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Business and Economics > Finance: General

You are looking at 1 - 10 of 56 items for :

  • Type: Journal Issue x
  • Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles: General (includes Measurement and Data) x
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Cover IMF Working Papers
Geoeconomic Fragmentation and International Diversification Benefits
Tatsushi Okuda
and
Tomohiro Tsuruga
This paper applies the two-country open-economy model with trade in stocks and bonds of Coeurdacier et al. (2010) to quantify the loss of international diversification benefits for major advanced economies, which have a significant presence in international financial markets, under geoeconomic fragmentation. We perform counterfactual simulations under different hypothetical fragmentation scenarios in which these economies are unable to trade with geopolitically distant countries, as measured by voting disagreement on foreign policy issues at the United Nations General Assembly meetings during 2012-2021. The simulation results imply a potentially significant loss of international diversification benefits of financial openness for the considered advanced economies by limiting trading to partner countries that are geopolitical allies with highly synchronized business cycles.
Keywords:
Geopolitical risk; financial integration; international risk sharing; diversification benefit; output volatility; volatility of Macro-Financial Variables; simulation result; investment efficiency process; Total factor productivity; Business cycles; Consumption; International capital markets; Output gap; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Sectoral Debt and Global Dollar Cycles in Developing Economies
Bada Han
,
Rashad Ahmed
,
Joshua Aizenman
, and
Yothin Jinjarak
We explore the role of sectoral debt dynamics in shaping business cycles in a sample of 52 Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and Frontier Market Economies (FMEs) from 2005 to 2021. Higher household debt levels and growth are associated with significantly slower GDP growth in more developed EMEs but not in less developed EMEs and FMEs. We also examine the relationship between US dollar cycles, sectoral debt levels and growth, and economic activity. Among developed EMEs, higher expected household debt growth magnifies the impact of US dollar fluctuations on economic activity, with significant but less persistent effects on consumption and more persistent effects on investment. Our empirical findings highlight the important role of household debt dynamics in relatively developed EMEs.
Keywords:
Sectoral Debt; Household Debt; Dollar Cycle; Emerging Markets; debt growth; household debt growth; debt level; appreciation shock; debt cycle; Business cycles; Consumption; Income; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Financial Heterogeneity, Investment, and Firm Interactions
Yang Liu
Recent literature has shown that corporate indebtedness affects firm-level investment behavior but not necessarily aggregate business cycles. I argue that interactions among heterogeneous firms play an important role in equilibrium. After a downturn, financially unconstrained firms in financially constrained industries significantly increase capital ex-penditure to substitute depressed investment by their financially constrained competitors. The increase in investment, primarily driven by small and medium firms, leads to substantial gains in future sales. Using a new empirical approach, I further show that equilibrium effects are unambiguously countercyclical because the increase in investment by unconstrained firms does not crowd out investment by financially constrained competitors. The “competitive interaction channel” underscored in this paper may play an important role in mitigating the impact of negative shocks in macroeconomic models with financial heterogeneity.
Keywords:
Financial constraints; investment; equilibrium effects; imperfect competition; firm interaction; investment behavior; equilibrium effect; interaction channel; product similarity; Government debt management; Productivity; Capital spending; Commodity markets; Competition; North America
Cover IMF Working Papers
Macro-Financial Stability in the COVID-19 Crisis: Some Reflections
Mr. Tobias Adrian
,
Mr. Fabio M Natalucci
, and
Mahvash S Qureshi
The global financial system has shown remarkable resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a sharp decline in economic activity and the initial financial market upheaval in March 2020. This paper takes stock of the factors that contributed to this resilience, focusing on the role of monetary and financial policies. In response to the pandemic-induced crisis, major central banks acted swiftly and decisively, cutting policy rates, introducing new asset purchase programs, providing liquidity support for the banking system, and creating several emergency facilities to sustain the flow of credit to the real economy. Several emerging market central banks also deployed asset purchase programs for the first time. While the pandemic crisis has underscored the importance of policies in preventing calamitous financial outcomes, it has also brought to the fore some unintended consequences of policy actions—in particular, of providing prolonged monetary policy support and applying regulation to specific segments of the financial system rather than taking a broader approach—that could undermine financial stability in the future.
Keywords:
COVID-19 pandemic crisis; monetary policy; financial stability; emerging markets; central bank asset; purchase program; monetary policy support; market liquidity; asset purchase; COVID-19; Inflation; Global financial crisis of 2008-2009; Capital flows; Financial sector stability; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
House Price Synchronicity, Banking Integration, and Global Financial Conditions
Mr. Adrian Alter
and
Jane Dokko
We examine the relationship between house price synchronicity and global financial conditions across 40 countries and about 70 cities over the past three decades. The role played by cross-border banking flows in residential property markets is examined as well. Looser global financial conditions are associated with greater house price synchronicity, even after controlling for bilateral financial integration. Moreover, we find that synchronicity across major cities may differ from that of their respective countries’, perhaps due to the influence of global investors on local house price dynamics. Policy choices such as macroprudential tools and exchange rate flexibility appear to be relevant for mitigating the sensitivity of domestic housing markets to the rest of the world.
