Regime switching as a test for exchange rate bubbles

This paper develops a new test for speculative bubbles, which is applied to data for the Japanese yen, the German mark and the Canadian dollar exchange rates from 1977 to 1991. The test assumes that bubbles display a particular kind of regime-switching behaviour, which is shown to imply coefficient restrictions on a simple switching-regression model of exchange rate innovations. Test results are sensitive to the specification of exchange rate fundamentals and other factors. Evidence most consistent with the bubble hypothesis is found using an overshooting model of the Canadian dollar and a PPP model of the Japanese yen.     

Diagnosing housing fever with an econometric thermometer

Housing fever is a popular term to describe an overheated housing market or housing price bubble. Like other financial asset bubbles, housing fever can inflict harm on the real economy, as indeed the U.S. housing bubble did in the period following 2006 leading up to the general financial crisis and great recession. One contribution that econometricians can make to minimize the harm created by a housing bubble is to provide a quantitative “thermometer” for diagnosing ongoing housing fever. Early diagnosis can enable prompt and effective policy action that reduces long-term damage to the real economy. This paper provides a selective review of the relevant literature on econometric methods for identifying housing bubbles together with some new methods of research and an empirical application. We first present a technical definition of a housing bubble that facilitates empirical work and discuss significant difficulties encountered in practical work and the solutions that have been proposed in the past literature. A major challenge in all econometric identification procedures is to assess prices in relation to fundamentals, which requires measurement of fundamentals. One solution to address this challenge is to estimate the fundamental component from an underlying structural relationship involving measurable variables. A second aim of the paper is to improve the estimation accuracy of fundamentals by means of an easy-to-implement reduced-form approach. Since many of the relevant variables that determine fundamentals are nonstationary and interdependent we use the endogenous instrumental variable based method (IVX) to estimate the reduced-form model to reduce the finite sample bias which arises from highly persistent regressors and endogeneity. The recursive evolving test proposed by Phillips, Shi, and Yu (PSY) is applied to the estimated nonfundamental component for the identification of speculative bubbles. The new bubble test developed here is referred to as PSY-IVX. An empirical application to the eight Australian capital city housing markets over the period 1999–2017 shows that bubble testing results are sensitive to different ways of controlling for fundamentals and highlights the importance of accurate estimation of these housing market fundamentals.     

How do stock prices respond to fundamental shocks in the case of the United States? Evidence from NASDAQ and DJIA

In this paper, we use both the Dow Jones and NASDAQ indices to test the robustness of Binswanger's (2004c) finding that US stock market dynamics are governed mostly by nonfundamental shocks or speculative bubbles after the 1982 debt crisis. We estimate a total of 72 SVAR models and 36 SVECM models. We determine that the findings are robust indeed and that fundamental shocks have become less and less important over the years, irrespective of which US stock market index is considered.     

Detecting speculative bubbles in an IT-intensive stock market

Using a battery of unit root test procedures and cointegration analysis with alternative null hypotheses we find some evidence of speculative bubbles in the Finnish stock market for monthly data on industry portfolio stock prices and returns from the 1990s. When analyzing the time series behavior of stock market prices and returns against the development of certain macroeconomic fundamentals, the bubbles seem to be present especially in the information technology (IT) prices and only during the latter half of the decade. (JEL C22, G12)     

基于指数平滑转移模型的价格泡沫检验方法

蒙特卡洛分析显示,Phillips,Wu和Yu（2011）提出的sup ADF泡沫检验方法对扰动项的异方差较为敏感,尤其是当扰动项方差接近非平稳时存在严重的尺度扭曲,倾向于过度拒绝不存在泡沫的原假设。同时,对于Evans（1991）周期性破灭的泡沫,当泡沫破灭的概率增加时,sup ADF检验的检验势下降较快。本文结合Kapetanios,Shin和Snell（2003）单位根检验的思想,在指数平滑转移模型的框架下提出了一种新的泡沫检验方法（sup KSS检验）。与sup ADF检验相比,sup KSS检验对于扰动项的异方差有一定的改进,同时对于周期性破灭的泡沫和指数平滑转移泡沫具有较稳健的检验势。     

Evidence of nonlinear speculative bubbles in pacific-rim stock markets

Increased volatility of many stock markets in recent years has sometimes been associated with rapid increases or decreases in asset values that may contain elements of speculative bubbles not justified by the underlying fundamentals. This paper studies the behavior of daily stock returns from ten pacific-rim countries by using a regime switching model to detect trends. Residuals from a VAR model of daily stock indices and presumed fundamentals like exchange rates, Far East and the World stock indices used in a regime switching model point to the existence of bubbles. The ARCH and BDS statistics also indicate strong evidence of non-linearities in all of these countries.     

