Heterogeneous ideas production and endogenous growth: an empirical investigation

Abstract .  We examine the dynamics of ideas production and knowledge-productivity relationship in a panel of 19 OECD countries. A new data set of triadic patents is used. We rigorously address the issues of cross-country heterogeneity and endogeneity. Domestic and foreign ideas stocks exert positive but heterogeneous effects on ideas production. We find evidence of duplicate R&D but little support for endogenous growth. Countries with low domestic ideas bases could considerably improve productivity through ideas accumulation; however, this effect is modest for countries with sizeable ideas bases. An implication is that country-specific R&D policy appears potentially more effective than the one-size-fits-all approach.     

The vanishing role of money in the macro-economy: An empirical investigation for India

The recent de-emphasizing of the role of “money” in both theoretical macroeconomics as well as in the practical conduct of monetary policy sits uneasily with the idea that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. Empirical evidence has, however, been accumulating pointing to an important leading indicator role for money and credit aggregates with respect to long term inflationary trends. Such a role could arise from monetary aggregates furnishing a nominal anchor for inflationary expectations, from their influence on the term structure of interest rates and from their affecting transaction costs in markets. Our paper attempts to assess the informational content role of money in the Indian economy by a separation of these effects across time scales and frequency bands, using the techniques of wavelet analysis and band spectral analysis respectively. Our results indicate variability of causal relations across frequency ranges and time scales, as also occasional causal reversals.     

Financial openness,market structure and private credit: An empirical investigation

Consistent with recent theoretical models, this paper finds that financial openness has a positive effect on private credit in economies characterized by a competitive banking sector, but that this effect vanishes and even becomes negative in economies with imperfect banking competition.     

Introduction: macroeconomic implications of capital flows in a global economy

The papers in this volume address issues raised by the wave of financial crises that hit emerging markets since the mid 1990s. Several of the papers examine the role that different credit market frictions may have played in triggering the crises, or in determining the effects of policies aimed at containing them. Other papers ask more general questions about the implications of international financial integration for business cycles, risk sharing, and sovereign lending.     

International transmission of business cycles: Evidence from dynamic correlations

We exploit dynamic correlations to estimate determinants of output comovement between OECD countries. Trade intensity, financial integration, and specialization patterns have significantly different effects on comovements at different frequencies. This sheds more light on previous results based on statistical filters.     

Volatility spillovers of unconventional monetary policy to emerging market economies

Emerging market economies (EMEs) have experienced waves of market volatility since the global financial crisis, with some commentators ascribing this at least partly related to monetary policy decisions in advanced economies. This paper examines volatility spillovers from changes in the size of the balance sheets of the Federal Reserve (FED) and European Central Bank (ECB) to EMEs from 2003 to 2018. We find that volatility spillovers to EME currency markets are greater in magnitude from the FED, while EME stock and bond markets are also vulnerable to volatility spillovers in a similar magnitude from both the ECB and the FED. We find only limited evidence of volatility transmission to the real economy of EMEs following the monetary policy actions of the FED and ECB. Finally, we show that the proportion of the volatility in EMEs that is accounted for by changes in FED and ECB balance sheets shifts over time. Our paper has important policy implications for EMEs, notably in respect of volatility transmission channels.     

Exchange rate pass-through to domestic producer prices: Evidence from Korean firm-level pricing survey

This note studies exchange rate pass-through to the prices of domestically produced goods, exploring the firm-level pricing survey conducted by the Bank of Korea. The data reveal the imported inputs channel of, as well as nonlinear and asymmetric, exchange rate-pass-through.     

Financial market integration: Theory and empirical results

In this article, we introduce a new theoretical international asset pricing model which accounts for partial financial market segmentation. We show that if some investors do not hold all international assets because of implicit and/or explicit segmentation factors, the world market portfolio is not efficient and the classic ICAPM must be augmented by a new factor reflecting the local risk undiversifiable internationally. We test this model empirically for a sample of emerging markets. Our findings show that the degree of market integration is time-varying and that the premium associated with the domestic risk factors is the most important component of the total risk premium. However, our results also show that most of the emerging markets we study have become more integrated in the end of our sample period as a result of liberalization and reforms.     

