Suchergebnisse

Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the 2007-2009 uncertainty shocks on policymakers' behavior.


Design/methodology/approach
– Uncertainty shocks in the US credit, financial and production markets are represented by extraordinary events. As in Bloom (2009), these events are associated with significant economic and political shocks (e.g. Lehman Brothers' collapse). Credit markets uncertainty shocks, which played a crucial role in the aftermath of the house prices collapse in the USA, are first analyzed in a bivariate VAR context, and then, embodied in a simple theoretical framework.


Findings
– The empirical evidence suggests that the US credit, financial and production markets have been affected by a relative large number of uncertainty shocks (i.e. rare events). In a Brainard's (1967) uncertainty scenario, it is shown that a bizarre money-liquidity relationship exacerbates the "policymakers' cautiousness-aggressiveness trade-off." In addition, the model suggests that a "double" dose of policy, in presence of a global credit crunch, might be useless.


Originality/value
– This paper improves the existing literature in two main directions. First, it provides novel empirical evidence on the unusual dynamics of the US credit market and its effects on the real economic activity during the crisis. Second, in a very simple theoretical framework accounting for parameter uncertainty, it addresses whether a bizarre money-credit relationship affects policymakers' behavior (i.e. cautiousness vs aggressiveness).

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the 2007-2009 uncertainty shocks on policymakers' behavior.Design/methodology/approach - Uncertainty shocks in the US credit, financial and production markets are represented by extraordinary events. As in Bloom (2009), these events are associated with significant economic and political shocks (e.g. Lehman Brothers' collapse). Credit markets uncertainty shocks, which played a crucial role in the aftermath of the house prices collapse in the USA, are first analyzed in a bivariate VAR context, and then, embodied in a simple theoretical framework.Findings - The empirical evidence suggests that the US credit, financial and production markets have been affected by a relative large number of uncertainty shocks (i.e. rare events). In a Brainard's (1967) uncertainty scenario, it is shown that a bizarre money-liquidity relationship exacerbates the "policymakers' cautiousness-aggressiveness trade-off." In addition, the model suggests that a "double" dose of policy, in presence of a global credit crunch, might be useless.Originality/value - This paper improves the existing literature in two main directions. First, it provides novel empirical evidence on the unusual dynamics of the US credit market and its effects on the real economic activity during the crisis. Second, in a very simple theoretical framework accounting for parameter uncertainty, it addresses whether a bizarre money-credit relationship affects policymakers' behavior (i.e. cautiousness vs aggressiveness).

This chapter measures financial integration in 10 industries over 4 different periods. We use two robust measures of integration: (i) the Pukthuanthong and Roll (2009) 's multi-factor R-square and (ii) the Volosovych (2011)'s integration index. Both measures, based on PCA, indicate that the difference between the level of integration over the period 2009-2012 ("Post-Lehman" era) and the level of integration over the period 1994-1998 ("Post-Liberalizations" era) is relatively high. In addition, the level of financial integration across international equity markets decreased during the late 1990s. This suggests that de jure integration does not necessarily improve de facto integration. Overall, our findings give rise to a "diversification benefits-insurance benefits trade-off".

We study the general equilibrium implications of different fiscal policies on macroeconomic quantities, asset prices, and welfare by utilizing two endogenous growth models. The expanding variety model features only homogeneous innovations by entrants. The Schumpeterian growth model features heterogeneous innovations: "incremental" innovations by incumbents and "radical" innovations by entrants. The government levies taxes on labor income and corporate profits and supplies subsidies to consumption, capital investment, and investments in research and development by entrants and, if applicable, incumbents. With these models at hand, we provide new insights on the interplay of innovation dynamics and fiscal policy.

We study the general equilibrium implications of different fiscal policies on macroeconomic quantities, asset prices, and welfare by utilizing two endogenous growth models. The expanding variety model features only homogeneous innovations by entrants. The Schumpeterian growth model features heterogeneous innovations: "incremental" innovations by incumbents and "radical" innovations by entrants. The government levies taxes on labor income and corporate profits and supplies subsidies to consumption, capital investment, and investments in research and development by entrants and, if applicable, incumbents. With these models at hand, we provide new insights on the interplay of innovation dynamics and fiscal policy.

