The illusive quest: Do international capital controls contribute to currency stability?

We investigate the effectiveness of capital controls in insulating economies from currency crises, focusing in particular on both direct and indirect effects of capital controls and how these relationships may have changed over time in response to global financial liberalization and the greater mobility of international capital. We predict the likelihood of currency crises using standard macroeconomic variables and a probit equation estimation methodology with random effects. We employ a comprehensive panel data set comprised of 69 emerging market and developing economies over 1975–2004. Both standard and duration-adjusted measures of capital control intensity (allowing controls to “depreciate” over time) suggest that capital controls have not effectively insulated economies from currency crises at any time during our sample period. Maintaining real GDP growth and limiting real overvaluation are critical factors preventing currency crises, not capital controls. However, the presence of capital controls greatly increases the sensitivity of currency crises to changes in real GDP growth and real exchange rate overvaluation, making countries more vulnerable to changes in fundamentals. Our model suggests that emerging markets weathered the 2007–2008 crisis relatively well because of strong output growth and exchange rate flexibility that limited overvaluation of their currencies.     

How international financial flows affect stock markets?

Relying on the IMF Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey, which reports countries’ bilateral investments in financial assets at end-2001 to end-2015, this article shows that a country’s stock market growth is not only spatially correlated with those of nearby countries, but also positively associated with the magnitude of connectedness of the country’s international investments in debt within a dynamic financial investment flow network. The positive relation arises because debts have become an increasingly important source of capital for developing countries.     

Do news shocks increase capital utilization?

Using the workweek of capital as a measure of capital utilization, we empirically test whether news shocks actually increase capital utilization. To this end, by estimating a panel VAR on two-digit manufacturing data identifying news shocks as innovations to stock returns orthogonal to the variations in current-period TFP growth, we find the positive response of capital utilization to news shocks. Moreover, to explain the positive response of capital utilization to news shocks in terms of plant-level investment behavior, we propose a heterogeneous plant model that combines the fixed cost of capital adjustment and an endogenous capital utilization choice. With the presence of fixed costs, except for the plants that have recently adjusted capital stock, news shock shortens the effective time horizon of currently installed capital stock and increases capital utilization. When the model economy is calibrated to match the salient features of the plant-level investment rate distribution, the economy generates a news-driven positive response of capital utilization.     

Do internal markets influence bank failures?

Empirical studies analysing the determinants of bank failures ignore the role of bank holding company affiliation in these failures. In this article, we propose a new approach of estimating affiliated banks’ failures that incorporates holding companies’ role in failures. Our logit regression results show that the holding company’s features, especially internal flows, mattered on failures more than those of the banks during the sub-prime mortgage crisis.     

Are cyclical patterns of international housing markets interdependent?

This paper investigates the relationships among the US, UK, and Canadian housing markets from two aspects: the driving forces of housing cycles and the structures of correlation coefficients in different phases of housing cycles. The results indicate that the structures of driving forces and correlation coefficients are deeply hinged on the international housing markets. For the US and Canada pair, the driving forces of cyclical patterns are related to each other and the regime-switching correlation coefficients are always positive. However, for the US and UK pair and the UK and Canada pair, the driving forces are independent and there is no consistent pattern for the correlations.     

Forecasting in efficient bond markets: Do experts know better?

Term structure theory suggests that bond rates in efficient markets approximately follow a random walk. We show that the random walk forecasts of 10-year U.S. Treasury and Moody's Aaa corporate bond rates for 1988–2005 are generally unbiased. Blue Chip forecasts, however, are both biased and inferior to random walk forecasts. Both models produce unbiased forecasts of the default spread, with the random walk again outperforming the Blue Chip. In addition, Blue Chip fails to accurately predict directional change. Emphasizing that the success of the random walk model is theoretically expected, we discuss why experts fail to beat random walk predictions.     

Sovereign default: Which shocks matter?

This paper analyses a small open economy that wants to borrow from abroad, cannot commit to repay debt but faces costs if it decides to default. The model generates analytical expressions for the impact of shocks on the incentive compatible level of debt. Debt reduction generated by severe output shocks is no more than a couple of percentage points. In contrast, shocks to world interest rates can substantially affect the incentive compatible level of debt.     

When do thick venture capital markets foster innovation? An evolutionary analysis

In this paper, we examine the trade off between different effects of the availability of venture capital on the speed of technological progress in an industry. We consider an evolutionary industry simulation model based on Nelson and Winter (1982), in which R&D efforts of an incumbent firm generate technological know-how embodied in key R&D employees, who might use this know-how to found a spinoff of the incumbent. Venture capital is needed to finance a spinoff, so that the expected profits from founding a spinoff depend on how easily venture capital can be acquired. Accordingly, thick venture capital markets might have two opposing effects. First, incentives of firms to invest in R&D might be reduced and, second, if spinoff formation results in technological spillovers between the parent firm and the spinoffs, the generation of spinoff firms might positively influence the future efficiency of the incumbent’s innovation efforts. We study the manner in which this tradeoff influences the effect of venture capital on innovation expenditures, speed of technological change and evolution of industry concentration in several scenarios with different industry characteristics.     

Do national business cycles have an international origin?

