The Economic and Financial Determinants of Carbon Prices

The aim of this paper is to analyze the economic and financial determinants of carbon dioxide (CO2) prices from the short and long-term perspective, in particular within the EU-wide CO2 emissions trading system (EU ETS). After reviewing present carbon markets, this paper investigates the several drivers of carbon prices from both n financial and an economic perspective. It then examines the main impacts of these drivers in the short and long term. Finally, by comparing the results of several academic and financial studies, this paper identifies the average carbon price and its standard deviation for different future time horizons.CO2 emission allowances, Emissions Trading Scheme, EU ETS, CO2 price, carbon market

How Does Liquidity Affect Government Bond Yields?

The paper explores the determinants of yield differentials between sovereign bonds in the Euro area. There is a common trend in yield differentials, which is correlated with a measure of aggregate risk. In contrast, liquidity differentials display sizeable heterogeneity and no common factor. We propose a simple model with endogenous liquidity demand, where a bond’s liquidity premium depends both on its transaction cost and on investment opportunities. The model predicts that yield differentials should increase in both liquidity and risk, with an interaction term of the opposite sign. Testing these predictions on daily data, we find that the aggregate risk factor is consistently priced, liquidity differentials are priced for a subset of countries, and their interaction with the risk factor is in line with the model’s prediction and crucial to detect their effect.

Debt and the Effects of Fiscal Policy

A shift in taxes or in government spending (a "fiscal shock") at some point in time puts a constraint on the path of taxes and spending in the future, since the government intertemporal budget constraint will eventually have to be met. This simple fact is surprisingly overlooked in analyses of the effects of fiscal policy based on Vector AutoRegressive models. We study the effects of fiscal shocks keeping track of the debt dynamics that arises following a fiscal shock, and allowing for the possibility that taxes, spending and interest rates might respond to the level of the debt, as it evolves over time. We show that omitting a debt feedback can result in incorrect estimates of the dynamic effects of fiscal shocks. In particular, the absence of an effect of fiscal shocks on long-term interest rates -- a frequent finding in studies that omit a debt feedback -- can be explained by their mis-specification. Using data for the U.S. economy and two alternative identification assumptions we reconsider the effects of fiscal policy shocks correcting for these shortcomings.

Monetary policy in the Euro area: Lessons from 5 years of ECB and implications for Turkey

We examine monetary policy in the Euro area from both theoretical and empirical perspectives. We discuss what theory tells us the strategy of Central banks should be and contrasts it with the one employed by the ECB. We review accomplishments (and failures) of monetary policy in the Euro area and suggest changes that would increase the correlation between words and actions; streamline the understanding that markets have of the policy process; and anchor expectation formation more strongly. We examine the transmission of monetary policy shocks in the Euro area and in some potential member countries and try to infer the likely effects occurring when Turkey joins the EU first and the Euro area later. Much of the analysis here warns against having too high expectations of the economic gains that membership to the EU and Euro club will produce.Pillars, Communication, Transmission, EU newcomers

The ECB and the bond market

Despite the fact that the correlation between policy rates in the U.S. and in the euro area has been low—at least over the past three decades—long term interest rates in the two regions have been highly correlated. More recently (since the early 1990s) their levels have also converged. Decomposing long-rates in their underlying factors-real rates (plus an inflation risk premium), term premia, expected monetary policy and expected inflation—we find that this convergence reflects more similar economic structures in the U.S. and in the euro area, rather than a change in the distribution of shocks that hit the two regions. As far as the response to shocks is concerned, since the start of EMU Euro area long rates have become more responsive to local non-monetary shocks: in the long run, however, they converge to the same level of U.S. long rates because expected inflation and expected monetary policy also converge to similar levels. Policy rates in the euro area have also become more responsive to local non-monetary shocks. Finally, since the start of EMU, a monetary tightening by the ECB raises long rates, contrary to what used to happen in the 1990s when the Bundesbank was running monetary policy. Interestingly long rates in the Euro area fall following a monetary tightening in the U.S.Favero, Giavazzi, 978-92-79-08239-9, US and German Term Structure, Term Premia, Inflation Expectations, Monetary Policy

Inflation Targeting and Debt: Lessons from Brazil

Studying the recent experience of Brazil the paper explains how default risk is at the centre of the mechanism through which an emerging market central bank that targets inflation might lose control of inflation--in other words of the mechanism through which the economy might move from a regime of 'monetary dominance' to one of 'fiscal dominance'. The literature, from Sargent and Wallace (1981) to the modern fiscal theory of the price level has discussed how an unsustainable fiscal policy may hinder the effectiveness of monetary policy, to the point that an increase in interest rates can have a perverse effect on inflation. We show that the presence of default risk reinforces the possibility that a vicious circle might arise, making the fiscal constraint on monetary policy more stringent.

High Yields: The Spread on German Interest Rates

This paper is a first attempt at evaluating the determinants of the total interest rate differentials on government bonds between high yielders, namely Italy, Spain, Sweden and Germany. In particular we address the question of the relative importance of local and global factors in the determination of such spreads. We identify and measure two components of total yield differentials: one due to expectations of exchange rate depreciation -- which we call the exchange rate factor -- another which reflects the market assessment of default risk. We propose and discuss a measure of the exchange rate factors and of the default risk premium based on interest rate swaps. Overall our investigation provides strong evidence in favor of the existence of a common trend for the Italian and Spanish spreads on Bunds, which is not shared by the Swedish spread. Such a trend is driven by international factors and is independent from country- specific shocks. Country-specific shocks are only relevant in explaining short term cycles around the common stochastic trend.

The Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy in Europe: Evidence from Banks' Balance Sheets

Available studies on asymmetries in the monetary transmission mechanism within Europe are invariably based on macro-economic evidence: such evidence is abundant but often contradictory. This paper takes a different route by using micro-economic data. We use the information contained in the balance sheets of individual banks (available from the BankScope database) to implement a case-study on the response of banks in France, Germany, Italy and Spain to a monetary tightening. The episode we study occurred during 1992, when monetary conditions were tightened throughout Europe. Evidence on such tightening is provided by the uniform squeeze in liquidity, which affected all banks in our sample. We study the first link in the transmission chain by analysing the response of bank loans to the monetary tightening. Our experiment provides evidence on the importance of the Europe and thus on one possibly important source of asymmetries in the monetary transmission mechanism. We do not find evidence of a significant response of bank loans to the monetary tightening, which occurred during 1992, in any of the four European countries we have considered. However we find significant differences both across countries and across banks of different dimensions in the factors that allow them to shield the supply of loans from the squeeze in liquidity.

Financial Factors, Macroeconomic Information and the Expectations Theory of the Term Structure of Interest Rates

In this paper we concentrate on the hypothesis that the empirical rejections of the Expectations Theory(ET) of the term structure of interest rates can be caused by improper modelling of expectations. Our starting point is an interesting anomaly found by Campbell-Shiller(1987), when by taking a VAR approach they abandon limited information approach to test the ET, in which realized returns are taken as a proxy for expected returns. We use financial factors and macroeconomic information to construct a test of the theory based on simulating investors' effort to use the model in `real time' to forecast future monetary policy rates. Our findings suggest that the importance of fluctuations of risk premia in explaining the deviation from the ET is reduced when some forecasting model for short-term rates is adopted and a proper evaluation of uncertainty associated to policy rates forecast is consideredExpectations Theory, Macroeconomic information in Finance