US economic policy uncertainty and co-movements between Chinese and US stock markets

This paper investigates the impact of innovations in US economic policy uncertainty on the co-movements of China's A/B stock markets with the US stock market. We show that it is the absolute changes in the US economic policy uncertainty index that have a negative impact on the co-movements. The finding is robust to the asymmetric effects of non-policy-uncertainty shocks, to a break in the correlation structure, and to the four Chinese A/B stock markets investigated. Our results provide the first evidence regarding how stock market correlations are driven by policy-related uncertainty shocks in the international context.     

Financial Deregulation and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism

Major changes to the Australian financial system in the 1980s may possibly have influenced the effects of monetary policy on economic activity. Using vector autoregressive econometric techniques we find that the deregulation of the financial system has made very little difference to the reduced form relationships among interest rates, employment growth, inflation and the growth rate of real credit. We find that interest rates are an important determinant of the business cycle, with credit being much less significant. We also find that monetary policy reacts to unexpected movements in real variables but does not react to surprises in the inflation rate.     

Are fundamentals still relevant for European economies in the post-Euro period?

A structural VAR model, with stock prices, real economic activity, a short-term interest rate and inflation, was applied to four European countries to investigate whether economic fundamentals play an important role in their national stock markets. The analysis considers the pre- and post-Euro introduction periods. In general, the results suggest a breakdown in the relationship between real economic activity and real stock returns during the post-Euro period. Second, impulse response analyses reveal that (shocks by) fundamental variables still influence somewhat real stock returns for some countries but the extent and nature of their impact differ among countries in the post-Euro period. Finally, an examination of equity risk premiums corroborates the above findings and, overall, they may be interpreted as the equity markets having a mind of their own, disconnected from the fundamentals and that they are significantly affected by foreign rather than country-specific forces.     

Virtual integration of financial markets: a dynamic correlation analysis of the creation of the Latin American Integrated Market

This article investigates the role of virtual integration of financial markets on stock market return co-movements. In May of 2011, the Chilean, Colombian and Peruvian stock markets virtually integrated their stock exchanges and central securities depositories to form the Latin American Integrated Market (MILA). We utilize the dynamic conditional correlation model proposed by Engle (2002) to identify a statistically significant positive correlation between these markets. Moreover, we find strong evidence that the creation of the MILA increased the levels of dynamic correlation between stock returns. A higher correlation was also found during the dot-com bubble and the 2007 financial crises. Our results imply a decline in gains from international diversification by holding portfolios consisting of diverse stocks of these countries.     

An empirical evaluation of China’s monetary policies

This paper investigates the responsiveness of the Chinese government’s monetary policies in terms of the money supply and interest rates to economic conditions and the effectiveness of these policies in achieving the goals of stimulating economic growth and controlling inflation. We analyze the responsiveness and effectiveness by estimating the Taylor rule, the McCallum rule, and a vector autoregressive model using quarterly data in the period of 1992-2009. The results show that, overall, the monetary policy variables respond to economic growth and the inflation rate, but the magnitudes of the responses are much weaker than those observed in market economies. Money supply responded actively to both the inflation rate and the real output and had certain effects on the future inflation rates and real output. The official interest rates, on the other hand, responded passively to the inflation rate and did not respond to the real output. They do not have any effect on future inflation rates and real output either.     

Determinants of private savings behaviour in Turkey

This study investigates the effects on private saving rates of a number of policy and non-policy variables. The analysis covers the period 1968–1994. The empirical private saving model for Turkey is estimated. The findings support the hypothesis that private saving rates have strong inertia. The evidence indicates that government saving does not tend to crowd out private savings and the Ricardian equivalence does not hold strictly. Income level has a positive impact on private saving rate, and growth rate of income is not statistically significant. From a policy point of view, financial depth and development measures in Turkey suggest that countries with deeper financial systems tend to have higher private saving rates. Private credit and real interest rates try to capture the severity of the borrowing constraints and the degree of financial repression for Turkey. Moreover, the negative impact of life expectancy rate lends support to the life-cycle hypothesis. The precautionary motive for saving is supported by the findings that inflation captures the degree of macroeconomic volatility and has a positive impact on private saving in Turkey.     

