Suchergebnisse

In ihrer Antrittsrede als Präsidentin des IWH ruft Prof. Dr. Claudia Buch dazu auf, aus der mehr als zwanzigjährigen Erfahrung der ökonomischen Transformation Mittel- und Osteuropas zu lernen. Zentrale neue Erkenntnisse der Wirtschaftswissenschaft können für die Politik besser nutzbar gemacht werden. Für diese Forschungsagenda, basierend auf modernen Methoden wissenschaftlicher Politikevaluierung, sieht sie das IWH sehr gut gerüstet.

The introduction of the euro is expected to increase capital mobility in Euroland. While, as in the US, a common monetary policy is now performed, institutional structures are inherently more heterogenous. This paper argues that experience of the US with financial market integration can potentially serve as a benchmark for the integration effects. The paper finds that, despite the restrictions to the regional expansion of banks that have prevailed, the degree of financial integration within the US tends to exceed that within Europe. Implications of barriers to the free mobility of capital for monetary policy and banking supervision are discussed.

Information costs and regulatory barriers are the main distinguishing features of international financial markets as compared to national financial markets. This paper presents a simple model of the impact of these factors on banks' cross-border activities and provides empirical evidence. Our dataset allows us to capture both the times-series and the cross-section dimension of information costs and changes in regulations, in particular, for intra-EU asset holdings. While EU membership per se seems to have had a negative impact on cross-border banking activities, the adoption of the Single Market clearly had a positive impact. While regulations and information costs are important for all reporting countries, their relative importance differs between countries.

Taxes on short-term capital flows such as introduced in Chile and Slovenia during the 1990s in the form of unremunerated reserve requirements (URRs) on financial credits are under discussion as a remedy against adverse effects of volatile international capital flows. From a theoretical point of view, URRs find support from the fact that financial markets react faster to exogenous shocks than goods markets. A high volatility of capital flows, in turn, may reduce investment and exports, and thus negatively affect overall growth. A tax designed to reduce inflows of (short-term) capital and to enhance the autonomy of domestic monetary policy may therefore raise welfare. Yet, the effectiveness of URRs is limited because capital controls can at best delay but not prevent speculative attacks on misaligned currencies. Moreover, a temporary introduction of capital controls, as is often proposed in the case of an acute financial crisis, may have the adverse effect of increasing rather than lowering financial market volatility. The empirical evidence from Chile and Slovenia shows that URRs are no panacea and that the gain in monetary autonomy has been limited. While the composition of inflows has changed towards flows exempted from the URR, the overall inflow of capital has increased, and interest rate effects have been short-lived. There is no evidence that the volatility of capital flows has declined. Exchange rate volatility seems to have come down, albeit possibly as a result of exchange market intervention. Capital controls are often proposed as a tool to promote the stability of the financial sector. More specifically, it is often argued that external financial liberalization should proceed only after sufficient progress has been made in reforming the domestic banking system. Yet, the administrative capacity to enforce capital controls is typically weak precisely in those countries which have poorly supervised and thus potentially unstable banking systems. Also, foreign competition can enhance the efficiency of the domestic financial sector. Thus, progressing simultaneously on internal and external financial liberalization seems the preferable option. At the time of opening up for foreign capital, minimum prudential standards should be in place. Also, public deposit guarantees should have been abolished in order to limit the risk of overborrowing and moral hazard. The imposition of capital controls may even send negative signals to investors and thus affect investment negatively. Exposure to external shocks should rather be reduced by pursuing structural reforms, by following sound macroeconomic policies, by disseminating clear and transparent information, and by using market mechanisms to alter the structure of foreign debt. This also allows for a more efficient use of scarce administrative resources. In this context, international institutions have an important role to play in designing and enforcing an institutional framework in which such mechanisms can be implemented.

Since early 1995, monetary stabilization has gradually been achieved in Russia. Extremely high real interest rate have been maintained throughout autumn 1996, an exchange rate target has been adhered to since mid-1995, auctions of Central Bank credit have gained in importance, and subsidized lending has been cut down. However, the conduct of monetary policy remains a trial-and-error process: Indirect budget financing through the CBR still occurs, the fixed exchange rate regime has caused a lack of control over the monetary base, and the money multiplier is relatively unstable. Preliminary empirical evidence shows that money demand has remained relatively stable since the beginning of reforms. Still, short-run fluctuations of money demand are substantial, and further portfolio adjustments are likely if inflationary expectations decline and if the capital account becomes more open. The success of monetary stabilization crucially depends on the effectiveness with which the CBR can defend its independence. Because financial sector stability is an important condition for a predictable and stable monetary policy, further measures to restructure and to consolidate the banking sector need to be pursued in parallel to structural reforms of the Russian economy.