is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ This document is the submitted version of a published work that appeared in final form in Economía Aplicada.We develop an international comparative assessment of the Great Recession, in terms of the features that characterize the form of the recession phases, namely length, depth and shape. The potential unobserved heterogeneity in the international recession characteristics is modeled by a finite mixture model. Using Bayesian inference via Gibbs sampling, the model classiffies the Great Recession suffered by a large number of countries into dfferent clusters, determining its severity in cross section and time series and dimensions. Our results suggest that the business cycle features of the Great Recession are not dfferent from others in an international perspective. By contrast, we show that the only distinctive feature of the Great Recession wasits unprecedented degree of synchronicity

6D Higgsless Standard Model

We present a 6D Higgsless Standard Model with a realistic gauge sector. The model uses only the Standard Model gauge group SU(2)xU(1) with the gauge bosons propagating in flat extra dimensions which are compactified on a rectangle. The electroweak symmetry is broken by boundary conditions, and the correct splitting between the W and Z boson masses can be arranged by a suitable choice of the compactification scales. The higher Kaluza-Klein excitations of the gauge bosons decouple from the low-energy theory due to dominant brane kinetic terms. The model has the following two key features compared to 5D models. The bulk kinetic couplings, responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking using mixed boundary conditions, are of order the electroweak scale. Moreover, the agreement with the precision electroweak parameters is improved compared to 5D warped or flat models. We also argue that the calculability of Higgsless models can be ameliorated in more than five dimensions.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, discussion of fermion masses added, comment on scalar degrees of freedom included, references adde

Credit Supply: Identifying Balance-Sheet Channels with Loan Applications and Granted Loans

To identify credit availability we analyze the extensive and intensive margins of lending with loan applications and all loans granted in Spain. We find that during the period analyzed both worse economic and tighter monetary conditions reduce loan granting, especially to firms or from banks with lower capital or liquidity ratios. Moreover, responding to applications for the same loan, weak banks are less likely to grant the loan. Our results suggest that firms cannot offset the resultant credit restriction by turning to other banks. Importantly the bank-lending channel is notably stronger when we account for unobserved time-varying firm heterogeneity in loan demand and quality