ASIAN FINANCIAL LINKAGE: MACRO‐FINANCE DISSONANCE

How are Asian financial markets interlinked and how are they linked to markets in developed countries? What is the main driver of fluctuations in Asian financial markets as well as real economic activity? To answer these questions, we estimate the spillover index proposed by Diebold and Yilmaz and gauge the degree of interaction in both financial markets and real economic activity among Asian economies. We first show that the degree of the international spillover in stock markets is uniform, irrespective of the groups of countries concerned, such as the G3 and ASEAN4. This suggests the importance of global common shocks in stock markets. We then discuss the macro‐finance dissonance. In stock and bond markets, the United States has been the main driver of fluctuations. However, China has emerged as an important source of fluctuations in real economic activity.     

金融资产是否具有通胀对冲功能——基于费雪假说的理论与实证述评

介绍国际上股票、商品和黄金等金融资产收益与通货膨胀之间费雪关系的研究经验。一般来说,在长期,股票、商品和黄金收益与通货膨胀正相关,纯粹的货币增长不会侵蚀股票等金融资产实际价值。然而在短期(1年以内),问题则变得非常难解,实证结果往往取决于数据集的特征,比如通胀的度量、时间序列的频度、不同的国家以及使用何种计量方法。     

International stock markets comovements: the role of economic and financial integration

The contribution of economic and financial integration to international stock markets comovements are investigated by means of a large scale macroeconometric model, set in the factor vector autoregressive framework (F-VAR). The findings point to a relevant role for both economic and financial integration in explaining international stock markets comovements for the G-7 countries. While economic integration would exercise its effects through the common response of stock markets to global economic shocks, financial integration would operate through financial shocks spillovers, particularly at the regional level.      

Liquidity risk, economic development, and the effects of monetary policy

Empirical evidence indicates that monetary policy is not super-neutral in many countries. In particular, in high inflation economies, inflation is negatively related to economic activity. By comparison, inflation may be positively correlated with output in low inflation countries. We present a neoclassical growth model with money in which the incidence of liquidity risk is inversely related to aggregate capital formation. Interestingly, there may be multiple monetary steady-states where the effects of monetary policy vary. In poor economies, the financial system is highly distorted and higher rates of money growth are associated with less capital formation. In contrast, in advanced economies, a Tobin effect is observed. Since inflation exacerbates distortions from a coordination failure in the low-capital steady-state, individuals become much more exposed to liquidity risk. Consequently, optimal monetary policy depends on the level of development.     

Performance of inflation targeting in retrospect

Both inflation and inflation expectations declined considerably in the inflation targeting countries during the past two decades. The questions of whether this decline has actually been an outcome of inflation targeting solely and whether inflation targeting has been successful in stabilizing other macroeconomic variables though remain. This study considers these questions on the basis of 16 inflation targeting countries and 21 non-targeting ones using a difference-in-difference approach. With regard to the baseline period of 1996–1999 during which neither of the groups was implementing inflation targeting, a difference-in-difference approach was employed to assess the effects of inflation targeting on inflation, output growth, real exchange rates, inflation volatility and real exchange rate volatility during moving 4-year periods between 2007 and 2015. Our estimates suggest that inflation targeting was superior in terms of harnessing inflation as well as inflation volatility. In terms of economic growth, however, inflation targeting seems to be neutral and in terms of real exchange rates it seems not to be stabilizing, if not de-stabilizing. A hybrid version of inflation targeting, namely the conventional inflation targeting augmented by an improved capacity to deliver macro-prudence as in the post-Lehman economic climate, can therefore be viewed as the best available policy alternative for the upcoming decades.     

