Money and exchange rates in the Grossman-Weiss-Rotemberg model

We analyze the impact of monetary policy on inflation, interest rates and exchange rates in a model with segmented asset markets developed by Grossman and Weiss (1983) and Rotemberg (1984, 1985). We find parameters for which real and nominal exchange rates in this model are (1) much more volatile than interest rates, inflation rates, and money growth rates, (2) highly correlated with each other, and (3) highly persistent. While this model fails to match the data in other important respects, it illustrates a potentially useful approach to modelling exchange rate behavior.     

Banking market conditions and deposit interest rates

This paper shows that the impact of market structure on bank deposit interest rates is complex. Both market size structure and multimarket bank presence have independent effects on rates. There is evidence that mid-size banks were more aggressive competitors than other banks, but that the effect of market structure on deposit rates has evolved over time, with mega-banks recently becoming more aggressive competitors. This may be related to the growth of mega-banks in many markets. These findings have implications for existing theories of deposit pricing and, by extension, antitrust policy in banking.     

Uncovered interest parity, monetary policy and time-varying risk premia

In a recent paper, McCallum argued that monetary-policy behavior can be responsible for the apparent empirical failure of uncovered interest parity (UIP). The present paper investigates whether optimizing policy behavior can account for the observed regime-dependence of UIP evidence. The main result is that the tradeoff between interest-rate and exchange-rate stability is a potential candidate for the explanation of the apparent failure of UIP and that the consideration of policy reactions can explain why deviations from UIP differ systematically by the exchange-rate regime.     

Sterilization of short-term capital inflows—through lower interest rates?

Reductions in international interest rates are a major cause of capital flows to emerging economies. Increases in domestic interest rates are a frequent policy response to the resulting price increases. This is often unsuccessful. The paper suggests a theoretical explanation based on distinctive features of emerging financial markets, including imperfect asset substitutability and imperfect capital mobility for some sectors of the economy. It concludes that the appropriate policy response to capital inflows may be lower interest rates.     

International interest rates and US monetary policy announcements: Evidence from Hong Kong and Singapore

This paper investigates the responses of market interest rates to US monetary policy announcements for the US and two emerging economies, Hong Kong and Singapore which are similar on many respects but have experienced opposite exchange rate regimes in the last twenty years. Our results, based on market expectations extracted from federal fund futures rates, document that FOMC announcements significantly affect the term structure of interest rate in the US and both Asian countries. Further, international interest rate differentials around FOMC meeting dates tend to be negative for short maturities with the impact gradually dissipating as bond maturity increases. Finally, for the case of Singapore, we find that domestic interest rates react to both external and domestic monetary policy announcements with a magnitude that is larger over the full bond maturity spectrum for domestic announcements. These results are robust to time-varying futures risk premia and alternative measures of interest rates expectations.     

Banking and interest rates in monetary policy analysis: A quantitative exploration

The paper reconsiders the role of money and banking in monetary policy analysis by including a banking sector and money in an optimizing model otherwise of a standard type. The model is implemented quantitatively, with a calibration based on US data. It is reasonably successful in providing an endogenous explanation for substantial steady-state differentials between the interbank policy rate and (i) the collateralized loan rate, (ii) the uncollateralized loan rate, (iii) the T-bill rate, (iv) the net marginal product of capital, and (v) a pure intertemporal rate. We find a differential of over 3% p.a. between (iii) and (iv), thereby contributing to resolution of the equity premium puzzle. Dynamic impulse response functions imply pro- or counter-cyclical movements in an external finance premium that can be of quantitative significance. In addition, they suggest that a central bank that fails to recognize the distinction between interbank and other short rates could miss its appropriate settings by as much as 4% p.a. Also, shocks to banking productivity or collateral effectiveness call for large responses in the policy rate.     

流动性导流——中国货币需求及现阶段流动性过剩问题研究

近年来,流动性过剩成为了我国宏观经济的要害性问题.所谓"流动性导流",就是将目前过剩的流动性通过若干可能的渠道疏导到实体经济之外,使之基本不对实体经济产生负面影响.我国流动性过剩是由外向型经济结构引起的外汇过多流人造成的,在经济结构短期内难以根本改变且人民币升值预期难以根本逆转的情况下,只能从疏导过多流动性的角度来寻找防治通胀之道.具体的疏导渠道包括将一部分流动性导向境外和在境内扩大虚拟经济以吸收一部分流动性.后者是解决当前通胀压力和股市扩容压力的一箭双雕之策,也是本文的新观点所在.     

Liquidity,assets and business cycles

The objective here is to evaluate the quantitative importance of financial frictions in business cycles. The analysis shows that a negative financial shock can cause aggregate investment, employment and consumption to fall with output. Despite this realistic comovement among macro quantities, a negative financial shock generates an equity price boom as the shock tightens firms׳ financing constraint. This counterfactual response of the equity price is robust to a wide range of variations in how financial frictions are modeled and whether financial shocks affect asset liquidity or firms׳ collateral constraints. Some possible resolutions to this puzzle are discussed.     

Liquidity risk and policy options

On the basis of a liquidity management model, liquidity risks, defined as the probability of payment failures in a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) payment system, may either stem from liquidity management inefficiencies or insufficient cash balances. I will show that penalties charged on the amount of payment failures minimise liquidity risks without interfering with the bank’s technology preferences. I will instead show that liquidity requirements, although as effective as penalties to contain the risk of liquidity shortage, may distort the bank’s technology preferences and cannot stem liquidity management inefficiencies. I will also show that liquidity risks within RTGS payment systems are potentially smaller because they depend more on the liquidity management efficiency than on the randomness of cash inflows and outflows.     