A remark on the fiscal theory of price determination

The fiscal theory of price determination asserts that the price level is determined by the ratio of nominal public debt to the present value of real primary surpluses. To show its fragility, we describe a simple monetary economy with an infinitely lived real productive asset. Under the hypotheses of the fiscal theory, speculative bubbles occur at equilibrium, thus leading to an indeterminate price level.     

A remark on the fiscal theory of price determination

The fiscal theory of price determination asserts that the price level is determined by the ratio of nominal public debt to the present value of real primary surpluses. To show its fragility, we describe a simple monetary economy with an infinitely lived real productive asset. Under the hypotheses of the fiscal theory, speculative bubbles occur at equilibrium, thus leading to an indeterminate price level.     

1. The Role of Land Markets in Economic Crises

It is widely recognized that the economic crisis of 2009 was caused by unsound lending for real estate. Largely ignored, however, is that this contraction was easily predicted on the basis of a well-established pattern of land speculation, premature subdivision, and excessive building on marginal land that recurs approximately once every 18 years. Capital locked up in projects that are started during a land bubble is effectively lost during the downturn, leaving the nation without sufficient capital to finance ordinary business operations during the recovery period. The best instrument for avoiding this boom-bust cycle is the property tax and, more specifically, the portion that falls on land. We explore here the ways in which the property tax influences the intensity, timing, and location of development. We also examine why frequent and accurate assessment are essential to make the property tax an effective method of preventing speculative real estate bubbles.     

On Modelling Speculative Prices: The Empirical Literature

Traditionally, financial theory and in particular asset pricing models have assumed (implicitly or explicitly) a certain probabilistic structure for speculative prices. The probabilistic structure is usually defined in terms of specific statistical models and relates to the dependence, heterogeneity and the distribution of such prices. The primary objective of this paper is to trace the development of various statistical models proposed since Bachelier (1900), in an attempt to assess how well these models capture the empirical regularities exhibited by data on speculative prices.     

Inflow Composition,Duration Dependence and their Impact on the Unemployment Outflow Rate*

This paper presents estimates of the components of the dynamics of the unemployment outflow rate with British data. We allow both the composition of the inflow and individual duration dependence to vary over the business cycle. We find the inflow composition to be strongly countercyclical. Individual exit rates are found to be substatntially more sensitive to the business cycle than previously thought and than the average exit rate fluctuations suggest. Cyclical variations in duration dependence are not significant. With our estimates, fluctuations in the average exit rate out of the first year of unemployment are mainly accounted for by variations of individual exit rates, variation of inflow composition, and variation in the inflow level combined with the duration dependence phenomenon.     

Contagion testing in frontier markets under alternative stressful S&P 500 market scenarios

We use alternative approaches to identify stable and stressful scenarios in the S&P 500 market, to offer a new perspective for constructing contagion tests in recipient frontier markets vulnerable to disturbances from this source market. The S&P 500 market is decomposed into discrete conditions of: (1) tranquil versus turbulent volatility; (2) bull versus bear market phases; (3) normal periods versus asset bubbles and crashes. Based on these identified scenarios, we use various co-moment contagion tests to analyse the changing relationship between the S&P 500 market and major frontier markets in the Caribbean region that have prominent trade related exposure to the US. Our findings show that, outside of the events of the Great Recession, the Caribbean stock exchanges are largely independent of the S&P 500 market.     

Investment and share prices: fundamental versus speculative components

This paper uses quarterly U.S. data from 1953(6) to 2000(6) to investigate the effects of share-price changes on investment. We focus on the distinction between speculative and fundamental components of share-price movements and we contribute to the literature by evaluating four alternative methods of decomposing share-price movements into these two components. The four methods are: (1) a decomposition based on regressing share returns on a set of variables designed to capture fundamentals; (2) the use of the price-earnings ratio; (3) the use of the dividend yield and (4) a structural vector-autoregressive model based on the dividend-discount equation. We find that, no matter what the method of decomposition is, shocks to both fundamental and speculative components have positive effects on investment and that, in contrast to the earlier literature, the effect of the speculative shock is at least as large as that of a shock to fundamentals.     

