What is global excess liquidity, and does it matter?

This paper endeavours to provide a comprehensive analysis of the nature and the possible importance of “global excess liquidity”, a concept which has attracted considerable attention in recent years. The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, we present some conceptual discussion on the meaning of excess liquidity in advanced countries with developed financial markets. Second, we report some descriptive analysis on the degree of co-movement of several possible measures of excess liquidity and spill-overs between them for a relatively large sample of industrialised and developing countries. Third, we estimate a VAR model for an aggregate of the major industrialised countries and analyse the transmission of shocks to global excess liquidity to the global economy, including possible cross-border spill-over effects to a number of domestic variables in the world’s three largest economies (the US, the euro area and Japan). JEL Classification: E52, F42Global excess liquidity, international economics, monetary policy, open economy

Business cycle synchronisation in East Asia

Against the background of the rapid inter- and intraregional integration of East Asia, we examine the extent and nature of synchronisation of business cycles in the region. We estimate various specifications of a dynamic common factor model for output growth of ten East Asian countries. A significant common factor is shared by all Asian countries considered, except China and Japan. The degree of synchronisation has fluctuated over time, with an upward trend particularly evident for the newly industrialised countries. Synchronisation appears to mainly reflect strong export synchronisation, rather than common consumption or investment dynamics. Cross-country spill-over effects explain only a small part of the comovement in the region. More importantly, a number of exogenous factors, such as the price of oil and the JPY-USD exchange rate, play an important role in synchronising activity. In addition, economic linkages with Europe and North America may also have contributed to the observed synchronisation. JEL Classification: E30, F00business cycles synchronisation, dynamic factor model, East Asia

Leading indicators in a globalised world

Using OECD composite leading indicators (CLI), we assess empirically whether the ability of the country- specific CLIs to predict economic activity has diminished in recent years, e.g. due to rapid advances in globalisation. Overall, we find evidence that the CLI encompasses useful information for forecasting industrial production, particularly over horizons of four to eight months ahead. The evidence is particularly strong when taking cointegration relationships into account. At the same time, we find indications that the forecast accuracy has declined over time for several countries. Augmenting the country-specific CLI with a leading indicator of the external environment and employing forecast combination techniques improves the forecast performance for several economies. Over time, the increasing importance of international dependencies is documented by relative performance gains of the extended model for selected countries. JEL Classification: C53, E32, E37, F47business cycle, forecast comparison, Globalisation, Leading Indicator, Structural change

Emerging Asia’s growth and integration: how autonomous are business cycles?

Against the background of the rapid integration of emerging Asia into the global economy, this paper investigates the role of domestic and external factors in driving individual emerging economies in Asia. We estimate VAR models for ten countries over the period 1979Q1- 2003Q4, controlling for external factors, and use sign restrictions to identify structural domestic shocks. Variance decompositions indicate that Asian emerging economies are to a large part driven by external developments, and even more so employing a more recent sample. We analyse to what extent structural domestic shocks exhibit a regional dimension by comparing shocks across countries using correlation and principal component analysis. The extent of regional co-movement between structural shocks is relatively limited. While the principal components analysis indicates a moderate increase in co-movement over time, the correlation analysis finds a decline. This may reflect a broadening of regional integration at the expense of bilateral economic ties. JEL Classification: F15, F02, F41Economic integration, International Business Cycles, sign restrictions, structural shocks

The Forecasting Performance of Composite Leading Indicators: Does Globalisation Matter?

Using OECD Composite Leading Indicators (CLI), we assess empirically whether the ability of the country-specific CLIs to predict economic activity has diminished in recent years, e.g. due to rapid advances in globalisation. Overall, we find evidence that the CLI encompasses useful information for forecasting industrial production, particularly over horizons of four to eight months ahead. The evidence is particularly strong when taking cointegration relationships into account. At the same time, we find indications that the forecast accuracy has declined over time for several countries. Augmenting the country-specific CLI with a leading indicator of the external environment and employing forecast combination techniques improves the forecast performance for several economies. Over time, the increasing importance of international dependencies is documented by relative performance gains of the extended model for selected countries.

Is Economic Activity in the G7 Synchronized? Common Shocks versus Spillover Effects

This Paper analyses the co-movement in activity, measured by GDP and industrial production, between the G7 countries for the period 1972-2002. For that purpose, a dynamic factor model is estimated using Kalman Filtering techniques. In addition to separating common and country-specific - idiosyncratic - developments of output, we try to identify the causes underlying the observed co-movement: to what extent is it driven by common shocks and to what extent can cross-country/cross-area spill-over effects account for the observed co-movement? We find that the output developments in G7 countries are driven to a substantial extent by common dynamics. A significant part of the co-movement, especially in the first half of the sample, can be explained by developments in the price of oil, an important and easily identifiable common shock. The analysis suggests that, in addition, area-specific common factors play an important role, separating the sample into a North American (US, Canada) and a continental European (France, Germany, Italy) area, with the UK and Japan being somewhat separate from these areas. We find that developments in the North American factor have a strong lagged impact on the continental European factor, while the reverse is not true. Furthermore, the strength of the cross-area spillovers from America to Europe appears to have become stronger over the sample period, suggesting that international linkages have increased in the process of globalization.business cycles synchronization; Dynamic Factor; kalman filter