Exchange Rate Flexibility in China: Measurement,Regime Shifts and Driving Forces of Change

With an emphasis on government intervention that hinders market forces in currency movements, this paper presents a nuanced investigation of the degree and dynamics of flexibility in China's exchange rate regime. A high‐frequency data model is developed to more accurately detect the extent to which the Chinese currency is market‐driven. This indicator is then utilized in a Markov switching model to examine shifts in RMB regime flexibility. The results suggest a moderate increase in exchange rate flexibility since the 2005 reform. Additionally, two switching states are captured, and possible driving factors are discussed.     

体制转换模型能预测货币危机吗?

本文以名义汇率月变化率为因变量 ,引入因变量一阶自回归过程对Abiad(2 0 0 3 )提出的变动概率体制转换模型进行了修改 ,以此为基础 ,采用改进后的模型对阿根廷等 1 2个国家或地区在 1 978年 1月至 2 0 0 2年 5月期间发生或可能发生的货币危机进行了研究。本文主要回答两个问题 :根据体制转换模型建立的货币危机预警系统是否具有更强的预警能力 ?它预测危机发生的时机是否更准确 ?研究表明 :变动概率体制转换模型能够较为准确地预测货币危机发生的可能性和发生的时点 ;但是 ,对于不同的国家或地区 ,模型的预警效果有高有低 ;总体而言 ,该模型的预警能力很强 ,预警时效性较强     

Does purchasing power parity hold sometimes? Regime switching in real exchange rates

Standard unit root tests are not very powerful in drawing conclusions regarding the validity of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP). Rather than asking whether PPP holds throughout the whole sample period, we examine, in this study, if PPP holds sometimes by employing Hamilton-type (1989) Markov regime switching models. When at least one of multiple regimes is stationary, PPP holds locally within the regime. There are indeed various reasons that we should expect that the persistence of real exchange rates changes over time. Employing five real exchange rates spanning more than 100 years, we find herein strong evidence that the strength of PPP varies during the sample periods and that there exist stationary regimes in which PPP holds. Throughout the article, we also make comparisons to previous Markov regime switching estimation results by Kanas (2006) on the same data series. The new Markov switching model selection criterion of Smith et al. (2006), which is devised especially for discriminating Markov regime switching models, unambiguously indicates a preference for the Hamilton-type Markov regime switching model employed in this study. We also find that the evidence for PPP is not much different across different nominal exchange rate arrangements.     

我国宏观经济周期性特征研究——基于高维机制转换因子模型的考察

本文利用高维机制转换因子模型（LD RS FM）研究大规模经济数据的机制转换特征和经济的周期性特征。借助主成分分析（PCA）和共同因子自回归的二步分析方法,LD RS FM从大规模变量中提炼出维数较小并可以概括经济周期运动的共同因子,在此基础上进行机制转换分析。这些共同因子代表了大部分宏观经济运动的趋势和特征,并具有明显的结构化含义。实证结果表明,LD RS FM在中国宏观经济周期性特征研究方面具有一定的理论和应用价值。     

Volatility forecasting: long memory,regime switching and heteroscedasticity

In this article, we account for the first time for long memory, regime switching and the conditional time-varying volatility of volatility (heteroscedasticity) to model and forecast market volatility using the heterogeneous autoregressive model of realized volatility (HAR-RV) and its extensions. We present several interesting and notable findings. First, existing models exhibit significant nonlinearity and clustering, which provide empirical evidence on the benefit of introducing regime switching and heteroscedasticity. Second, out-of-sample results indicate that combining regime switching and heteroscedasticity can substantially improve predictive power from a statistical viewpoint. More specifically, our proposed models generally exhibit higher forecasting accuracy. Third, these results are widely consistent across a variety of robustness tests such as different forecasting windows, forecasting models, realized measures, and stock markets. Consequently, this study sheds new light on forecasting future volatility.     

Switching between Expectation Processes in the Foreign Exchange Market: a Probabilistic Approach using Survey Data*

This paper relaxes a fundamental hypothesis commonly accepted in the expectation formation literature: expectations are, unchangingly, either rational or generated by one of the three simple extrapolative, regressive, or adaptive processes. Using expectations survey data provided by Consensus Forecasts on six European exchange rates against the US dollar, we find that the rational expectations hypothesis is rejected at the aggregate level. By implementing a switching‐regression methodology with stochastic choice of regime, we show that the expectation generating process is given at any time by some combination of the three simple processes. An interpretation of this framework in terms of economically rational expectations is suggested.     

Evaluating currency crises: A Bayesian Markov switching approach

In this paper we examine the nature of a currency crisis. We do so by employing an out-of-sample forecasting exercise to analyse the Mexican crisis in 1994. Forecast evaluation was based on modern econometric techniques concerning the shape of forecaster’s loss function. We also extend the empirical framework suggested by Jeanne and Masson [Jeanne, O., Masson, P., 2000. Currency crises and Markov-switching regimes. Journal of International Economics 50, 327–350] to test for the hypothesis that the currency crisis was driven by sunspots. To this end we contribute to the existing literature by comparing Markov regime switching model with a time-varying transition probabilities with two alternative models. The first is a Markov regime switching model with constant transition probabilities. The second is a linear benchmark model. Empirical results show that the proxy for the probability of devaluation is an important factor explaining the nature of currency crisis. More concretely, when the expectation market pressure was used as a proxy of probability of devaluation, forecast evaluation supports the view that currency crisis was driven by market expectation unrelated to fundamentals. Alternatively, when interest rate differential is used as a proxy for probability of devaluation, currency crisis was due to predictable deterioration of fundamentals.     

