Valuation effects with transitory and trend productivity shocks

Changes in asset prices of a country's foreign assets and liabilities (“valuation effects”) are commonly thought of as stabilizing: they counteract current account movements and mitigate the impact of the current account on the country's net foreign asset (NFA) position. This paper shows that whether valuation effects are stabilizing or not depends critically on the nature of the underlying productivity shocks. In response to transitory shocks, valuation effects are stabilizing; but in response to trend shocks, such effects amplify the impact of the current account on NFA position. These contrasting effects arise because optimally smoothing consumers respond differently to a transitory shock than to a trend shock to income. This theoretical result finds empirical support with G7 countries' data, and is illustrated by the pattern of external imbalances between the U.S. and other G7 countries since the 1990s.     

A new perspective on “the new rule”of the current account

In an influential series of contributions, Kraay and Ventura (2000, 2003) offer a “new rule” for the current account: in response to a temporary income shock, the change in the current account is equal to the change in saving times the ratio of net foreign assets to wealth. We analyze the impact of a temporary income shock on the current account in the context of a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model of portfolio choice and show that the new rule does not hold. We also show that the cross-section evidence reported by Kraay and Ventura in favor of the new rule is a feature implied by the steady state of the model that is conceptually distinct from the new rule. We argue that the new rule could only hold in a model with one-way capital flows (only inflows or outflows, but not both), a feature that is strongly counterfactual.     

The demand for safe assets in emerging economies and global imbalances: New empirical evidence

Recent economic theory has singled out mismatches between the supply and the demand of safe financial assets in emerging countries as drivers of international capital flows and, ultimately, global current account imbalances. This paper assesses empirically the contribution of such “search for safe assets” to the size and composition of emerging economies’ international asset portfolios. Excess demand for safe assets in financially less‐developed countries would imply that these countries hold disproportionately high shares of their total portfolios in foreign assets. Moreover, financially less‐developed countries would hold disproportionately high shares of their foreign portfolios in financially developed countries, which are the major producers of ostensibly safe assets. This paper finds little empirical support for these predictions. Financially less‐developed countries allocate a larger proportion of their total holdings to domestic assets. Even when focusing on their foreign portfolios, there is no evidence of a general bias towards the assets of financially developed countries. Overall, asset mismatches do not appear to explain the asset allocation of financially less‐developed countries.     

International capital flows and development: Financial openness matters

Does capital flow from rich to poor countries? We revisit the Lucas paradox to account for the role of capital account openness. We find that, when accounting for such openness, the prediction of the neoclassical theory is empirically confirmed: among financially open economies, less developed countries tend to experience net capital inflows and more developed countries tend to experience net capital outflows. The results hold also when taking into account private flows, institutions, and numerous controls. We also show that reserve intervention has an effect on the current account only in financially open economies.     

Oil shocks and external balances

We provide estimates of the effects of demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market on several measures of oil exporters' and oil importers' external balances, including the oil trade balance, the non-oil trade balance, the current account, capital gains, and changes in net foreign assets (NFA). First, we show that the effect of oil demand and supply shocks on the merchandise trade balance and the current account, which depending on the source of the shock can be large, depends critically on the response of the non-oil trade balance. Our results provide evidence of an intermediate degree of international financial integration. Second, we document the presence of large and systematic valuation effects in response to these shocks. Valuation effects overall tend to cushion the effect of oil demand and supply shocks on the NFA positions of oil exporters and oil importers. Third, we quantify the overall importance of global business cycle demand shocks as well as oil-market specific demand and supply shocks for external balances.     

Heterogeneous effects of competitiveness shocks on macroeconomic performance across euro area countries

This paper considers how competitiveness impacts macroeconomic performance in 11 euro area countries. VAR models are estimated for the individual countries using quarterly data from 1995Q4 to 2013Q4. Besides unit labour costs as a competitiveness measure, the models include GDP, the current account balance and domestic credit. The empirical analyses show that changes in unit labour costs help explain GDP dynamics in the short and medium term in most countries, whereas they have little explanatory power for the current account balance or domestic credit for most countries. Overall, the effects of the unit labour costs vary substantially across the countries in the euro area. The heterogeneity suggests that policy measures aiming to improve economic growth, correct current account imbalances and ensure financial stability need to take country‐specific features into account.     

Another Look at the Case for International Diversification

In an era of sluggish domestic growth, the business spotlight is once again turning to international diversification as a means to harness global growth opportunities and production efficiencies. However, the current empirical literature provides an inconsistent view of the effects of international diversification on business performance. We employ a panel-data analysis of the international revenues and assets of the 2011 Fortune Global 500 companies and examine their performance over the past 15 years. We find that the overall contribution of diversification to revenue growth, profitability and return on capital has been positive. However, the specific shape and timing of the impact can be complex. Accordingly, businesses need to be aware of the turning points for organizational gain as well as loss.     