Estimating monetary policy reaction functions for emerging market economies: The case of Brazil

The paper investigates monetary policy in Brazil following a shift to a floating exchange rate alongside inflation targeting adoption. The benchmark reaction function reveals that the Central Bank behaves according to the Taylor principle by raising the overnight Selic policy interest rate more than the amount by which expected inflation exceeds the target. The investigation also considers a data-rich environment via an excess policy response containing information from a panel of 45 economic time series. The excess policy response carries a positive and significant coefficient in the reaction function including only an inflation gap variable.     

Endogenizing market institutions: An experimental approach

We study experimental two-sided markets in which the information structure is endogenous. When submitting an offer, a trader decides which other traders will be informed about the offer. This setup allows both a decentralized bargaining market (Chamberlin, J. Polit. Econ. 56 (1948) 95), and a double auction market (Smith J. Polit. Econ. 70 (1962) 111) as special cases. The results show that offers are typically directed to all traders of the other side of the market, but to none of the traders of the same side of the market. Even though traders receive much less information, the resulting market institution leads to the same outcomes in terms of prices and efficiency as a double auction market. In two additional treatments we examine the robustness of these results. First, it is found that the market institution adapts predictably, but not necessarily efficiently, to the imposition of transaction costs. Second, we find that the preference of sellers to conceal offers from competitors is strict. At the same time, sellers benefit collectively when they reveal offers to each other.     

Culture and labour productivity: An empirical investigation

Culture is considered as one of the most powerful forces that shape human behaviour and thereby economic activity. This paper investigates the effects of culture on labour productivity and examines the cultural traits driving this relationship. Using panel data analysis, empirical evidence is provided covering a sample of 34 OECD countries over a wide period of three decades. Our empirical results suggest a significant positive relationship between the cultural background and labour productivity. The main channels of this positive impact are control and work ethic environment, while obedience has a negative impact on productivity. These findings are robust to a series of robustness checks, including alternative cultural measures, additional control variables, various country samples, and alternative specifications.     

Currency crisis transmission through international trade

The Eurozone recent crisis has shown how balance of payments problems in less developed European Monetary Union (EMU) member countries can affect EMU trading partners, spreading the crisis to a larger group of countries. This paper introduces a three-country dynamic general equilibrium model to analyze whether and how terms of trade effects can generate a spillover effect or a currency crisis transmission between countries. Specifically, using a two period model, it incorporates world market clearing conditions for tradables into a new theoretic model, analyzes net capital flow movements between countries, and establishes cross-border macroeconomic linkages. This paper shows how a currency crisis can transmit through the real (trade) sector channel of the economy.     

Investment-specific shocks and real business cycles in emerging economies: Evidence from Brazil

This paper investigates the role of the RBC (Real Business Cycle) model with investment-specific technology shocks in explaining business cycle fluctuations in Brazil. I consider the role of transitory and permanent components of neutral and investment-specific technology shocks. I fit the model to the data using Bayesian techniques to show that the investment-specific shocks are important sources of fluctuations in the estimated model. In fact, in the context of the model, investment-specific shocks can account for remarkable percentages of fluctuations in consumption growth, GDP growth, investment growth and trade balance to GDP ratio. Furthermore, I present simulation evidence showing that the RBC model cannot account for some important features of the data.     

Maturity mismatch and financial crises: Evidence from emerging market corporations

Substantial attention has been paid in recent years to the risk of maturity mismatch in emerging markets. Although this risk is microeconomic in nature, the evidence advanced thus far has taken the form of macro correlations. We evaluate this mechanism empirically at the micro level by using a database of over 3000 publicly listed firms from fifteen emerging markets. We measure the risk of maturity mismatch by estimating, at the firm level, the effect on investment of the interaction of short-term exposure and aggregate capital flight. This effect is (statistically) zero, contrary to the prediction of the maturity-mismatch hypothesis. This conclusion is robust to using a variety of different estimators, alternative measures of capital flows, and controls for devaluation effects and access to international capital. We do find evidence that short-term-exposed firms pay higher financing costs, and have lower equity valuations, but not that this reduction in net worth translates into a drop in investment or sales.     