Predicting long-run risk factors of stock returns: Evidence from Australia

This study utilises the stock market data provided by the Australian Equity Database to analyse the long-run relationship between Australian stock returns and key macroeconomic variables over the period 1926–2017. To measure the diverse risk factors in the stock market, we examine the possible determinants in four main categories: real, financial, domestic and international. Our results reveal that historical stock returns are strongly connected to financial and international factors as compared to real and domestic factors. Both the 1973–1974 OPEC Oil Price Crisis and 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis had dampening effects on stock returns. There is a positive association between the US and Australian stock markets in the long-run. These findings on stock market dynamics and their linkages with domestic and international macroeconomic policy changes in the long-run have important implications for traders and practitioners.     

Economic development and inflation: a theoretical and empirical analysis

This paper studies the relation between inflation and economic development. The literature is largely silent regarding both the theoretical and empirical perspectives that undeveloped countries endure higher average inflation than developed economies. We present a simple theoretical model linking the inflation phenomenon to the tradition of development economics. Empirical evidence is garnered to test the hypothesis that economic development engenders a downward bias to inflation rates. Through the feasible-GLS estimator in a panel of 65 countries from 2001 to 2011, we aim at listing a number of variables most commonly used to explain differences in the stage of economic development across countries and identifying the most statistically relevant ones to account for differences in inflationary patterns. While our results show that inflation is inversely correlated with the level of the technological content of the economy (measured by share of high-tech exports), human capital and cyclical unemployment, it is directly related to the degree of inflation persistence and terms of trade growth. However, our findings still present an inverse and low correlation between inflation persistence and economic development, implying that development-sensitive variables allowed into the model can only partially account for the differences in inflation at different levels of economic development.     

Financial stress,economic activity and monetary policy in the ASEAN-5 economies

This article uses a structural vector autoregression approach to analyse the impact of financial stress on the economy and the relationship between monetary policy and financial stress in the ASEAN-5 economies (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). We find that an increase in financial stress leads to tighter credit conditions and lower economic activity in all five countries. The estimated impact on the real economy displays an initial rapid decline followed by a gradual dissipation. In Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand, the central banks tend to reduce policy interest rates (IRs) when financial stress increases, although there is substantial cross-country variation in the magnitude and time dynamics. The lower policy IRs are found to have little significant effects in lowering financial stress, but are still effective in stimulating economic activity through other channels. These findings imply that easing monetary policy is likely necessary but insufficient to address growth slowdowns associated with financial stress. Monetary easing should instead be complemented with other policy measures which are targeted at restoring financial stress to normal levels.     

Time–frequency relationship between US output with commodity and asset prices

Commodity and asset prices have a well-documented effect on economic growth as manifested through various channels. At the same time, the business cycle influences the commodity and asset prices. Whereas empirical evidence on the effect of commodity and asset prices on the long-run economic growth is ambiguous, most of the previous researches highlight a positive correlation in the short run. The aim of this article is to disentangle the short- and long-run co-movements between US historical business cycles and commodity and asset prices over the period 1859–2013. For this purpose, we use a time–frequency approach and we test the historical influence of oil, gold, housing and stock prices over the output growth. In contrast to other studies, we control for the effect of other prices and monetary conditions, using the wavelet partial coherency. In line with the previous works, we discover that co-movements between economic growth and commodity and assets prices manifest especially in the short run. We also find that stock returns and housing prices have a more powerful effect on the US economic growth rate than the oil and gold prices. The long-run co-movements are documented especially around the World War II. Finally, when controlling for the influence of the interest rate, inflation and other commodity and asset prices, co-movements become weaker in the short run. In general, the oil and housing prices lead the GDP growth, the US output leads the gold prices, while there is no clear causality direction between business cycle and stock prices.     