Conditional Markov regime switching model applied to economic modelling

In this paper we discuss the calibration issues of regime switching models built on mean-reverting and local volatility processes combined with two Markov regime switching processes. In fact, the volatility structure of these models depends on a first exogenous Markov chain whereas the drift structure depends on a conditional Markov chain with respect to the first one. The structure is also assumed to be Markovian and both structure and regime are unobserved. Regarding this construction, we extend the classical Expectation–Maximization (EM) algorithm to be applied to our regime switching model. We apply it to economic data (Euro/Dollar (USD) foreign exchange rate and Brent oil price) to show that such modelling clearly identifies both mean reverting and volatility regime switches. Moreover, it allows us to make economic interpretations of this regime classification as in some financial crises or some economic policies.     

Testing the null hypothesis of no regime switching with an application to GDP growth rates

This paper presents tests for the null hypothesis of no regime switching in Hamilton’s (Econometrica 57:357–384, 1989) regime switching model. The test procedures exploit similarities between regime switching models, autoregressions with measurement errors, and finite mixture models. The proposed tests are computationally simple and, contrary to likelihood based tests, have a standard distribution under the null. When the methodology is applied to US GDP growth rates, no strong evidence of regime switching is found. I thank Don Andrews, Peter Phillips, Yuichi Kitamura, Anat Bracha, Patrik Guggenberger, Orit Whiteman and three anonymous referees for useful comments and suggestions.     

Multivariate Markov Switching Common Factor Models for the UK

We estimate a model that incorporates two key features of business cycles, comovement among economic variables and switching between regimes of boom and slump, to quarterly UK data for the last four decades. A common factor, interpreted as a composite indicator of coincident variables, and estimates of turning points from one regime to the other, are extracted from the data by using the Kalman filter and maximum likelihood estimation. Both comovement and regime switching are found to be important features of the UK business cycle. The composite indicator produces a sensible representation of the cycle and the estimated turning points agree fairly well with independently determined chronologies. These estimates are sharper than those produced by a univariate Markov switching model of GDP alone. A fairly typical stylized fact of business cycles is confirmed by this model – recessions are steeper and shorter than recoveries.     

Combining country-specific forecasts when forecasting Euro area macroeconomic aggregates

European Monetary Union member countries’ forecasts are often combined to obtain the forecasts of the Euro area macroeconomic aggregate variables. The aggregation weights which are used to produce the aggregates are often considered as combination weights. This paper investigates whether using different combination weights instead of the usual aggregation weights can help to provide more accurate forecasts. In this context, we examine the performance of equal weights, the least squares estimators of the weights, the combination method recently proposed by Hyndman et al.  (Comput Stat Data Anal 55(9):2579–2589, 2011) and the weights suggested by shrinkage methods. We find that some variables like real GDP and the GDP deflator can be forecasted more precisely by using flexible combination weights. Furthermore, combining only forecasts of the three largest European countries helps to improve the forecasting performance. The persistence of the individual series seems to play an important role for the relative performance of the combination.     

Cointegration tests under multiple regime shifts: An application to the stock price–dividend relationship

We examine the properties of several residual-based cointegration tests when long-run parameters are subject to multiple shifts driven by an unobservable Markov process. Unlike earlier study, which considered one-off deterministic breaks, our approach has the advantage of allowing for an unspecified number of stochastic breaks. We illustrate this issue by exploring the possibility of Markov switching cointegration in the stock price-dividend relationship and showing that this case is empirically relevant. Our subsequent Monte Carlo analysis reveals that standard cointegration tests are generally reliable, their performance often being robust for a number of plausible regime shift parameterizations.     

Bilateral counterparty risk valuation for credit default swap in a contagion model using Markov chain

The computation of the bilateral counterparty valuation adjustment for a credit default swap (CDS) contract is in effect the modeling of the default dependence among the investor, the protection seller, and the reference entity. We present a contagion model, where defaults of three parties are all driven by a common continuous-time Markov chain describing the macroeconomic conditions. We give the explicit formula for the bilateral credit valuation adjustment (CVA) of CDS and examine the effect of the regime switching on the CVA.     

A tale of two states: asymmetries in the UK small,value and momentum premiums

This article performs comparative analysis of the asymmetries in size, value and momentum premium and their macroeconomic determinants over the UK economic cycles, using Markov switching approach. We associate Markov switching regime 1 with economic upturn and regime 2 with economic downturn. We find clear evidence of cyclical variations in the three premiums, most notable being that in the size premium, which changes from positive in expansions to negative in recessions. Macroeconomic indicators prompting such cyclicality the most are variables that proxy credit market conditions, namely the interest rates, term structure and credit spread. Overall, macro factors tend to have more significant impact on the three premiums during economic downturns. The results are robust to the choice of information variable used in modelling transition probabilities of the two-stage Markov switching model. We show that exploiting cyclicality in premiums proves particularly profitable for portfolios featuring small cap stocks in recessions at a feasible level of transaction costs.     