中国十大宜居城市房地产价格泡沫度的实证研究

本文通过单位根ADF检验,对我国十大宜居城市中的九个城市（剔除桂林,数据不可得）的房地产价格泡沫进行了初步检验,结果显示除青岛外其他城市房地产价格都面临着不同程度的泡沫。然后通过建立时变风险溢价模型和三变量VAR模型,对除青岛以外的剩余城市的房地产价格泡沫进行了度量,结果显示：上海、大连、北京、广州、成都、杭州、珠海和厦门的房地产市场都存在着不同程度的泡沫,其中北京、杭州和珠海的房地产市场泡沫已经达到了30％以上,而上海、大连和厦门的房地产市场泡沫在20％以上,成都和广州的房地产市场泡沫也在10％以上。使用该方法可以度量任何一个地区、省份、市区的房地产价格泡沫度,可以为房地产商、购房人和中央及地方政府提供相应的决策依据。     

How binding are legal limits? Transitions from temporary to permanent work in Spain

This paper studies the duration pattern of fixed-term contracts and the determinants of their conversion into permanent ones in Spain, where the share of fixed-term employment is the highest in Europe. We estimate a duration model for temporary employment, with competing risks of terminating into permanent employment versus alternative states, and flexible duration dependence. We find that conversion rates are generally below 10%. Our estimated conversion rates roughly increase with tenure, with a pronounced spike at the legal limit, when there is no legal way to retain the worker on a temporary contract. We argue that estimated differences in conversion rates across categories of workers can stem from differences in worker outside options and thus the power to credibly threat to quit temporary jobs.     

Transient fads and the crash of ′87

Using a fad model with Markov-switching heteroscedasticity in both the fundamental and fad components (UC-MS model), this paper examines the possibility that the 1987 stock market crash was an example of a short-lived fad. While we usually think of fads as speculative bubbles, what the UC-MS model seems to be picking up is unwarranted pessimism which the market exhibited with the OPEC oil shock and the '87 crash. Furthermore, the conditional variance implied by the UC-MS model captures most of the dynamics in the GARCH specification of stock return volatility. Yet unlike the GARCH measure of volatility, the UC-MS measure of volatility is consistent with volatility reverting to its normal level very quickly after the crash.     

Speculative hyperinflations and currency substitution

We propose a rational expectations framework for understanding speculative hyperinflations that end in response to ‘orthodox’ stabilization programs. Motivated by a strong degree of hysteresis in the stock of real balances after the end of hyperinflations, we provide a cash-and-credit model in which the money demand exhibits persistence because individuals can establish long-lasting credit relationships. We use the model to show that if hysteresis in real balances is possible then a fiscal–monetary reform that successfully stops a speculative hyperinflation may fail to prevent it. We argue that speculative hyperinflationary equilibria are consistent with some key stylized facts observed in extreme hyperinflations.     

股市理性泡沫的检验方法比较研究

首先在理性预期和无套利条件下得到理性泡沫模型;然后基于实证对理性泡沫的四种典型检验方法:方差界检验、设定检验、单位根和协整检验、内在性泡沫检验方法进行比较分析,并得出结论。     

Stock returns and real activity in the G-7 countries: did the relationship change during the 1980s?

Several empirical studies show that a substantial fraction of the changes in growth rates of real activity can be explained by lagged aggregate stock return variations in the U.S. as well as in other G-7 countries from the 1950s to the 1990s. However, the results presented in Binswanger.[International Review of Economics and Finance 9 (2000) 387] indicate that this traditionally strong relation has disappeared in the U.S. in the early 1980s. This paper shows that a similar breakdown occurred in Canada, Japan and in an aggregate economy consisting of the four European G-7 countries. The results provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis that speculative bubbles during the 1980s and 1990s were an international phenomenon.     

Liquidity traps and large-scale financial crises

This paper estimates a nonlinear Threshold-VAR to investigate if a Keynesian liquidity trap due to a speculative motive was in place in the U.S. Great Depression and the recent Great Recession. We find clear evidence in favor of a breakdown of the liquidity effect after an unexpected increase in M2 in the 1921–1940 period. This evidence, which is consistent with the Keynesian view on a liquidity trap, is shown to be state contingent. In particular, it emerges only when a speculative regime identified by high realizations of the Dow Jones index is considered. A standard linear framework is shown to be ill-suited to test the hypothesis of a Keynesian liquidity trap. An investigation performed with the same data for the period 1991–2010 confirms the presence of a liquidity trap just in the speculative regime. This last result emerges significantly only when we consider the federal funds rate as the policy instrument and we model the Divisia M2 measure of liquidity.