The irrelevance of organisational boundaries of owner-managed firms

Empirical researchers and analysts of small or owner-managed businesses generally behave as if the selected organisational form and the consequent legal and accounting boundaries of owner-managed firms are meaningful. This paper discusses selected aspects of this notion, and provides some empirical evidence concerning loan securities, and treatments of debts and assets, which justify rejecting the relevance of the organisational types and implied boundaries in many contexts relating to owner-managed firms. These include analyses employing traditional accounting disclosures and studies that view the firm as defined by some formal organisational structure. Emphasis is on the treatment and effects of private debts and assets.     

浅析新会计准则下的投资收益

在我国的新会计准则中,投资收益包括长期股权投资收益和金融资产投资收益.新会计准则中引入了公允价值的计量属性,使投资收益核算方法有所改变,但没有改变投资收益的数额.在长期股权投资中,投资收益采用成本法和权益法核算.金融资产的投资收益核算,在持有期间公允价值变动并没有计入投资收益,而是分别计入了公允价值变动科目和资本公积科目,只有在处王时才将公允价值变动损益转入投资收益.投资收益科目体现了新会计准则的核心理念.     

账户余额试算平衡表的编制——科目汇总法

与传统的总账记录法不同,科目汇总法是一种利用科目汇总表数据进行试算平衡、相对独立于账簿体系之外的账户余额试算平衡表编制方法。其编制程序是根据企业档案管理要求或经营管理需求,设计每册会计凭证的起、止编号及其适当的科目汇总表工作底稿,逐笔登记每张记账凭证中的会计科目发生额、加计和调整以及结转相关科目的本期借贷发生额并进行余额的试算平衡。手工账下,基于有效履行受托责任和减少会计风险的考量,运用科目汇总法来编制账户余额试算平衡表应是一种必要的会计程序。     

Medium-term determinants of current accounts in industrial and developing countries: an empirical exploration

This paper provides an empirical investigation of the medium-term determinants of current accounts for a large sample of industrial and developing countries, utilizing an approach that highlights macroeconomic determinants of longer-term saving and investment balances. Cross-section and panel regression techniques are used to characterize the variation of the current account across countries and over time. We find that current account balances are positively correlated with government budget balances and initial stocks of net foreign assets. Among developing countries, measures of financial deepening are positively associated with current account balances while indicators of openness to international trade are negatively correlated with current account balances.     

Managers, investors, and crises: mutual fund strategies in emerging markets

We examine the trading strategies of mutual funds in emerging markets. We develop a method for disentangling the behavior of fund managers from that of underlying investors. For both managers and investors, we strongly reject the null hypothesis of no momentum trading: mutual funds systematically sell losers and buy winners. Selling current losers and buying current winners is stronger during crises, and equally strong for managers and investors. Selling past losers and buying past winners is stronger for managers. Managers and investors also practice contagion trading—they sell (buy) assets from one country when asset prices fall (rise) in another.     

Modeling strategic group dynamics: A hidden Markov approach

With competition playing a critical role in market-based strategic planning and implementation, identifying and understanding competiton and competitive dynamics has become critical. In this vein, the strategic groups perspective has emerged as a powerful means to understand such competitive phenomena. Empirical approaches to model competitive dynamics within the strategic groups framework, however, have been piece meal as researchers typically resort to distinct sequential analysis by time period. To overcome the limitations of these simplistic approaches, we develop a hidden Markov model to study strategic group (competitive) dynamics. In this approach, we explicitly account for competitive dynamics over time by modeling strategic group memberships as latent states that follow a first-order Markov process. Thus, we explictly model the notion that firms adopt their strategy for the next time period based on their current strategy and respective outcomes. We illustrate the model with longitudinal data from COMPUSTAT on 63 public banks from the tri-state region of NY-OH-PA. The results show the proposed model to be superior to a number of viable alternative approaches that have been suggested in the literature. We find the existence of three strategic groups: the leveraged group has low current assets compared to current liabilities, high debt to equity, and high total borrowing to assets. The lending group consists of the largest banks that focus on lending with high ratios of gross loans to securities and gross loans to deposits. The balanced group has the largest number of banks where the values of the financial and product ratios are intermediate compared to the leveraged and lending groups. The asymmetries in the switching probabilites are also evident as there seems to be a higher probability of switching into the balanced group than switching out of this group. The switching probabilites are symmetric between the the leveraged and lending groups.     

An empirical investigation of the pollution haven effect with strategic environment and trade policy

Using a new dataset on the stringency and enforcement of environmental policy, this study is the first to find robust confirmation of a pollution haven effect in a cross-country context by accounting for strategically determined environment, trade, and intellectual property right (IPR) policies. A simple game theoretic approach to policy determination is described which suggests an identification strategy based on other country characteristics. It is found that for the top 20th percentile of countries in terms of growth in U.S multinational affiliate value added, as much as 8.6% of that growth between 1999 and 2003 can be attributed to declining relative stringency and enforcement of environmental policy. The results are robust to a number of identification tests, weak IV tests, and third country spatial effects. Further, evidence is found that relatively ‘footloose’ industries are more likely to be affected by environmental policy than more traditionally ‘dirty’ industries and enforcement of environmental policies tends to be a more important deterrent than the stringency of the policy set.     

