Can leading indicators assess country vulnerability? Evidence from the 2008–09 global financial crisis

We investigate whether leading indicators can help explain the cross-country incidence of the 2008–09 financial crisis. Rather than looking for indicators with specific relevance to the recent crisis, the selection of variables is driven by an extensive review of more than eighty papers from the previous literature on early warning indicators. Our motivation is to address suspicions that indicators found to be useful predictors in one round of crises are typically not useful to predict the next round. The review suggests that central bank reserves and past movements in the real exchange rate were the two leading indicators that had proven the most useful in explaining crisis incidence across different countries and episodes in the past. For the 2008–09 crisis, we use six different variables to measure crisis incidence: drops in GDP and industrial production, currency depreciation, stock market performance, reserve losses, and participation in an IMF program. We find that the level of reserves in 2007 appears as a consistent and statistically significant leading indicator of who got hit by the 2008–09 crisis, in line with the conclusions of the pre-2008 literature. In addition to reserves, recent real appreciation is a statistically significant predictor of devaluation and of a measure of exchange market pressure during the current crisis. We define the period of the global financial shock as running from late 2008 to early 2009, which probably explains why we find stronger results than earlier papers such as Obstfeld et al. (2009, 2010) and Rose and Spiegel (2009a,b, 2010, 2011) which use annual data.     

Debt source choices and stock market performance of Russian firms during the financial crisis

This paper examines the relationship between stock returns and the sources of corporate debt during the financial crisis of 2008. In particular, using data on large-capitalization Russian firms, we investigate whether dependence on either bank debt or bonds affected stock returns during the credit crunch. Our results indicate that the firms which rely entirely on bank debt significantly outperformed the firms with public debt amidst the crisis. This finding suggests that bank debt may be particularly valuable in harsh times. However, we also document that the stock prices of the bank dependent firms recovered more slowly in the post-crisis period.     

Shift‐contagion Vulnerability in the MENA Stock Markets

As part of a broader financial development reform agenda, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries have successfully expanded and revitalised their stock markets over the last decade. Whereas previous contributions have investigated efficiency, international integration and portfolio diversification opportunities, very little is known about these markets’ vulnerability to external financial crises. In this paper, we investigate shift‐contagion to the MENA region using a comprehensive battery of econometric tests for a number of different crises episodes: the 1997 Asian crisis, the 1998 Russian virus and its Brazilian sequel, the 2000 Turkish collapse, the 9/11 turmoil, the 2001 Argentinean crisis, the 2002 Enron/WorldCom scandal and the 2007–09 global financial crisis. We found that Turkey, Israel and Jordan were the most vulnerable markets over the 1997–2009 period, followed by Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon. Our results also highlight heterogeneous but increasing levels of sensitivity to external financial shocks, especially during the recent global financial crisis. From a financial point of view, this suggests that MENA‐based diversification strategies may be relatively inefficient during periods of global turmoil. From an economic point of view, our results suggest that stock market development also involves potential destabilisation costs. This issue should be acknowledged and addressed by policymakers if these countries are to ensure a smooth transition towards international financial integration.     

Stock liquidity and ownership structure during and after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis: Empirical evidence from an emerging market

This paper examines the impact of ownership structure, whether state owned, foreign owned or institutionally owned, on Vietnamese stock market liquidity in different market conditions. We find that state ownership is associated with lower liquidity after the 2008 financial crisis. Institutional ownership shows a weak influence on liquidity in the post-crisis period. During the financial crisis, however, liquidity declines could not be attributed to ownership structure. Our results imply that foreign investors have not yet played a significant role in driving stock market liquidity in Vietnam, which is counter to findings in the existing literature concerning liquidity in more developed markets. Our results are consistent across conventional liquidity measures and a composite liquidity measure.     

