European hoarding: currency use among immigrants in Switzerland

Do immigrants have a higher demand for large denominated banknotes than natives? This study examines whether cash orders for CHF 1000 notes, a banknote not used for daily transactions, is concentrated in Swiss cities with a high foreign-to-native ratio. Controlling for a range of socio-economic indicators across 250 Swiss cities, European immigrants in Switzerland are found to hoard less CHF 1000 banknotes than natives. A 1 percent increase in the immigrant-to-native ratio leads to a reduction in currency orders by CHF 4000. This negative correlation between immigrant-to-native ratio and currency orders for CHF 1000 notes holds irrespective of the European immigrants' country of origin. Hoarding of large denominated banknotes by natives is attributed tax avoidance.Money ; Immigrants ; Bank notes ; Monetary policy

On the Inadequacy of Newswire Reports for Empirical Research on Foreign Exchange Interventions

Newswire reports have become an accepted tool for empirical studies analyzing informational asymmetries in FX markets. This paper tests the accuracy of such reports for Swiss interventions in the foreign exchange market. The evidence finds that the time stamp of the reports does not always lie near the recorded time of the first intervention trade as is commonly assumed in market microstructure studies. The standard deviation of the time difference is measured in hours and not in minutes. These and other regression results question the accuracy of newswire reports for Swiss interventions.Central Bank Interventions, Intra-Daily Data, Newswire Reports

Measuring Income Elasticity for Swiss Money Demand: What do the Cantons say about Financial Innovation?

Recent time-series evidence has re-confirmed the forecasting ability of Swiss broad money. The same money demand studies and others, however, find that the income elasticity is greater than one. Such parameter estimates are difficult to reconcile with transactions demand theory. This study re-examines the estimates for income elasticity in money demand based on cross-regional evidence for Switzerland. Particular attention is given to the influence of regional financial sophistication. The cross-cantonal results find that the income elasticity lies between 0.4 and 0.6. This discrepancy between the two empirical methodologies has important consequences for the conduct of Swiss monetary policy.Money Demand, Cross-Regional Estimates, Regional Financial Sophistication

Immigrant language barriers and house prices

Are language skills important in explaining the nexus between house prices and immigrant inflows? The language barrier hypothesis says immigrants from a non common language country value amenities more than immigrants from common language countries.> ; In turn, immigrants from non common language countries are less price sensitive to house price changes than immigrants from a common language country. Tests of the language barrier hypothesis with Swiss house prices show that an immigration inflow from a non common language country equal to 1 percent of an area's population is coincident with an increase in prices for single-family homes of about 4.9 percent. Immigrant inflow from a common language country instead has no statistically significant impact.Labor mobility

Fluctuations in the Swiss Franc: What has Changed Since the Euro's Introduction?

The monetary implications arising from EMU for Swiss monetary policy show up primarily in the exchange rate. Until now, fluctuations in the Swiss franc against the euro have been surprisingly moderate. The Swiss franc has thus tracked the euro's decline against the US dollar without experiencing strong inflationary pressure and a convergence in the interest-rate differential: a paradoxical result for a small open economy. This paper examines critically whether the recent record reveals information about a change in SNB monetary policy. It also attemps to shed light on the SNB's ability to implement an independent monetary policy with the new landscape defined by EMU. Four hypotheses of euro tracking are considered.

Are Weekly Inflation Forecasts Informative?

Are weekly inflation forecasts informative? Although several central banks review and discuss monetary policy issues on a bi-weekly basis, there have been few attempts by analysts to construct systematic estimates of core inflation that supports such a decision-making schedule. The timeliness of news releases and macroeconomic revisions are recognized to be an important information source in real-time estimation. We incorporate real-time information from macroeconomic releases and revisions into our weekly updates of monthly Swiss core inflation using a common factor procedure. The weekly estimates for Swiss core inflation find that it is worthwhile to update the forecast at least twice a month.Inflation, Common Factors, Sequential Information Flow

Monthly pass-through ratios

This paper estimates monthly pass-through ratios from import prices to consumer prices in real time. Conventional time series methods impose restrictions to generate exogenous shocks on exchange rates or import prices when estimating pass-through coefficients. Instead, a natural experiment based on data releases defines our shock to foreign prices. Our estimation strategy follows an event-study approach based on monthly releases in import prices. Projections from a dynamic common factor model with daily panels before and after monthly releases of import prices define the shock. This information shock allows us to recover a monthly pass-through ratio. We apply our identification procedure to Swiss prices and find strong evidence that the monthly pass-through ratio is around 0.3. Our real-time estimates yield higher pass-through ratios than time series estimates.Monetary policy ; Econometric models ; Foreign exchange rates ; Prices

Understanding Reserve Volatility in Emerging Markets: A Look at the Last Thirty Years

In this paper, we examine external, monetary, and structural determinants of cross-country variation in reserve volatility for 30 emerging market economies from 1973 to 2000. We find that reserve holdings and openess to be the most important determinants of reserve volatility. These results are robust for a range of control variables, including monetary variables, the degree of financial development, and the level of indebtness. We view these results as establishing interesting stylized facts that may be helpful in evaluating reserve ubncertainty as a crises indicator.

The mechanics of a successful exchange rate peg: lessons for emerging markets

To the surprise of many market watchers, Thailand’s exchange rate peg to the dollar collapsed in July 1997, leading to similar rounds of currency devaluations in other East Asian countries. This study seeks to determine whether there were identifiable contrasts in implementation between Thailand’s peg and a perennially successful peg—Austria’s peg to the Deutsche mark—that would have hinted at problems for Thailand prior to July 1997. The comparison suggests that Thailand was not sufficiently vigilant about keeping its inflation rate low in the early 1990s. By 1995, Thailand faced a situation where a tight monetary policy involving high domestic interest rates would not always have created disinflationary pressure, as high interest rates also tended to attract greater capital inflow to Thailand. In this environment, Thailand’s monetary policy became erratic and failed to maintain the exchange rate peg.Foreign exchange rates ; Thailand

Time-Varying Pass-Through from Import Prices to Consumer Prices: Evidence from an Event Study with Real-Time Data

This paper analyzes the pass-through from import prices to CPI inflation in real time. Our strategy follows an event-study approach, which compares inflation forecasts before and after import price releases. Inflation forecasts are modelled using a dynamic factor procedure that relies on daily panels of Swiss data. We find strong evidence that monthly import price releases provide important information for CPI inflation forecasts and that the behavior of updated forecasts is consistent with a time-varying pass-through. The robustness of this latter result is underpinned in two ways: an alternative CPI measure that excludes price components subject to administered pricing and panels capturing different levels of information breadth. Besides implying a time-varying pass-through, our empirical findings cast doubt on a prominent role of sticky prices for the low pass-through findings.Common Factors, Pass-Through, Daily Panels