Oil price shocks on Indian economy: evidence from Toda Yamamoto and Markov regime-switching VAR

The study investigates the dynamic impact of linear and non-linear specifications of oil price shocks on macroeconomic fundamentals for an oil-importing emerging economy – India – during the period March 1991 to January 2009. The paper deploys extended vector autoregressive (VAR) model of possibly integrated processes proposed by Toda and Yamamoto, which has its advantage of application irrespective of the variables being stationary or cointegrated. The study further estimates two-state Markov regime-switch VAR model to examine regime shift behaviour of the underlying variables and its relationship. The study finds that inflation and foreign exchange reserve are greatly impacted by oil price shocks. The study also confirms that the movement in oil price is exogenous with respect to the movement of India’s macroeconomic variables and the impact of oil price shocks are asymmetric in nature with negative price shocks having more pronounced effect than positive shocks.     

汇率价格传递效应理论的发展

传统的汇率价格传递效应理论是建立在一价定律基础上的,认为汇率变动会对进出口价格产生完全的传递效应。但是,大量的实证研究表明,汇率变动引致的进出口价格相应的变动往往是不完全的。关于汇率变动对进出口价格的不完全传递效应,多数学者从微观经济学的视角展开研究,如不完全竞争、价格歧视、沉淀成本、厂商定价策略等;近年来也有一些学者试图从宏观经济学的视角进行解释,如一国通货膨胀环境、货币政策稳定性等。     

Declining Effects of Oil Price Shocks

In recent years, output responses to oil price shocks have not only been weaker, but have also reached their trough earlier. This paper builds a model that incorporates a realistic structure of U.S. petroleum consumption and explores three possible explanations for the changes. The possible factors considered are (i) deregulation in the transportation industry, (ii) improved energy efficiency, and (iii) a lower degree of persistence of oil price shocks. Under realistic parameter values, the three factors play an important role quantitatively, accounting for half of the reduction in the largest impact on output of an oil price shock over time.     

人民币汇率及其对日本美国进口价格的传递效应

本文估计了人民币汇率变化对美国和日本从中国进口商品价格的传递效应。实证结果表明,人民币名义升值1%,将导致美国的进口价格短期上涨0.23%,长期上涨0.47%。日本从中国的进口价格对人民币和日元双边汇率的变化更为敏感。如果人民币兑日元名义汇率上升1%,日本的进口价格短期提高0.55%,长期则提高0.99%,具有完全的传递效应。这种高传递效应在食品、原材料、服装、制造和机械等不同类别的进口商品中也存在。但是,进一步分析表明:日本的高传递效应主要归因于中国钉住美元的汇率政策,而美元是中国对日本出口贸易的主要计价货币。在控制了计价货币因素后,自2005年7月以来人民币的累计升值并未传递到日本的总体进口价格或分类商品进口价格上。人民币汇率的这种低传递效应表明,人民币适度升值对中国的贸易顺差影响甚微。     

Exchange Rate Pass-Through in an Emerging Market: The Case of the Czech Republic

We examine exchange rate pass-through, or how domestic prices respond to exchange rate shocks, in the Czech Republic from 1998 to 2013 by employing vector autoregression models. Using the aggregate consumer price index and its subcomponents, we find that the peak response occurs between nine and thirteen months after the exchange rate shock. The average pass-through at the monetary policy horizon is approximately 20 percent at the aggregate level. Regarding the subcomponents, the degree of pass-through is greatest for food prices.     

The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks under Measurement Error: A Proxy SVAR Approach

A growing literature considers the impact of uncertainty using SVAR models that include proxies for uncertainty shocks as endogenous variables. In this paper, we consider the impact of measurement error in these proxies on the estimated impulse responses. We show via a Monte Carlo experiment that measurement error can result in attenuation bias in impulse responses. In contrast, the proxy SVAR that uses the uncertainty shock proxy as an instrument does not suffer from this bias. Applying this latter method to the Bloom (2009) data set results in impulse responses to uncertainty shocks that are larger in magnitude and more persistent than those obtained from a recursive SVAR.     