Anticipated and unanticipated money: a case study of Malaysia

The paper tests the LSW proposition that unanticipated policy changes affect real economic variables by using Malaysian data over the period 1970:1–1990:4. The empirical evidence changes in fiscal policy and balance of payments do not affect real output, thus lending support to the proposition. On the other hand, anticipated monetary policy and inflation influence output in the short-run, lending support to Mishkin's views of the economy and rejecting the LSW proposition. In addition, the long-run neutrality proposition is not supported by the data. Moreover, unanticipated changes in inflation do influence real output in the short-run lending support to the LSW proposition. However, unanticipated changes in monetary policy, balance of payments and fiscal policy do not influence real output, lending support to the classical view of the economy and rejecting the LSW proposition. Furthermore, the Monetarist's view that inflation is a monetary phenomenon is rejected. The findings also show that unanticipated movements of money supply contribute significantly to the inflation rate. The Chow test shows that the coefficients remain stable over the period of study.     

我国资产价格波动与货币政策关系研究

随着金融自由化的逐步推进,资本市场存量日益增大.这既体现了金融深化程度的提高,又意味着货币供应与国民经济主要指标之间稳定性的弱化.资产价格对货币政策的制订和执行会产生深刻的影响.其中股价、房价等资产价格在货币政策传导机制中扮演的角色越来越重要.本文从实证角度出发,通过构建VAR模型检验我国资产价格对货币政策的反应以及资产价格对货币政策目标的影响,发现资产价格、货币政策及货币政策目标间存在长期协整关系,资产价格对产出有正向冲击作用,股市显著影响通货膨胀,但房地产市场对通货膨胀推动作用不明显,资产价格受货币政策的冲击影响显著,其中股市对货币政策冲击的反应明显大于房地产市场.     

Financial variables and euro area growth: A non-parametric causality analysis

This paper investigates the predictive ability of financial variables for euro area growth through bivariate and multivariate non-parametric Granger causality tests. Apart from assessing the within-country forecasting ability of commonly-employed financial variables, such as the term spread, the stock market returns and the growth of real money supply, we also test for cross-country influences. In this way, we reveal the countries that are more useful in predicting growth in other member countries along with the ones that are more receptive to other countries' financial developments. Our results suggest that financial variables are useful leading indicators for euro area growth at a joint level, albeit at different horizons, ranging from one to six quarters. Our finding of overall increased levels of receptivity among member states provides useful information for policy makers, especially in the case of monetary union such as the euro area.     

The relationship between South Asian stock returns and macroeconomic variables

This article investigates whether economic variables have explanatory power for share returns in South Asian stock markets. In particular, using data for four South Asian emerging stock markets over the period 1998–2012, the article examines the influence of a selection of local, regional and global economic variables in explaining equity returns; most previous studies that have examined this issue have tended to focus on only local and/or global factors. Important factors are identified by distilling the macroeconomic variables into principal components. Economic activities, real interest rates, real exchange rates and the trade balance represent local factors. Regional factors are represented by interregional trade and regional economic activity while global factors are represented by world financial asset returns and world economic activity. The vector autoregression results suggest that the South Asian markets examined are not efficient. Both local and regional factors can directly and indirectly explain Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Sri Lankan stock returns while the lagged returns of the Pakistani stock market and world economic activity can explain Indian stock returns.     

Finance–Growth Nexus and the P‐bias: Evidence from OECD Countries

Recent studies provide new empirical evidence confirming that financial development is linked to economic growth in OECD countries. Using new dynamic panel regression techniques, these appraisals indicate that within the group of high‐income countries stock market size as a measure of financial advancement contributes significantly to overall economic activity. Applying the same advanced techniques, this paper questions this conclusion by showing that the findings of these studies seem to be not only not robust with respect to adding new observations but also likely to be plagued by a severe price bias which belittles the information content of the used financial indicator (stock market capitalization). We provide evidence that anticipative price effects (i.e. expectations of future growth, reflected in current stock prices) may be driving the statistical relationship between stock market activities and economic growth in high‐income countries to a much larger extent than recent analyses of the finance– growth link in OECD countries suggest .