Equity market and foreign capital

Abstract .  I present a model that demonstrates that the market mechanism is not always effective in stabilizing an open equity market. Foreign capital inflows create multiple equilibria in the equity market, which may simultaneously trigger a currency crisis as well as an equity market crash even if the equity market is well developed.     

Explaining the early years of the euro exchange rate: An episode of learning about a new central bank

Many observers were surprised by the depreciation of the euro after its launch in 1999. Handicapped by a short sample, explanations tended to appeal to anecdotes and lessons learned from the experiences of other currencies. Now sample sizes are just becoming large enough to permit reasonable empirical analyses. The model of this paper provides empirical support for the euro exchange rate to be affected by learning. By focusing on euro-area inflation as the key fundamental, the model is structured toward the dynamics of learning about ECB policy with regard to inflation. While a stated target inflation rate of 2 percent existed, it may be that market participants had to be convinced that the ECB would, indeed, generate low and stable inflation. With a prior distribution drawn from the pre-euro EMS experience and updating based upon the realized experience each month following the introduction of the euro, the evidence suggests that it was not until December of 1999 that the market assessed a greater than 50 percent probability that the inflation process had changed to a new regime. From this point on, trend depreciation of the euro ends and further increases in the probability of the new inflation process are associated with euro appreciation versus the US dollar, the British pound and the Japanese yen.     

Central bank independence and stock market returns in emerging economies

We investigate the effect of central bank independence on stock market returns in emerging economies. We find evidence for a positive overall effect, but economic independence of the central bank appears to be more relevant than political independence.     

The impact of trade costs on exports: An empirical modeling

Studies, which have discussed some of the important issues concerning the measurement of trade costs, have conceded that the literature is still in the early stages of understanding and measuring what the real costs are. It is in this context, decomposing trade costs into ‘natural’ costs, ‘behind the border’ costs, ‘explicit beyond the border’ costs, and ‘implicit beyond the border’ costs, this paper suggests a method to measure the impacts of these components on changes in exports between countries in the absence of complete information on all the components of trade costs in home and partner countries. Empirical measurement has been demonstrated using 1999 and 2004 trade data from Pakistan. The results show that Pakistan's export growth between 1999 and 2004 came mainly from the reduction in both ‘explicit and implicit beyond the border’ trade costs in partner countries.     

An empirical investigation of the effect of borrowing constraints on Spanish consumption

Abstract. This work analyses the relevance of borrowing constraints on the intertemporal behaviour of Spanish non-durable consumption. We estimate Euler equations with cohort data extracted from the “Encuesta Continua de Presupuestos Familiares” (ECPF) for the period 1985–1993. The results are robust to the use of different estimators to eliminate fixed individual effects, to different specifications of the model, to the effect of uncertainty and to the presence of habits in consumption. Our results allow us to conclude that non-durable consumption of a considerable fraction of the Spanish population is affected by borrowing constraints. At the same time, and in accordance with similar results for other countries, we confirm that borrowing constraints are especially important for the young. The author acknowledges the grant received from the Conselleria de Cultura, Educación y Ciencia de la Generalitat Valènciana, as part of its grant's programme for stays in foreign universities and the financial support by DGICYT grants SEC99-0820 and SEC 2002-00667. The author also acknowledges the hospitality of the Department of Economics at University College London (UCL) and of the Departamento de Análisis Económico de la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. This work has been presented in the XXV Simposio de Análisis Económico, held in Bellaterra (Spain) in December 2000. Finally, the author acknowledges comments by J. E. Boscá and two anonymous referees that have contributed to improving the final version of the paper.