The Effect of 2008 Crisis on the Volatility Spillovers among Six Major Markets

The scope of this paper is to determine whether global stock markets function differently under conditions of economic crisis by measuring volatility spillovers between six major markets, namely the US, the UK, Germany, Spain, Turkey, and Greece. We examine the volatility spillover effects of the 2008 US financial crisis to these six major markets using daily stock returns from January 2003 to December 2014, before, during, and after the 2008 financial crisis. We combine the Diebold and Yilmaz methodology with the stochastic volatility model of Taylor implemented through the sequential Efficient Importance Sampling method of Richard and Zhang to obtain variance decompositions derived from an estimated vector autoregressive model. The empirical findings suggest that stock markets tend to show increased volatility spillovers during the crisis period, thus resulting in lesser diversification benefits for investors.     

Financial versus Monetary Mercantilism: Long‐run View of Large International Reserves Hoarding

The sizeable hoarding of international reserves by several East Asian countries has been frequently attributed to a modern version of monetary mercantilism – hoarding international reserves in order to improve competitiveness. From a long‐run perspective, manufacturing exporters in East Asia adopted ‘financial’ mercantilism – subsidising the cost of capital – during decades of high growth. They switched to hoarding large international reserves when growth faltered, making it harder to disentangle the monetary mercantilism from the precautionary response to the heritage of past financial mercantilism. Monetary mercantilism also lowers the cost of hoarding, but may be associated with negative externalities leading to competitive hoarding. From this viewpoint, this paper makes three observations on the East Asian reserve accumulation. First, the recent large hoarding of reserves in Japan and Korea occurred in the aftermath of the growth strategy that combined export promotion and credit subsidisation (financial mercantilism). Second, whether the ultimate motive is mercantilist or precautionary, the ongoing reserve hoarding in Asia contains an element of competitive hoarding, which is likely to have negative externalities among countries involved. Finally, China's hoarding of reserves partly reflects the precaution against the financial fragility that is likely to follow the slowing of economic growth.     

The arrival of the Euro and its implications for Asia

The third stage of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) commenced on January 1, 1999 with the launch of the European single currency, the euro. The first round of participants comprises 11 of the 15 European Union (EU) nations, dubbed “Euroland.” The potential implications of EMU for Asia are immense. The euro's emergence as an international currency and its impact on Asia can be assessed in 3 different domains: (1) as a medium of exchange for Europe's trade with Asia; (2) as a store of value in stocks and bonds in world capital markets; and (3) as part of official foreign exchange reserves of Asian central banks. Our analysis suggests that there is potential for the euro to play a bigger role in EU-Asia trade links, which will be underpinned by the collective importance of Euroland as a much-enlarged trading and investment partner for Asia. However, in the short term at least, Asian equity markets are unlikely to benefit from significant inflows of capital from the EU as the former have been decimated by the region's financial crisis. As for Asian bond markets, rapid deterioration of sovereign ratings of countries in the region over the past 12 months would make it difficult for Asian companies to raise funds through euro-denominated debt instruments. As for official foreign exchange reserves, the bulk of Asian reserves is currently held in US dollar assets. Judging from Asian trade and debt figures, it seems unlikely that the euro would challenge the US dollar as a reserve currency any time in the near future. Nevertheless, in the longer term, the euro's introduction could make it easier for Asian central banks to diversify their reserves from the greenback to the euro. The internationalization of the euro is likely to happen only gradually, whether in terms of international trade denomination and settlement, denominating international financial assets, or as a reserve currency. Since the magnitude of shock that the single European currency would bring to the international monetary system is still unknown, only very tentative conclusions for the impact on Asian countries can be drawn at this point in time.     