国际原油价格波动对中国物价水平的影响

本文在多变量VAR模型的基础上,分别采用协整检验、脉冲响应和方差分解方法分析了国际原油价格对中国物价水平的影响.结果显示：国际石油价格冲击对中国物价水平的影响是显著的,对中国生产者物价水平的影响速度大于对消费者物价水平的影响,对中国生产者物价水平的影响程度大于对消费者物价水平的影响.     

Menu costs and Markov inflation: A theoretical revision with new evidence

We revisit a foundational theoretical paper in the menu-cost literature, Sheshinski and Weiss [1983. Optimum pricing policy under stochastic inflation. Review of Economic Studies 50(3), 513-529], one of the few to treat stochastic inflation with persistent deviations from trend. In contrast to the original finding, we show that optimal pricing in this environment entails using different (s,S) bands in high-inflation and low-inflation states of the world. The low-inflation band is strictly contained within the high-inflation band. This revised solution has very different implications from the original one. Firms are generally risk loving, not risk averse, with respect to inflation. An increase in the variance of inflation increases price dispersion when inflation is high and decreases price dispersion when inflation is low. On an aggregate level, this optimal pricing would lead to bunching of prices and non-neutrality of money in the setting of Caplin and Spulber [1987. Menu costs and the neutrality of money. Quarterly Journal of Economics 102(4), 703-725]. To test the main finding, we construct an establishment-level dataset from the months surrounding Mexico's “tequila crisis” in 1995. In the high-inflation state, price increases are larger and establishments allow their prices to vary more widely around their respective long-run mean relative prices. Cross-establishment price dispersion is lower, but this result seems due to decreased establishment heterogeneity rather than narrower (s,S) bands. Overall, the evidence suggests that establishments employ wider (s,S) bands in the high-inflation state.     

Determinants of House Prices: A Quantile Regression Approach

OLS regression has typically been used in housing research to determine the relationship of a particular housing characteristic with selling price. Results differ across studies, not only in terms of size of OLS coefficients and statistical significance, but sometimes in direction of effect. This study suggests that some of the observed variation in the estimated prices of housing characteristics may reflect the fact that characteristics are not priced the same across a given distribution of house prices. To examine this issue, this study uses quantile regression, with and without accounting for spatial autocorrecation, to identify the coefficients of a large set of diverse variables across different quantiles. The results show that purchasers of higher-priced homes value certain housing characteristics such as square footage and the number of bathrooms differently from buyers of lower-priced homes. Other variables such as age are also shown to vary across the distribution of house prices.

Foreign Property Shocks and the Impact on Domestic Securitized Real Estate Markets: An Unobserved Components Approach

As the globalization of world financial markets continues unabated the issue of benefits arising from international diversification becomes increasingly important. Due to the fixed geographical nature of the underlying product, securitized property might be considered immune from the effects of globalization, and to this extent researchers have considered the issue of international property market interdependence using a variety of statistical procedures. In this paper the question of interdependence across securitized property markets is examined by combining the Inoue (1999) cointegration methodology with the structural time series procedure of Harvey (1989). In the event of commonality of movement across property markets, this approach permits the researcher to isolate and visualize common movement, an operation that may be helpful to a portfolio manager trying to understand cross market activity. The results indicate that there is some unifying force across international property markets and that this unifying force may stem from the United States. The results also suggest that, at least to some extent, shocks to securitized property markets produce a similar response to stock market shocks.     

Monetary Pressures and Inflation Dynamics in Turkey: Evidence from P-Star Model

This paper uses the P-star model to explain inflation dynamics in Turkey. In P-star models, money determines the price gap, which is postulated to measure the pressure on prices in an economy. This pressure emerges when output is above the potential, the interest rate is lower than the natural rate, or there is pure excess money in the economy. The estimation results with the Turkish data show that the price gap contains considerable information for explaining inflation dynamics. Moreover, the model selection criterion that compares the empirical performance of the P-star model with the new classical Phillips curve relation favors the P-star model over the Phillips curve relationship. We conclude that money is efficacious in predicting risk in price stability in Turkey.     

