Exchange rate pass-through into import prices revisited: What drives it?

A large sample of developed and emerging economies is utilized to investigate import exchange rate pass-through. Panel models reveal that various economic aspects of the destination country can explain about one third of the total variation in pass-through elasticities and the remaining variation comes largely in the form of unobserved country-specific effects. Inflation, exchange rate volatility, openness and relative wealth play a clear role as drivers of emerging markets’ pass-through whereas the output gap and protectionism appear influential more generally. Nonlinearity regarding large-versus-small changes in the exchange rate is quite pervasive. Our evidence challenges the widely-held view that pass-through has been universally falling in developed markets and that it is higher for emerging markets. The economic drivers are shown to play a role as out-of-sample predictors of pass-through. The findings confirm pricing-to-market theories and have implications for the optimal conduct of monetary policy.     

Theoretical and Empirical Evidence for the Impact of Cross-Border Production Sharing on Exchange Rate Pass-Through

This paper uses the theoretical model created by Ghosh (2009) to analyze the extent of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) for traditional trade and different production sharing cases. Comparing the differences among these scenarios reveals that production sharing could be a reason for the continual decline in ERPT. Furthermore, empirical evidence from Taiwan indicates that under production sharing, the pricing-to-market for intermediate goods exporters and the currency fluctuation in the home country of end products exporters will further influence the magnitude of the decline in ERPT.     

U.S. Monetary Regimes and Optimal Monetary Policy in the Euro Area

Monetary policy in the United States has been documented to have switched from reacting weakly to inflation fluctuations during the 1970s, to fighting inflation aggressively from the early 1980s onward. In this paper, I analyze the impact of the U.S. monetary policy regime switches on the Eurozone. I construct a New Keynesian two‐country model where foreign (U.S.) monetary policy switches regimes over time. I estimate the model for the U.S. and the Euro Area using quarterly data and find that the United States has switched between those two regimes, in line with existing evidence. I show that foreign regime switches affect home (Eurozone) inflation and output volatility and their responses to shocks, substantially, as long as the home central bank commits to a time‐invariant interest rate rule reacting to domestic conditions only. Optimal policy in the home country instead requires that the home central bank reacts strongly to domestic producer‐price inflation and to international variables, such as imported goods relative prices. In fact, I show that currency misalignments and relative prices play a crucial role in the transmission of foreign monetary policy regime switches internationally. Interestingly, I show that only marginal gains arise for the Euro Area when the European Central Bank (ECB) adjusts its policy according to the monetary regime in the United States. Thus, a simple time‐invariant monetary policy rule with a strong reaction to Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation and relative prices is enough to counteract the effects of monetary policy switches in the United States.     

When and how US dollar shortages evolved into the full crisis? Evidence from the cross-currency swap market

This paper investigates when and how the US dollar shortages evolved into the full crisis in the cross-currency swap market between major European currencies and the US dollar during the turmoil of 2007-2009, using the dynamic factor model with regime-switching β coefficients of each swap price with respect to the latent common factor. The 1-year market entered the high-β crisis regime soon after the onset of the subprime problem in August 2007. The 10-year market entered that regime following the collapse of Bear Sterns in mid-March 2008. Financial credit spreads have significant predictive power for switches between high and low-β regimes.     

Return behavior and pricing of American depositary receipts

This paper provides an empirical analysis of 123 American depositary receipts (ADRs) from 16 countries. The paper finds that the returns on ADRs have significant risk exposures to the returns on the world market portfolio and their respective home market portfolios. Further, ADRs do not have significant risk exposures to changes in their home currency’s exchange rates. In explaining variations in ADR returns, a multi-factor model with the world market return and the home market return as the risk factors performs better than models with just the world market return, the home market return or a set of global factors as the risk factors.     

Price discovery for cross-listed firms with foreign IPOs

We investigate the inter-market return and volatility linkages for an atypical case of firms with foreign IPOs that subsequently cross-listed in their domestic market. In particular, our data set consists of a unique sample of 29 Israeli firms that went public in the US (host market) and then cross-listed in the Israeli market (home market). To estimate the spillover effects, we employ bivariate GARCH models, assuming both constant and dynamic conditional correlation specifications. At the aggregate market level, we find unidirectional mean and volatility spillovers from the US to the Israeli market. For the portfolios of Israeli cross-listed stocks, we report significant spillovers, at both the mean and volatility levels, from the underlying stocks in the Israeli market to their American Depository Receipts (ADRs) but not vice versa. Thus, the home market dominates the host market in the price discovery process in this atypical international cross-listing case, providing new evidence in support of the home bias hypothesis. We also find that external shocks originating from the Middle East peace process have no impact on the conditional correlation between the two markets but external shocks originating from the world and regional markets impact the conditional correlation positively.     