流动性过剩的机理分析

流动性过剩是世界经济发展中出现的一个新问题。但流动性是什么,流动性过剩指的又是什么,国内外的学者们都有不同见解。既然流动性过剩一词是作为对世界经济运行状态的表述,则其合理的内核应该是一致的。只有弄清什么是流动性、什么是流动性过剩,我们才能对流动性过剩问题做更进一步的研究。本文以凯恩斯对流动性的理解为基础,构建了一个流动性过剩的理论框架,提出了流动性过剩的判断标准及其存在的前提条件,以此为流动性过剩的深入研究做一些有益的探讨。     

Liquidity provision during the crisis of 1914: Private and public sources

Caught between the end of the National Banking Era and the beginning of the Federal Reserve System, the crisis of 1914 provides an example of a banking panic avoided. We investigate how this outcome was achieved by examining data on the issues of Aldrich-Vreeland emergency currency and clearing house loan certificates to New York City institutions that identify the borrower and the quantity requested for each type of temporary liquidity measure. The extensive provision of temporary credit to a wide array of financial intermediaries was, in our opinion, essential to the successful alleviation of financial distress in 1914. Empirical results indicate an important role for clearing house loan certificates that is distinct from the influence of Aldrich-Vreeland emergency currency issues.     

Liquidity and market incompleteness

This note shows that according to Lippman and McCall’s (Am Econ Rev 76, 43–55, 1986) operational definition of liquidity, incomplete markets are a necessary condition for illiquidity. This note is a revised subset of a larger paper that circulated under the name of “Liquidity as an Insurance Problem” (Zurita 2001). I am grateful to Luis Ahumada, David K. Levine, Raimundo Soto, Gert Wagner, Federico Weinschelbaum and seminar participants at UCLA, Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society, Banco Central de Chile, LACEA, Jornadas de Economía del Banco Central del Uruguay, and ILADES, for their helpful comments, as well as the feedback of an anonymous referee. Financial support from Vicerrectoría Académica de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile is gratefully acknowledged.     

Deposit interest rates, asset risk and bank failure in Croatia

Financial deregulation, while beneficial in the long-term, seems to be linked to instability. Intense competition for deposits appears to be an ingredient in instability. We examine the aftermath of deregulation in Croatia, which included rapid growth of both deposits and deposit interest rates, followed by numerous bank failures.

Using panel regression techniques, we find evidence of “market-stealing” via high deposit interest rates. We connect high deposit interest rates to bank failure using logit models. High deposit interest rates were a reliable signal of risk-taking. When supervisory capabilities and powers are weak, deposit interest rate regulation may be worth considering.     

Continuous time and nonparametric modelling of U.S. interest rate models

In this paper we compare the forecasting performance of different models of interest rates using parametric and nonparametric estimation methods. In particular, we use three popular nonparametric methods, namely, artificial neural networks (ANN), k-nearest neighbour (k-NN), and local linear regression (LL). These are compared with forecasts obtained from two-factor continuous time interest rate models, namely, Chan, Karolyi, Longstaff, and Sanders [CKLS, J. Finance 47 (1992) 1209]; Cos, Ingersoll, and Ross [CIR, Econometrica 53 (1985) 385]; Brennan and Schwartz [BR-SC, J. Financ. Quant. Anal. 15 (1980) 907]; and Vasicek [J. Financ. Econ. 5 (1977) 177]. We find that while the parametric continuous time method, specifically Vasicek, produces the most successful forecasts, the nonparametric k-NN performed well.     

Liquidity and capital structure

We examine the relation between equity market liquidity and capital structure. We find that firms with more liquid equity have lower leverage and prefer equity financing when raising capital. For example, after sorting firms into size quintiles and then into liquidity quintiles, the average debt-to-asset ratio of the most liquid quintiles is about 38% while the average for the least liquid quintiles is 55%. Similar results are observed in panel analyses with clustered errors and using instrumental variables. Our results are consistent with equity market liquidity lowering the cost of equity and, therefore, inducing a greater reliance on equity financing.     

Implied volatilities,stochastic interest rates,and currency futures options valuation: an empirical investigation

Different models of pricing currency call and put options on futures are empirically tested. Option prices are determined using different models and compared to actual market prices. Option prices are determined using historical as well as implied volatility. The different models tested include both constant and stochastic interest rate models. To determine if the model prices are different from the market prices, regression analysis and paired t-tests are performed. To see which model misprices the least, root mean square errors are determined. It is found that better results are obtained when implied volatility is used. Stochastic interest rate models perform better than constant interest rate models.     

Combining forecasts: some results on exchange and interest rates

The aim of this work is to investigate whether the combination of forecasts plays an important role in the improvement of forecast accuracy Particular attention is paid to: (a) the methods of forecasting (the methods compared are neural networks, fuzzy logic, GARCH models, switching regime and chaotic dynamics); (b) combining the forecasts provided by the different methods. This work has also the aim of revising a short-term econometric forecast using a longer-term forecast. The revision process usually runs the opposite way (revision is made on a longer-term forecast using a short-term one to reflect the current available information, but it is not excluded that it is possible to proceed as described above. Daily data from the financial market is used. Some empirical applications on exchange and interest rates are given.     

Liquidity risk and syndicate structure

We decompose syndicated loan risk into credit, market, and liquidity risk and test how these shape syndicate structure. Commercial banks dominate relative to non-banks in loan syndicates that expose lenders to liquidity risk. This dominance is most pronounced when borrowers have high levels of credit or market risk. We then tie commercial banks’ advantage in liquidity risk to access to transactions deposits by comparing investments across banks. The results suggest that risk-management considerations matter most for participants relative to lead arrangers. Links from transactions deposits to liquidity exposure, for instance, are more than 50% larger at participants than at lead arrangers.