Mexican peso crisis and its spillover effects to emerging market debt

This paper examines the spillover effects of the Mexican financial crisis to emerging financial markets. As of November 1994, the financial markets were not anticipating a change in exchange rate regime in Mexico. Coincident with the peso devaluation on 20, December 1994, Mexican Brady bond prices declined significantly and continued to experience significant decline during the subsequent three months. Emerging market assets reacted differently to the Mexican crisis. Latin America as a region was more exposed to the Mexican crisis than emerging markets from other regions. The ratio of liquid monetary assets to international reserves and the ratio of current account to GDP were the most influential variables in explaining variation in CARs across countries. Trade competition with third markets was the most significant transmission channel during the Mexican crisis.     

Understanding bilateral exchange rate volatility

This paper develops an empirical model of bilateral exchange rate volatility. We conjecture that for developing economies, external financial liabilities have an important effect on desired bilateral exchange rate volatility, above and beyond the standard optimal currency area (OCA) factors. By contrast, industrial countries do not face the same set of constraints in international financial markets. In our theoretical model, external debt tightens financial constraints and reduces the efficiency of the exchange rate in responding to external shocks. We go on to explore the determinants of bilateral exchange rate volatility in a broad cross section of countries. For developing economies, bilateral exchange rate volatility (relative to creditor countries) is strongly negatively affected by the stock of external debt. For industrial countries however, OCA variables appear more important and external debt is generally not significant in explaining bilateral exchange rate volatility.     

Co-movement of exchange rates with interest rate differential,risk premium and FED policy in “fragile economies”

We use the wavelet coherency analysis in order to investigate the relationship between the exchange rate changes and its major financial determinants for selected emerging economies. Our analysis shows that the changes in exchange rate are correlated with interest rate differentials, risk premium, the FED's monetary policy implementation and its policy uncertainty. Moreover, the co-movement between the exchange rate changes and its financial determinants substantially changes across frequencies and over time. The co-movement patterns also vary to a large extent across “fragile” emerging markets. Finally, the strongest co-movement of exchange rate changes is with the risk premium in all countries.     

INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTION,INVESTMENT AND BORROWING WITH EXCHANGE RATE RISK AND FUTURES MARKETS

In this paper we consider a multinational firm under exchange rate and interest rate risks in a multiperiod model. We analyze the impact of exchange rate uncertainty and the use of currency futures on the risk-averse firm's decisions about home and foreign production. Without any hedging markets exchange rate risk lowers foreign investment and output. However, when futures markets exist, the separation property holds. Introducing another source of uncertainty, such as the interest rate, which is nondiversifiable, affects the production in both countries, i.e., the separation property does not hold. However, we show that the adverse effect of the missing financial market (to hedge against this additional risk) disappears when international borrowing is available.     

The COVID-19 pandemic and financial markets in Central Europe: Macroeconomic measures and international policy spillovers

This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic policy announcements on financial markets in three Central European economies: Czechia, Hungary, and Poland (CE–3). We focus on the unprecedented stabilisation policies implemented from March to December 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, including unconventional monetary measures and large stimulus programs. Detailed categories of monetary and fiscal measures are introduced into vector autoregressions with exogenous regressors and dynamic conditional correlations, which we estimate using daily data. This allows us to control for policy spillovers from abroad, as well as global risk factors and pandemic-related variables. We find that, in general, macroeconomic policy measures implemented in the CE–3 countries played an important role in stabilising financial markets during the pandemic. We uncover several notable patterns in the reaction of markets to anti-crisis measures across the region. The impact of the monetary policy announcements on 10-year sovereign bond yields was more substantial than on stock market returns and exchange rate returns. The communication of the unconventional tools proved effective in lowering the bond yields. Interestingly, we document that the effects of non-standard measures for some variables, such as the exchange rate, can be qualitatively different from those resulting from a conventional monetary expansion. Even though the domestic monetary events became more important than the fiscal ones, the latter proved relevant for financial market returns, especially when large-scale immediate fiscal measures and tax deferrals were introduced. We also show that the CE–3 economies were subject to the cross-border transmission of policy announcement effects from the Euro Area and the US, although the magnitude of these effects was smaller than expected and varied across the CE–3 countries.     

Debt composition and exchange rate balance sheet effect in Brazil: a firm level analysis

In this paper, we study the interaction between macroeconomic environment and firms’ balance sheet effects in Brazil during the 1990's. We start by assessing the influence of macroeconomic conditions on firms’ debt composition in Brazil. We found that larger firms tend to change debt currency composition more in response to a change in the exchange rate risk. We then proceed to investigate if and how exchange rate balance sheet effects affected the firms’ investment decisions. We test directly the exchange rate balance sheet effect on investment, but the results were not statistically significant. We then pursue an alternative investigation strategy, inspired by the credit channel literature. According to this perspective, Tobin's q can provide an adequate control for the competitiveness effect on investment. Our results provide supporting evidence for imperfect capital markets, but not for a balance sheet effect in Brazil. The main effect we found is that firms in industries with higher proportion of imported inputs tend to invest less when the exchange rate is depreciated.     