Currency boards, dollarized liabilities, and monetary policy credibility

The recent collapse of the Argentine currency board raises new questions about the desirability of formal fixed exchange rate regimes. This paper examines the relative performance of a currency board with costly abandonment in the presence of dollarized liabilities to a fully-discretionary regime. Our results demonstrate that neither regime necessarily dominates with only idiosyncratic firm shocks, but discretion unambiguously dominates with the addition of shocks to the dollar-euro rate. The relatively strong performance of the discretionary regime in this model stems from the benign impact of dollarized liabilities on the monetary authority’s time-inconsistency problem.     

Day and night returns of Chinese ADRs

Are the returns of Chinese American Depositary Receipts (ADR) more affected by the US market or their underlying home market? We separate Chinese ADR daily returns into day and night returns to investigate the different market effects on ADR pricing. We compare “homeless” ADRs to home-based or cross-listed ADRs to see if they are affected differently by market factors. We find the night returns of Chinese ADRs are significantly affected by their home market (either the Hong Kong market or mainland China market) daily returns and the US market night returns. The US day returns appear to be the most significant pricing factor for the day returns of Chinese ADRs. The homeless ADRs are more affected by the US market and less affected by their home market compared to the cross-listed ADRs.     

Valuation impact of currency crises: Evidence from the ADR market

This study analyzes American depository receipts (ADR) performance surrounding the outbreak of major currency crises during the past decade. By employing event-study methodologies and multifactor pricing models, we find that the outbreak of a currency crisis is accompanied by a negatively significant abnormal return for the corresponding ADRs, even after controlling for variations in exchange rates. We also find significant upward shifts in the exchange rate exposure of ADRs when the home currency is switched from a “pegging” to a “floating” exchange rate regime. In addition, ADR-originating firms with larger sizes, greater proportions of U.S. market activities, and greater market liquidity have relatively less negative abnormal returns (ARs) and less significant upward shifts in currency exposure, implying that such firms are relatively better hedged against currency crises.     

Short selling of ADRs and foreign market short-sale constraints

We examine the effect of home market short-sale constraints on securities that also trade in other countries that have more liberal short-sale rules. In particular, we focus on the case of ADRs traded in the US, as in some cases, the home markets of these ADRs prohibit short selling. We find that short sellers more heavily trade ADRs from countries where short selling is prohibited than from markets where short selling is allowed. Furthermore, we find that the greater levels of short selling in ADRs with binding home-market constraints is driven by stocks with greater dispersion of investors’ opinion, low fundamentals-to-price ratios, and recent price increases. Our results support the hypothesis that short sellers target ADRs with home market short-sale constraints because these ADRs are more often subject to temporary misvaluation.     

Pass-Through of Exchange Rates and Competition between Floaters and Fixers

This paper studies how a rise in the share of U.S. imports from China, or any country with a fixed exchange rate, can explain a disproportionate fall in exchange rate pass-through to U.S. import prices. A theoretical model provides an explanation working through changes in markups, showing that a particular "local bias" condition is necessary and that free entry amplifies the effect. The model produces a structural equation for pass-through regressions including the China share; panel regressions over 1993–2006 indicate that the rising share of trade from China or other exchange rate fixers can explain as much as one-half of the observed decline in pass-through for the United States.     

Inflationary Effects of Oil Prices in Turkey: A Regime-Switching Approach

This paper investigates the existence of oil pass-through to inflation for Turkey covering the period February 1996-May 2007. Oil price-augmented Phillips curves are estimated with linear and Markov regime-switching models. Markov regime-switching models reveal the asymmetric structure of oil pass-through and indicate the existence of two different regimes characterized as the high- and the low-inflation periods. We find evidence for asymmetric oil pass-through in the high-inflation regime for headline and food- and energy-excluded inflation measures. Our results suggest that Jarque-Bera core inflation is not affected by oil price variations under either inflationary environment. Hence, we suggest the Jarque-Bera indicator as an intermediate target in the analysis of the future trend of inflation.     

Pricing of American Depositary Receipts under Market Segmentation

This article examines the pricing of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) in a three-factor pricing model. A seemingly unrelated regression model is utilized to test the nonlinear parameter restriction implied by the model. It is found that, although ADRs are traded in the U.S. securities market, their returns are significantly affected by their respective home market factors rather than by U.S. market movements. While U.S. investors are exposed to incremental risk from foreign equity market, they do not command a risk premium. The findings suggest that (1) markets are segmented and ADR listing does not integrate world capital market and (2) ADRs behave more like a foreign security and ADR is an effective tool of global risk diversification for U.S. investors.     

Accounting for banks,capital regulation and risk-taking

This paper examines risk-taking incentives in banks under different accounting regimes in presence of capital regulation. In the model the bank jointly determines the capital issuance and investment policy. Given an exogenous minimum capital requirement, lower-of-cost-or-market accounting is the most effective regime that induces the bank to issue more excess equity capital above the minimum required level and implement less risky investment policy. However, the disciplining role of lower-of-cost-or-market accounting may discourage the bank from exerting project discovery effort ex-ante. From the regulator’s perspective, the accounting regime that maximizes the social welfare is determined by a tradeoff between the social cost of capital regulation and the efficiency of the bank’s project discovery efforts. When the former effect dominates, the regulator prefers lower-of-cost-or-market accounting; when the latter effect dominates, the regulator may prefer other regimes.     