We extend the endogenous growth model of Kung and Schmid (2015) by adding endogenous labor dynamics and two variants of wage rigidities. This leads to an increase of 250-350 basis points in the risk premia, depending on the model specification. Additionally, it brings labor market quantities much closer to their empirical counterparts. In particular, wage rigidities generate an increase of around 60-250 basis points in labor growth volatility, which depends on how wage rigidities are modeled. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The average equity risk premium (ERP) in emerging markets is well-known to be significantly higher than in developed markets. But, key reasons for this remain unclear, contributing to investment strategy uncertainty. Here, we use industry-level data for 19 emerging market countries across three regions of the world to first examine the contribution of each industrial stock market to the extra premium paid by emerging markets to international investors from 1995 to present, and then to explore the relative importance of country-level governance and macroeconomic policy uncertainty in explaining both national and regional industry-by-industry ERP behavior. We conduct separate analyses for the emerging market crises period of 1995-2002, and the post-crises period of 2003-2012. Based on both static and dynamic approaches, we find that some industries indeed perform consistently better than others. In particular: (i) the healthcare and basic materials industries mostly contributed to the extra premium paid by the Asian stock market; and (ii) the East European and Latin American stock markets' extra performances were largely driven by the utilities and consumer services industries, respectively. However, our cross-sectional analyses suggest that country-level governance indicators are not strongly correlated with either national or industry-level returns, with the exception of the consumer goods industry. Lastly, using both rolling-window and DCC-GARCH frameworks, we find that correlations between industrial stock market excess returns and a measure of global economic policy uncertainty are consistently negative, and follow similar patterns. Our empirical evidence as a whole suggests that industrial stock markets are more highly related both within and across countries and regions than has been suggested previously. Contrary to much existing empirical work, our results therefore suggest there is currently little space in emerging markets to exploit cross-industry portfolio diversification benefits. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

AbstractThis paper uses historical monthly temperature level data for a panel of 114 countries to identify the effects of within year temperature level variability on productivity growth in five different macro regions, i.e., (1) Africa, (2) Asia, (3) Europe, (4) North America and (5) South America. We find two primary results. First, higher intra-annual temperature variability reduces (increases) productivity in Europe and North America (Asia). Second, higher intra-annual temperature variability has no significant effects on productivity in Africa and South America. Additional empirical tests indicate also the following: (1) rising intra-annual temperature variability reduces productivity (even thought less significantly)in both tropical and non-tropical regions, (2) inter-annual temperature variability reduces (increases) productivity in North America (Europe) and (3) winter and summer inter-annual temperature variability generates a drop in productivity in both Europe and North America. Taken together, these findings indicate that temperature variability shocks tend to have stronger adverse economic effects among richer economies. In a production economy featuring long-run productivity and temperature volatility shocks, we quantify these negative impacts and find welfare losses of 2.9% (1%) in Europe (North America).

We study if government response to the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic can mitigate investor herding behaviour in international stock markets. Our empirical analysis is informed by daily stock market data from 72 countries from both developed and emerging economies in the first quarter of 2020. The government response to the COVID-19 outbreak is measured by means of the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, where higher scores are associated with greater stringency. Three main findings are in order. First, results show evidence of investor herding in international stock markets. Second, we document that the Oxford Government Response Stringency Index mitigates investor herding behaviour, by way of reducing multidimensional uncertainty. Third, short-selling restrictions, temporarily imposed by the national and supranational regulatory authorities of the European Union, appear to exert a mitigating effect on herding. Finally, our results are robust to a range of model specifications.

We study if government response to the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic can mitigate investor herding behaviour in international stock markets. Our empirical analysis is informed by daily stock market data from 72 countries from both developed and emerging economies in the first quarter of 2020. The government response to the COVID-19 outbreak is measured by means of the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, where higher scores are associated with greater stringency. Three main findings are in order. First, results show evidence of investor herding in international stock markets. Second, we document that the Oxford Government Response Stringency Index mitigates investor herding behaviour, by way of reducing multidimensional uncertainty. Third, short-selling restrictions, temporarily imposed by the national and supranational regulatory authorities of the European Union, appear to exert a mitigating effect on herding. Finally, our results are robust to a range of model specifications.