Impacts of short-term interest rates on stock returns and exchange rates: Empirical evidence from EAGLE countries

In this study, we estimate Bayesian vector autoregression (BVAR) and time-varying structural VAR (TVP-VAR) models for Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey to analyze the impacts of short-term interest rates on stock prices and exchange rates considering the relationships between these variables. BVAR and TVP-VAR models’ estimations indicate that monetary policy decisions of these countries lead to capital movements as well as capital movements may create a considerable amount of variation in exchange and stock markets both in the periods of economic stability and financial crisis. We also reveal that increases in interest rates intending to prevent capital outflows may lead to decrease in stock returns, which in turn may deteriorate the real economic activity in Indonesia, while changes in short-term interest rates in Brazil, Indonesia and Turkey cannot be used as a tool to stabilize the value of their home currencies against the USD. Our study highlights the importance of formulating an optimal monetary policy framework accompanied by macro-prudential polices, which help to reach inflation target and smooth the possible variations in exchange rates and stock prices during economic crisis conditions in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey.     

新时期中国对外贸易及战略调整分析

国际金融危机对全球经济格局的影响是广泛而深远的。正确判断后危机时代全球经济格局的变动趋势,及金融危机对我国经济结构的动态性长远影响,对于我国在外贸出口锐减、国际贸易壁垒高企、发达经济体"制造业回归"等不利因素冲击下更好地参与经济全球化具有重要的意义。本文对扩大内需突破口的寻找、内需主导型经济模式的创设、奢侈品消费市场的回流、一般生活必需品的必须消费逐渐向非必须消费转变、非生活必需品的个体消费逐渐向群体消费转变等问题进行了探讨。     

The roles of news and volatility in stock market correlations during the global financial crisis

The global financial crisis has again brought the interdependencies of international financial markets to the fore, particularly during times of financial crises. This paper explores the relative roles of news and volatility in explaining the changes in correlations between national stock markets during the global financial crisis. Our results show that the majority of the correlations are more strongly explained by volatility rather than news. However as the global financial crisis evolves the relative role of news grows in importance.     

The Asian economy: current state of play and future prospects

The global financial crisis, the so-called great world recession and recovery have had a serious impact on the Asian and global economies. Together, they managed to engender significant transformation in the contours of both the Asian and global economies. For instance, Asian economies presently depend less on markets in the advanced industrial economies and, due to their enlarging markets, can and did make a substantive contribution to the global recovery. They spearheaded the economic recovery from the global financial crisis. The post-crisis Asian economy is the third pole of the global economy. Significantly, the emerging market economies of Asia did not magnify the external shock this time and performed more like the advanced industrial economies. After a robust recovery in 2010, growth became somewhat subdued in 2011. Projections show that economic performance in the region in 2012 will not be very different from that in 2011 (see WB [World Bank] 2012).     

美国次贷危机对我国经济发展的启示

2007年美国次贷危机所引发的全球金融危机给世界经济造成了重大冲击,对我国金融机构以及产品出口也都带来了直接影响,使我国巨额外汇储备大幅度缩水,购买能力下降.在经济和金融全球化背景下,我国应强化金融风险意识,加强政府对于金融市场的干预和管理,加强抵押贷款业务的管理,提高金融市场的透明度,降低市场的不确定性,努力规避金融风险.     

金融危机的新变化与中国应对之策

当代金融危机已经摆脱了经济周期性和意识形态的时空限制。金融市场将经济危机延缓到未来,并首先以金融危机形式集中释放,西方发达国家又向世界转嫁危机。我国当前的大量外汇储备受到了金融危机的冲击,因此应适度调整对外经济政策和外汇储备策略。此外,我国需要通过扩大内需和完善金融市场体系而从根本上推动国民经济协调发展。     

后金融危机时期黑龙江出口企业的发展对策

由于国际金融危机致使世界贸易明显下滑,中国产品出口也受到了冲击。随着各国政府采取的经济刺激政策逐步取得成效,许多国家经济指标正在逐步企稳,这预示着世界经济逐步进入"后危机时期",也意味着全球经济复苏已为时不远,产品出口将迎来新的发展时期,这将给包括黑龙江省在内的中国出口企业带来新的发展机会。因此,黑龙江产品出口营销企业应充分认清形势,做好充分准备,蓄势待发,以迎接产品出口稳步发展的新的历史时期的到来。     

Did foreign exchange holding influence growth performance during the global financial crisis?