CREDIBILITY, MACROECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALS AND MARKOV REGIME SWITCHES IN THE EMS

The main objective of this paper is to use the Markov regime‐switching modelling framework to describe and analyse the credibility of a number of countries participating in the European Monetary System during 1980–1998. Our credibility indicator, based on Hughes Hallet et al.'s (1997) methodology, is subject to discrete regime shifts and is made dependent on macroeconomic fundamentals. We carry out extensive testing to assess the specification of the Markov regime‐switching model and the potential existence of permanent breaks. A contribution of our paper is the specification of a multivariate Markov switching model that allows us to examine whether macroeconomic variables have asymmetric effects on credibility. Another contribution is the specification of a regime‐switching model with time‐varying transition probabilities, which enables us to determine whether changes in macroeconomic variables can trigger switches between the low and high credibility regimes. We find strong evidence of regime switching behaviour in all countries. Both the level of credibility and the transition probabilities display an asymmetric response to changes in macroeconomic variables, with the stance of fiscal policy exerting the most systematic influence in all countries.     

What to stabilize in the open economy*

We consider the question how “best” to maintain price‐level stability in an open economy, and evaluate three possible policy choices: (a) a constant money growth rate rule; (b) a fixed exchange rate; and (c) a policy of explicit commitment to a price‐level target. In each case we assume that policy is conducted by injecting reserves into or withdrawing reserves from the “banking system.” In evaluating the three regimes, we adopt the criterion that the “best” policy should leave the least scope for indeterminacy and “excessive” economic volatility. In a steady‐state equilibrium, the choice of regime is largely irrelevant; any steady‐state equilibrium under one regime can be duplicated by an appropriate choice of the “control” variable under any other regime. However, we show that the sets of equilibria under the three regimes are dramatically different. When all countries follow the policy of fixing a constant rate of money growth, there are no equilibria displaying endogenously arising volatility and there is no indeterminacy of equilibrium. Under a regime of fixed exchange rates, indeterminacies and endogenously arising fluctuations are impossible if and only if the country with the low “reserve‐to‐deposit” ratio is charged with maintaining the fixed rate. Finally, when one country targets the time path of its price level, under very weak conditions, there will be indeterminacy of equilibrium and endogenously arising volatility driven by expectations.     

Testing Markov switching models

In this article, we propose a new test for Markov switching models. Unlike the tests in the existing literature (e.g. Hansen, 1992; Garcia, 1998; Cho and White, 2007), we focus on testing the null of two regimes, instead of one single regime, in a switching framework. To implement our test, we propose a Markov switching model with absorbing states and examine whether the absorption probabilities are close to the boundary of the parameter space. We exploit recent advances by Andrews (2001) and conduct inference in the proposed model.     

Path dependence,self-fulfilling expectations,and carbon lock-in

Growing under the incumbent dirty regime might generate inertia against switching to a clean alternative and lead to the carbon lock-in. I analyze the economics of carbon lock-in through the lens of path dependence and self-fulfilling expectation. The incumbent dirty regime, as the first mover, accumulates an installed base of household users during early lead periods. The installed base generates an effect of path dependence that incentives upcoming households to keep on joining the incumbent dirty regime rather than switch to the clean alternative. Switching could be an expectation-driven selection outcome if expectations are formed about an expanding clean regime which outweighs the path dependence effect. Switching is a welfare-improving outcome if welfare gains by upcoming households switching to the clean regime offset welfare losses by installed-base households locked in the dirty one.     

Regime‐dependent effects of uncertainty on inflation and output growth: evidence from the United Kingdom and the United States

Employing a bivariate regime switching model, this paper attempts to examine the regime‐dependent effects of inflation uncertainty and output growth uncertainty on inflation and output growth. Using monthly data of the United Kingdom and the United States, we provide evidence that both nominal and real uncertainty exert regime‐dependent impacts on inflation. Furthermore, in case of both the countries, inflation uncertainty has adverse impact on output growth mainly during the period of economic contraction. Also, for these two countries, it can be argued that higher real uncertainty significantly reduces output growth only in their respective low output growth regimes.     

Oligarchs,political regime changes,and firm valuation1

This paper examines the impact of a regime shift on the valuation of politically powerful oligarch firms. Focusing on the Yeltsin–Putin regime shift in Russia, we find that the valuations of oligarch‐controlled firms are significantly higher under the Putin regime than under the Yeltsin regime after controlling for industry and time effects. The findings suggest that the increasing cost of extracting private benefits outweighs the reduction in the value of political connections following the political regime change. The results are also consistent with changes in the risk of state expropriation. Our results indicate that effects driven by the political regime change complement the traditional view that increased ownership concentration improved the performance of Russian oligarch firms.