This paper analyses a set of output data for 113 countries and identifies common sources of fluctuations, to estimate a world business cycle. We also analyze the multiplier effects of worldwide or global shocks and their implications for the persistence and amplitude of cyclical fluctuations. We find that a higher relative importance of global shocks leads to lower persistence and greater volatility. Finally, we compare some regional integration agreements and find that the EC emerges as the most integrated block. The analytical framework used is that of Forni, Hallin, Lippi and Reichlin (1999). First version: November 1999/Final version accepted: November 2001 RID="*" ID="*"  Université Libre de Bruxelles, DULBEA – CP 140, 50 av. Franklin Roosevelt, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium. We are grateful towards two anonymous referees for their really helpful remarks. We also wish to express our deepest gratitude towards Lucrezia Reichlin for her very precious advice. We also would like to thank Jorge Rodigez and Marco Lippi for providing large pieces of code and Khalid Sekkat, Christophe Croux, Frederic Pivetta, and Francois Rycx for helpful comments and discussions.     

Do complex inventions need less international patent protection?

I show that very complex inventions stay outside the patent system more often than medium-complexity products. I test this hypothesis using a subset of international patents data. The regressions confirm that patents and technological complexity have an inverted-U shape relation.     

Intraday bidirectional volatility spillover across international stock markets: does the global financial crisis matter?

This article studies volatility spillover between the US and the three largest European stock markets (Frankfurt, London and Paris) around the time of the recent Subprime crisis. In order to investigate the impact of the latter, we break our sample down into two sub-periods: a pre-crisis period and a post-crisis period, using a structural break test that has the advantage of endogenously testing for further breaks in the data. Unlike previous studies that have frequently investigated this issue using low frequency data, our article makes use of intraday data. Accordingly, using Threshold generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model estimations, we find weak evidence of volatility transmission between the two regions before the Subprime crisis. However, during the post-crisis period, we record returns and volatility spillover from US to European markets and vice versa at different times of the trading day, indicating that the two regions became more dependent during the recent Subprime crisis, a finding that supports the contagion hypothesis between the US and European stock markets.     

Do Aussie markets smile? Implied volatility functions and determinants

If options are correctly priced, the interpretation of volatility in the Black–Scholes model (as identifying the volatility of the underlying asset) is violated. The empirical relation between the model ‘implied volatility’ and the degree to which the option is in-the-money (moneyness) has been reported as resembling a U-shape (or ‘smile’) for options on currencies (and more of a ‘smirk’ for options on equities). In this article, using multivariate time-series analysis and employing an impulse response function, we investigate the structural relationships and dynamics of the volatility smile in relation to the option liquidity, key features of the underlying asset and market momentum. Our findings confirm evidence of a number of biases in the Black–Scholes model consistent with Chou et al. (2011) in regard to liquidity in both the underlying and the option itself, and with Peña et al. (1999) as to the importance of the option time to maturity. As well as delineating such biases as they co-relate both with each other and with the underlying asset volatility and momentum, we find that the pronounced smile is related to the differential sensitivities of in-the-money and out-of-the-money options, which itself suggests an explanation for the characteristic smile shape.     

Volatility of capital flows and financial liberalization: Do specific flows respond differently?

This paper examines the volatility of capital flows following the liberalization of financial markets. Utilizing a panel data set of overlapping data, the paper focuses on the response of foreign direct investment, portfolio flows, and other debt flows to financial liberalization. The financial liberalization variable comes from the chronology and index developed by Kaminsky and Schmukler [Kaminsky, G.L. and Schmukler, S.L., 2003, Short-run pain, long-run gain: The effects of financial liberalization, IMF Working Paper WP/03/34.]. Different types of capital flows are found to respond differently to financial liberalization. Surprisingly, portfolio flows appear to show little response to capital liberalization while foreign direct investment flows show significant increases in volatility, particularly for the emerging markets considered.     

The impact of monetary policy on local housing markets: Do regulations matter?

This paper shows that monetary policy has uneven impacts on local housing markets, and that the magnitude of the impacts are correlated with housing supply regulations. We apply the linearized present value model, which allows the log rent–price ratio to be decomposed into the expected present values of all future real interests rates, real housing premia, and real rent growth, to the housing markets in 23 US metropolitan statistical areas. Based on the indirect inference bias-corrected VAR estimates, we find that MSAs that are more regulated have (i) a higher variance in the log rent–price ratio, (ii) a larger share of the variance explained by real interest rate, and (iii) a stronger impulse response of house price to the real interest rate shock.     

Fund-raising success and a solicitor's beauty capital: Do blondes raise more funds?

This study uses a door-to-door fund-raising field experiment to explore the returns to physical appearance on fund-raising success. Interestingly, blonde females earn more on average than brunette counterparts. However, the returns to physical appearance depend critically on the race of a potential donor.     

Wealth effects on the housing markets: Do market liquidity and market states matter?

This paper analyzes the effect of household wealth (including housing and financial wealth) on housing sales and probes their long-run and short-run dynamic relationships. We further examine the short-run effect of financial wealth on housing sales by employing quantile regressions, restricted upon different liquidity (quantile) levels and up-down housing markets, from which the differences between the early and late stages of an uptrend/downtrend can be respectively exhibited. We find that housing wealth, income, and mortgage rates have long-run influences on housing sales. Looking at the short run, we find that housing sales only respond to housing wealth and mortgage rates. When we distinguish the effects of financial wealth on housing sales in up-down housing markets, we note a positive influence of financial wealth on housing sales in down markets, but not in up markets. Particularly, our results show an impact of housing liquidity on the short-run relationships.