In a context of increased foreign exchange reserves holding from emerging and developing countries, this paper investigates the diminishing return of reserves holding assumption over the most severe phase of the global financial crisis (2008Q1–2010Q4). Relying on a Panel Smooth Transition Regression model, we highlight the differential effect of the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves for a set of financial vulnerabilities variables. In a specific manner, although reserves accumulation is effective above a critical threshold to cope with vulnerabilities related to the financial channel, we show that it becomes less effective beyond a certain threshold for domestic bank vulnerabilities. Our results are robust to alternative specifications.     

Lohnimpulse und Wirtschaftswachstum — eine Simulationsanalyse für die Eurozone

Since the global financial and economic crisis, the question has arisen whether a policy of wage restraint could lead the European crisis countries back onto a more stable growth path. Using simulation calculations for varying wage setting strategies in Europe through 2030, the advantages and disadvantages of such a scenario can be discussed. One of the main findings is that temporary wage restraint in the economically weak countries only works as a means to regaining competitiveness if accompanied by other economic policies at the European level. These policies include higher wage growth in the economically stronger countries, transfer payments to foster investments and the acceptance of higher inflation rates in the eurozone.     

Did corporate governance safeguard investor interest in the global financial crisis? Evidence from Hong Kong SAR

The global financial crisis of 2008 aroused renewed interest in the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms to safeguard investor interests. In this paper, we measure the effects of the crisis from 2008 to 2009 on the share performance of 976 companies listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the Hong Kong SAR and examine the link between share performance and corporate governance mechanisms. Our results present evidence that firms with a higher proportion of independent directors and a greater concentration of ownership had lower share performance, but lower price volatility, during the global financial crisis. These results suggest that no single corporate governance mechanism is fit for all economic environments and time frames. To strengthen investors' confidence, companies should enhance the efficiency and adaptability of their governance mechanisms in turbulent times.     

Supply Chains,Global Financial Shocks and Firm Behaviour towards Liquidity Needs

Driven by the increasingly important role of supply chains in global production, this paper studies empirical association between global credit‐market shocks and firm behaviour towards liquidity needs across countries and industries. Focusing on the adjustment of working‐capital financing, we find two pieces of supporting evidence from international firm‐level panel data covering the period 2002:I–2012:IV. First, for industries where specific investment in the input supplier–customer relationship is large, firms are more exposed to credit‐market shocks. We find that measures of global credit‐market shocks are negatively associated with trade receivables, trade payables and inventories, conditional on the level of contract intensity in the industries where firms operate. Second, firms in emerging markets are more vulnerable to credit‐market shocks than are firms in developed countries. We are also able to verify the economic significance of sales growth, operating cash flows, cash stock and firm size in the overall adjustment. Our findings highlight the importance of balance‐sheet contagion along supply chains during the 2007–09 global financial crisis.     

Do global factors impact BRICS stock markets? A quantile regression approach

This paper examines the dependence structure between the emerging stock markets of the BRICS countries and influential global factors. Using the quantile regression approach, our results for the period from September 1997 to September 2013 show that the BRICS stock markets exhibit dependence with the global stock and commodity markets (S&P index, oil, and gold) as well as changes in the U.S. stock market uncertainty (CBOE Volatility Index). This dependence structure is often asymmetric and affected by the onset of the recent global financial crisis. By contrast, the U.S. economic policy uncertainty has no impact on the BRICS stock markets.     

Can emerging market central banks bail out banks? A cautionary tale from Latin America

This paper investigates whether emerging market countries can implement monetary policies to cope with financial crises as advanced countries did during the recent global crisis—injecting significant amounts of money into the financial system without facing major short-run adverse macroeconomic repercussions. Using panel data techniques, the paper analyzes episodes of financial turmoil in 16 Latin American countries during 1995–2007. The results show that developing and emerging market countries should be cautious because injecting money on a large scale into the financial system may fuel further macroeconomic instability, increasing the chances of simultaneous currency crises.