Keywords:
WP; house price synchronicity; gap synchronicity; synchronicity measure; house price growth; equity price return; price gap synchronicity; Housing market; global liquidity; financial conditions; banking intergration; business cycles; gaps of country; cycle synchronicity; house price synchronicity measure; Housing prices; Exchange rate arrangements; International liquidity; Global financial crisis of 2008-2009; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Is the Cycle the Trend? Evidence From the Views of International Forecasters
Mr. John C Bluedorn
and
Mr. Daniel Leigh
We revisit the conventional view that output fluctuates around a stable trend by analyzing professional long-term forecasts for 38 advanced and emerging market economies. If transitory deviations around a trend dominate output fluctuations, then forecasters should not change their long-term output level forecasts following an unexpected change in current period output. By contrast, an analysis of Consensus Economics forecasts since 1989 suggest that output forecasts are super-persistent—an unexpected 1 percent upward revision in current period output typically translates into a revision of ten year-ahead forecasted output by about 2 percent in both advanced and emerging markets. Drawing upon evidence from the behavior of forecast errors, the persistence of actual output is typically weaker than forecasters expect, but still consistent with output shocks normally having large and permanent level effects.
Keywords:
WP; real GDP; standard deviation; output persistence; business cycles; output fluctuations; ouput forecast; advanced and emerging markets; emerging market sample; current-period output; output fluctuation; point estimate; shock proxy; output level; estimation sample; Emerging and frontier financial markets; Supply shocks; Vector autoregression; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Where Have All the Profits Gone? European Bank Profitability Over the Financial Cycle
Ms. Enrica Detragiache
,
Mr. Thierry Tressel
, and
Ms. Rima A Turk
The paper investigates EU banks’ profitability through the recent financial cycle using banklevel balance sheet and income statement data. We find that banks that were more successful at protecting their profits had a less pronounced deterioration in loan quality and a larger improvement in cost efficiency. They also downsized their assets more aggressively during the crisis, and reduced reliance on wholesale funding more markedly post-crisis. Net interest margins remained broadly stable over the financial cycle, including post-crisis, and there is no clear evidence that aspects of bank business model, such as higher reliance on fees and commission income, were associated with better profitability post-crisis.
Keywords:
WP; bank; EU bank; profitability; Financial Cycle; Bank Profitability; Financial Crisis; bank characteristic; bank leverage; bank asset; return on equity; profit growth; bank performance; Bank soundness; Financial cycles; Personal income; Nonperforming loans; Global systemically important banks; Global
Cover IMF Working Papers
Financial Resource Curse in Resource-Rich Countries
Mr. Montfort Mlachila
and
Rasmané Ouedraogo
Why do commodity-dependent developing countries have typically lower levels of financial development than their peers? The literature has proposed many possible explanations, but it typically does not dwell on the deep mechanisms that drive such an outcome. In this paper, we argue that the main cause is the shocks in commodity prices. We test the hypothesis on 68 commodity-rich developing countries between 1980 and 2014, and we find strong evidence of the financial development resource curse through the channel of commodity price shocks, after controlling for other explanations found in the literature. The findings are robust to the different types of commodities, the nature of the shocks, and various indicators of financial development. We also show how the impact of these shocks can be mitigated through good quality of governance.
Keywords:
WP; price shock; shock indices; export concentration; private sector; natural resource
Cover IMF Working Papers
Strategic Corporate Layoffs
Ruchir Agarwal
and
Julian Kolev
Firms in the S&P 500 often announce layoffs within days of one another, despite the fact that the average S&P 500 constituent announces layoffs once every 5 years. By contrast, similarsized privately-held firms do not behave in this way. This paper provides empirical evidence that such clustering behavior is largely due to CEOs managing their reputation in financial markets. To interpret these results we develop a theoretical framework in which managers delay layoffs during good economic states to avoid damaging the markets perception of their ability. The model predicts clustering in the timing of layoff announcements, and illustrates a mechanism through which the cyclicality of firms layoff policies is amplified. Our findings suggest that reputation management is an important driver of layoff policies both at daily frequencies and over the business cycle, and can have significant macroeconomic consequences.
Keywords:
WP; layoff announcement; public firm; business cycle; private firm; layoff; reputation management; business cycles; clustering; firm level; layoff propensity; Labor force; Stock markets; Wages
Cover IMF Working Papers
Testing Shock Transmission Channels to Low-Income Developing Countries
Nina Biljanovska
and
Alexis Meyer-Cirkel
The paper examines the transmission of business cycle fluctuations and credit conditions from advanced and emerging market economies to Low-Income Developing Countries (LIDCs), using a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) framework and related countryspecific error correction models. We compile a dataset on bank credit, exports, output, and real effective exchange rate for 24 LIDCs and 16 Advanced and Emerging Markets, accounting for 74 percent of World GDP, from 1990Q1 to 2013Q4. Impulse response analyses show that business cycles in oil- and commodity-exporting, as well as frontier LIDCs are more synchronized with those in emerging market economies. Furthermore, credit conditions in the US seem to have a significant impact on exports and real economic activity in LIDCs, while these variables are basically unresponsive to credit availability in emerging markets or economies in other parts of the world.
Keywords:
WP; GVAR; Low-Income Countries; Transmission of Shocks; export demand equation; frontier LIDCs; trade export share; LICS export destination share; credit condition; output fluctuation; export partner; export series; commodity-exporting LIDCs; Credit; Exports; Emerging and frontier financial markets; Oil; Real effective exchange rates; Global