Financial integration and the wealth effect of exchange rate fluctuations

Recent years have witnessed a large increase in international financial integration in the form of largely offsetting cross-holdings across countries. We assess how such financial leverage affects the international transmission of monetary shocks, and find that it leads to sizable welfare differentials that far exceed the impact due to nominal rigidities. We document the relevance of the exact nature of holdings, with bond holdings associated with larger effects than equity holdings. The impact of financial leverage on welfare is also sensitive to the extent of exchange rate pass-through and the substitutability between goods produced in different countries.     

Exchange rate regimes, globalisation, and the cost of capital in emerging markets

This paper presents a multifactor asset pricing model for currency, bond, and stock returns for ten emerging markets to investigate the effect of the exchange rate regime on the cost of capital and the integration of emerging financial markets. Our results suggest that a fixed exchange rate regime system can help reduce the cost of capital in emerging markets by reducing the currency risk premia demanded by foreign investors.     

Global Volatility and Forex Returns in East Asia*

During 2001–2010, increases in mature market volatility were associated with declines in forex returns for East Asian economies, consistent with an overall ‘flight to safety’ effect. Estimates from GARCH models suggest that a 10 percentage point increase in mature market equity volatility generated an exchange rate depreciation of up to 3/4 percent. This sensitivity rose during a more tranquil subsample for some countries, reflecting their greater integration with global financial markets. Long‐run forex volatility increased in Asian economies after 2008, reflecting the global reach of the financial crisis in mature markets. Unconditional standard deviations estimated from these models provide operational measures of ‘long‐term’ and ‘excess’ volatility in forex markets.     

Should the exchange rate be a shock absorber?

This paper examines the welfare case for the exchange rate as a “shock absorber”, cushioning an economy in face of shocks to world demand for its good. We provide an example in which, although the exchange rate acts perfectly as a shock absorber, stabilizing output around the natural rate, and eliminating the impact of nominal rigidities, it may in fact be better to prevent the exchange rate from adjusting at all. The explanation for this is that, with incomplete international financial markets, the natural rate is inefficient; it does not respond enough to demand shocks. While fixing the exchange rate increases the volatility of consumption, the pro-cyclical nature of monetary policy under a fixed exchange rate allows for a more efficient composition of consumption between home and foreign goods. Furthermore, for the shocks examined, a welfare maximizing monetary rule always dampens exchange rate volatility relative to that of a free float, and in some cases may imply a fixed exchange rate.     

Escaping financial crises? Macro evidence from sovereign wealth funds' investment behaviour

This paper investigates the determinants of the investment activity of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) at a macro level, with special emphasis on the possible reaction to a financial crisis in a potential target economy. The analysis relies upon a specially built proprietary database, which encompasses 1,903 acquisition deals spanning the period 1995–2010 and involving 29 out of the 79 existing SWFs. According to a three-step modelling approach, we find that this class of investors prefers to invest in countries with a higher degree of economic development, larger and more liquid financial markets, institutions that offer better protection of legal rights, and a more stable macroeconomic environment. Most importantly, and in stark contrast with the existing empirical literature on other major institutional investors, SWFs seem to engage in ‘contrarian’ investment behaviour, i.e. increasing their acquisitions in countries where crises hit. The results are shown to be valid if we consider both the likelihood of a country being the target of SWFs' investments and the amount SWFs choose to invest in each country. Capital flows stemming from SWFs' acquisition activity worldwide may therefore have a stabilizing effect on local markets during periods of financial turmoil, protecting the targeted countries from foreign shocks instead of propagating them globally.     

The role of the stock market in the provision of Islamic development finance: Evidence from Sudan

This paper assesses the impact of stock exchange funding in the Shari'ya compliant Islamic economy of Sudan. Evidence suggests that while Islamic financial instruments have considerable potential in facilitating development finance through their emphasis on partnership this is better achieved by the banking system rather than the Khartoum Stock Exchange. A case study of the Sudan Telecommunications company shows that larger firms able to cross-list elsewhere are likely to choose regional markets in preference to their domestic one thus benefiting from lower costs of equity. However, governance preferences are likely to favour block shareholders following the Islamic finance partnership concept.     