Quantitative implications of a debt-deflation theory of Sudden Stops and asset prices

This paper shows that the quantitative predictions of an equilibrium asset-pricing model with financial frictions are consistent with key features of the Sudden Stop phenomenon. Foreign traders incur costs in trading assets with domestic agents, and a collateral constraint limits external debt to a fraction of the market value of domestic equity holdings. When this constraint does not bind, standard productivity shocks cause typical real-business-cycle effects. When it binds, the same shocks cause strikingly different effects depending on the leverage ratio and asset market liquidity. With high leverage and a liquid market, the shocks force “fire sales” of assets and Fisher's debt-deflation mechanism amplifies the responses of asset prices, consumption and the current account. Precautionary saving makes these Sudden Stops infrequent in the long run.     

Surges

This paper examines when and why capital sometimes surges to emerging market economies (EMEs). Using data on net capital flows for 56 EMEs over 1980−2011, we find that global factors, including US interest rates and investor risk aversion act as “gatekeepers” that determine when surges of capital to EMEs will occur. Whether a particular EME receives a surge, and the magnitude of that surge, however, depends largely on domestic factors such as its external financing need, capital account openness, and exchange rate regime. Differentiating between surges driven by exceptional behavior of asset flows (repatriation of foreign assets by domestic residents) from those driven by exceptional behavior of liability flows (nonresident investments into the country), shows the latter to be relatively more sensitive to global factors and contagion.     

Habit formation and the present-value model of the current account: Yet another suspect

In a recent paper, Gruber (Gruber, J.W., 2004. A present value test of habits and the current account. Journal of Monetary Economics 51, 1495-1507) claims that habit formation in consumption plays an important role in current account fluctuations in selected developed countries, extending the present-value model of the current account (PVM) with consumption habits. In this paper, however, I show that the habit-forming PVM is observationally equivalent to the PVM augmented with persistent transitory consumption, which is induced by world real interest rate shocks. Based on a small open-economy real business cycle (SOE-RBC) model endowed with consumption habits as well as persistent world real interest rate shocks, this paper resolves the inherent identification problem of the habit-forming PVM by Bayesian methods to seek effects of habit formation on current account fluctuations in typical small open economies, Canada and the United Kingdom. Results reveal no clear evidence that habit formation plays a crucial role in current account fluctuations.     

Current account sustainability in advanced economies

This paper investigates the sustainability of current accounts in advanced economies using a panel of 27 countries and annual data over the 1980–2008 period. Relying on various panel unit root tests and a sequential panel selection method, we find strong evidence in favour of nonlinear but stationary current account trajectories only for 7 countries, while the remaining 20 appear to be non-stationary and thus unsustainable. Our analysis indicates that careful empirical modelling of current account dynamics, particularly in relation to cross-section dependence and nonlinear behaviour, is crucial for appropriate economic policy-making.     

Anmerkungen zu „Irrungen und Wirrungen mit der Leistungsbilanzstatistik“ von Georg Erber

Priewe rejects several propositions: The current account balance is not a sound indicator of the competitiveness of an economy, the direct use of gross capital inflows is not pre-determined by anyone other than foreign investors, capital flows do not determine the current account balance, bilateral capital flows between member countries of the eurozone are not relevant for the balance of payment, and absolving the surplus countries and solely blaming the deficit countries for improper use of capital inflows obfuscates the fact that both surplus and deficit countries are involved in the making of imbalances. In his reply, Erber stresses that the intention of his article was to point out that the empirical facts blaming Germany for being responsible for the current eurozone crisis are not supported by the data. Furthermore, current accounts are mere accounting identities. Therefore, focussing on the current accounts alone is insufficient for identifying the causes of the euro crisis.     

In search of WTO trade effects: Preferential trade agreements promote trade strongly, but unevenly

The literature measuring the effects of WTO membership on trade flows has produced remarkably diverse results. Rose (2004) reports a wide range of empirical specifications that produce no WTO effects. Tomz et al. (2007) use Rose's data but include de facto WTO membership, to find positive WTO trade effects. Rose (2005) also produced positive WTO trade effects after accounting for the diverse trade effects produced by individual preferential trade agreements (PTAs). When Subramanian and Wei (2007) emphasize general equilibrium trade effects by controlling for multilateral resistance, they find strong WTO trade effects only for industrialized countries. Subramanian and Wei (2007), however, account neither for unobserved heterogeneity among trading partners, nor for differences in trade effects across PTAs (which could inflate WTO estimates). We unify the Rose, Tomz et al., and Subramanian and Wei specifications in one comprehensive approach that minimizes omitted variable bias to show that all specifications produce one consistent result: WTO effects on trade flows are not statistically significant, while PTAs produce strong but uneven trade effects. Extending the gravity model to address specific avenues in which WTO may have affected trade flows, we find that WTO membership boosts trade prior to PTA formation and increases trade among proximate developing countries (at the expense of distant trade). An augmented gravity model that accounts for WTO terms-of-trade theory shows that countries with greater incentives to bargain for tariff reductions before WTO accession experience positive and significant subsequent WTO trade effects.