Return spread and liquidity: Evidence from Hong Kong ADRs

Fifteen Chinese H-shares listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong are cross listed as ADRs on the NYSE. We empirically determine the role of security specific liquidity associated with those ADRs and their underlying H-shares on return spreads, differences between the returns on ADRs and their corresponding H-shares after controlling for ADRs and H-shares excess market returns and their respective price inverses denoting conditional betas. We use three proxies for liquidity, trading volume, turnover, and illiquidity (Amihud, 2002) and find that only trading volume and turnover are consistent determinants of return spread for the majority of Chinese ADRs with primary listing in Hong Kong Stock Exchange (SEHK). We use a switching regression model and find that the model parameter estimates are not stationary and change, often drastically between pre and post 2000 and 2003. Further tests using Bai Perron indicate return spreads data as non-stationary with multiple regime changes during the sample period. Further the causes of non-stationarity seem to be largely security specific and not driven by broad market swings in either market.     

The impact of unconventional monetary policy on the market for collateral: The case of the French bond market

We consider the channel consisting in transferring the credit risk associated with refinancing operations between financial institutions to market participants. In particular, we analyze liquidity and volatility premia on the French government debt securities market, since these assets are used as collateral both in the open market operations of the ECB and on the interbank market. In our time-varying transition probability Markov-switching (TVTP-MS) model, we highlight the existence of two regimes. In one of them, which we refer to as the conventional regime, monetary policy neutrality is verified; in the other, which we dub the unconventional regime, monetary policy operations lead to volatility and liquidity premia on the collateral market. The existence of these conventional and unconventional regimes highlights some asymmetries in the conduct of monetary policy.     

Divergence of US and Local Returns in the After‐market for Equity Issuing ADRs

We study one‐year post‐listing prices and returns to equity issuing ADRs that listed in the US between January 1991 and October 2000. ADRs from countries that impose restrictions on capital flows are priced at a premium to their home market ordinaries. While the mean premium for the full sample is statistically indistinguishable from zero, after an adjustment for asynchronous trading, the magnitude of the premium to ADRs from restricted markets is 11.33% at the 300‐day post listing interval, which is statistically significant. In the short run (30 days) following listing, the magnitude of the premium is larger for ADRs with larger excess demand from US investors. At the longer 300‐day horizon, Nasdaq listed ADRs earn a larger premium than their NYSE/AMEX listed counterparts. Time‐series regressions and two‐stage cross‐sectional regressions establish that the premium to foreign equity issuers is greater if the US listing attracts liquidity and if US returns have a lower correlation with the local country index.     

Market price accounting and depositor discipline: The case of Japanese regional banks

We examine the determinants of Japanese regional bank pricing-to-market decisions and their impact on the intensity of depositor discipline, in the form of the sensitivity of deposit growth to bank financial conditions. To obtain consistent estimates, we first model and estimate the bank pricing-to-market decision and then estimate the intensity of depositor discipline after conditioning for that decision. We find that banks were less likely to adopt market price accounting the larger were their unrealized securities losses. We also find statistically significant evidence of depositor discipline among banks that elected to price to market. Our results indicate that depositor discipline was more intense for the subset of banks that adopted market price accounting.     

Exchange rate dynamics under state-contingent stochastic process switching

This paper offers a closed-form solution of a process switching problem, i.e., switching the exchange rate regime from free-floating to a completely fixed one. An example of such regime change is the adoption of the Euro. In contrast to previous studies on the subject, this paper analyzes a specific case when foreign exchange market participants consider both the Euro locking rate and locking date as uncertain. Preceding the locking, the exchange rate is determined by three factors: fundamental, market expectations for the Euro locking rate, and date. The model is used to examine the conditions under which the exchange rate volatility is mitigated by the prospect of locking.     

Monetary policy transparency and pass-through of retail interest rates

This paper examines the degree of pass-through and adjustment speed of retail interest rates in response to changes in benchmark market rates in New Zealand during the period 1994–2004. We consider the effects of policy transparency and financial structure of the monetary transmission mechanism. New Zealand is the first OECD country to adopt a full-fledged inflation targeting regime with specific accountability and transparency provisions. Policy transparency was further enhanced by a shift from quantity (settlement cash) to price (interest rate) operating targets in 1999. Using Phillips–Loretan estimates of cointegrating regressions we find complete long-term pass-through for some but not all retail rates. Our results also show that the introduction of the Official Cash Rate (OCR) increased the pass-through of floating and deposit rates but not fixed mortgage rates. In line with previous studies we find the immediate pass-through of market interest rates to bank retail rates to be incomplete. Although we find no statistical evidence for asymmetric response of retail rates to changes in market rates other than for business lending rates in the pre OCR period, differences in the magnitude of mean adjustment lags indicate that banks appear to pass on decreases to fixed mortgage rates faster. Overall, our results confirm that monetary policy rate has more influence on short-term interest rates and that increased transparency has lowered instrument volatility and enhanced the efficacy of policy.