The global financial crisis: An analysis of the spillover effects on African stock markets

This paper examines the relative importance of the global and regional markets for financial markets in developing countries, particularly during the US financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis. Specifically, we examine the way in which the degree of regional (seven African markets combined), global (China, France, Germany, Japan, the UK and the US), commodity (gold and petroleum), and nominal effective exchange rate (Euro and US dollar) spillovers to individual African countries evolved during the two crises through the econometric method introduced by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012). We find that African markets are most severely affected by spillovers from global markets and only modestly from commodity and currency markets. Conversely, regional spillovers within Africa are smaller than global ones, and hence, African markets are insulated from global crises. We also find that the aggregated spillover effects of European countries to the African markets exceeded the corresponding effects of the US, even in the wake of the US financial crisis.     

Financial crises and contagion vulnerability of MENA stock markets

This paper examines contagion vulnerability and the international and regional financial linkages of the MENA stock markets. The degree of vulnerability of those markets to global and regional financial crises will have important bearings on the respective economies' growth rate, and on their ability to diversify international and regional portfolios. Granger causality tests and impulse response functions reveal that while the GCC equity markets still offer international investors portfolio diversification potentials, those markets are relatively less vulnerable to global and regional financial crises. Moreover, even though the remaining MENA stock markets of Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia have matured and are now financially integrated with the world stock markets, they tend to exhibit more vulnerability to regional and international financial crises. Their vulnerability to international financial crises is due, on the one hand, to weak regional integration, and to greater economic and financial integration with the more advanced economies on the other.     

金融危机背景下汇市与股市关系实证研究

本文建立了由上证综指、汇率、利率与道·琼斯指数构成的多变量VAR模型,运用Granger因果检验、脉冲响应函数与方差分解技术分析了金融危机背景下外汇市场与股票市场关系.实证分析结果表明:我国金融市场上汇率变动对股票价格有明显的短期作用,而股票价格变动对汇率没有影响;美国股市波动对我国股市的短期冲击超过人民币汇率对股市的冲击;我国的利率调整对汇率有短期效应,但对股票价格无影响.     

International financial markets: Control or liberalization?

Exchange rates, interest rates and share prices are subject—at least occasionally—to great fluctuations. Diverse economists regard the volatility of international financial markets as a threat to the goods and labour markets. They blame the price turbulences on the speculative behaviour of a large section of market participants, and claim that the deregulation and liberalization of the international financial markets in the eighties has therefore already gone too far. Under discussion today are approaches to a re-regulation of the money, capital and foreign exchange markets. These proposals are evaluated in the following paper.     

International capital flows,returns and world financial integration

International capital flows have increased dramatically since the 1980s, with much of the increase being due to trade in equity and bond markets. Such developments are often attributed to the increased integration of world financial markets. We present a model that allows us to examine how greater integration in world financial markets affects the behavior of international capital flows and financial returns. Our model predicts that international capital flows are large (in absolute value) and very volatile during the early stages of financial integration when international asset trading is concentrated in bonds. As integration progresses and households gain access to world equity markets, the size and volatility of international bond flows decline. This is the natural outcome of greater risk sharing facilitated by increased integration. This pattern is consistent with declining volatility observed during 1975–2007 period in the G-7 countries. We also find that the equilibrium flows in bonds and stocks predicted by the model are larger than their empirical counterparts, and are largely driven by variations in equity risk premia. The model also predicts that volatility of equity and bond returns decline with integration, again consistent with the data for G-7 economies.     

Exchange rate exposure

In this paper we examine the relationship between exchange rate movements and firm value. We estimate the exchange rate exposure of publicly listed firms in a sample of eight (non-US) industrialized and emerging markets. We find that exchange rate movements do matter for a significant fraction of firms, though which firms are affected and the direction of exposure depends on the specific exchange rate and varies over time, suggesting that firms dynamically adjust their behavior in response to exchange rate risk. Exposure is correlated with firm size, multinational status, foreign sales, international assets, and competitiveness and trade at the industry level.     

Predicting financial crises in emerging markets using a composite non-parametric model

The large number of financial crises in emerging markets over the past ten years has left many observers, both from academia and financial institutions, puzzled by an apparent lack of homogenous causal relations between endogenous economic variables and the bursting of large financial shocks. The paper aims at showing that the key difficulty is not the identification of proper endogenous variables, but the ability to combine them in a way that is able to capture the combinatorial aspect of such causal relations. The paper is based on a newly developed non-parametric methodology for country risk signaling: the RiskMonitor CDM-Model. Using a combination of macroeconomic indicators and a composite model of 5 modern non-parametric classification methods, we constructed 9 early warning signals to predict financial crises in emerging markets. These signals are constructed for 3 types of crises (cyclical crises, exchange rate crises and transfer crises) and over 3 horizons (less than 1 year, 1 to 3 years, 3 to 5 years). This complex use of quantitative models is able to provide excellent early warning information, with impressive back-testing results on 50 developing countries over the period 1980 to 2002.