Monetary Policy and Asset Prices: A Mechanism Design Approach

We investigate the effects of monetary policy on asset prices in economies where assets are traded periodically in bilateral meetings. The trading mechanism is designed to maximize social welfare taking as given the frictions in the environment and monetary policy. We show that asset price “bubbles” emerge in a constrained‐efficient monetary equilibrium only if liquidity is abundant and the first‐best allocation is implementable. In contrast, if liquidity is scarce, assets are priced at their fundamental value in any constrained‐efficient monetary equilibrium, in which case an increase in inflation has no effect on asset prices, but it reduces output and welfare.     

Are Indexed Bonds Really Inflation Proof? A Model of Real and Nominal Term Structures when Money has Real Effects

This paper studies the general behavior of the nominal and real term structures of interest rates in a general equilibrium framework. A central bank is introduced in the model as an agent facing a tradeoff between inflation and output and choosing a monetary policy variable. Prices and output are jointly determined in our model endogenously. Two multi-factor nominal and real term structure models are given as examples to illustrate the general model. In our economies, inflation indexed bonds are not completely inflation proof, but are still subject to the influence of inflation uncertainties. The models offer us an empirical framework that can be studied with indexed bond data and nominal bond data together in a single estimation.     

A Fundamental Analysis Approach to Oil and Gas Firm Valuation

Most fundamental analysis studies have focused on fundamentals selected by a data-driven approach on large samples of firms from numerous industries. This paper reports the results of a fundamental analysis of a single industry, the US oil and gas exploration and production industry, using variables identified by industry financial analysts. The results demonstrate a significant relationship between a number of the fundamentals with both the market value of equity and cumulative stock return. The results also suggest that the fundamentals provide incremental information beyond earnings, change in earnings, and book value of equity when explaining equity values and stock returns.     

The Effects of Oil Supply and Demand Shocks on U.S. Consumer Sentiment

This paper investigates how the University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment responds to oil price shocks. While oil supply shocks play only a limited role, the effect of aggregate demand shocks is positive for the first few months and negative thereafter. A typical other oil demand shock has a significant negative impact for up to 2 years. By studying the responses of individual survey questions, we find that expectations of future inflation and a change in real household income as well as perceived vehicle and house buying conditions are the main transmission channels of oil supply and demand shocks.     

The Relationship Between REITs Returns and Inflation: A Vector Error Correction Approach

Previous studies show that REITs returns and inflation arenegatively related. This paper reexamines this perverse inflation hedgephenomenon by investigating the relationship among REITs returns, realactivities, monetary policy and inflation through a Vector ErrorCorrection Model. Empirical results show that inflation does notGranger-cause REITs returns and that REITs returns signal changes in monetary policy. The observed negative relationship between REITs returnsand inflation is merely a proxy for the more fundamental relationshipbetween REITs returns and other macroeconomic variables.     

人民币汇率变动对我国通货膨胀的影响：汇率传递视角的研究

在开放经济条件下,汇率变动对一国通货膨胀水平的决定具有重要作用。本文利用自回归分布滞后(ARDL)模型研究了人民币汇率变动对以消费者价格指数(CPI)衡量的国内通货膨胀的传递效应。研究结果表明,人民币汇率变动对以CPI衡量的通货膨胀水平的传递是不完全的且存在明显的时滞,长期和短期汇率传递效应都很低;汇率变动对我国CPI的传递效应受食品价格冲击的影响非常大。本文的研究结论对于我国的汇率制度改革和货币政策实施等具有重要的启示意义。     

Does Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift in Stock Prices Reflect A Market Inefficiency? A Stochastic Dominance Approach

This paper uses a stochastic dominance approach to test for market efficiency following earnings announcements. We find that the stocks that recently announced good earnings news stochastically dominate those that recently announced bad news. The results cast serious doubt on any belief that asset pricing model misspecifications might explain post-earnings-announcement drift.     

Determinants of Currency Crises in Emerging Markets: The Case of Turkey

This paper investigates possible determinants of currency crises in Turkey. We use three different techniques—namely, the signaling approach, structural model, and Markov switching model with monthly data for the period 1992-2004. The results show that money market pressure index, real-sector confidence index, and public-sector variables are significant in explaining currency crises. Hence, one can say that banking crises lead to currency crises. Central banks' real-sector confidence index may be a good leading indicator for currency crises.