Direct and Spillover Effects of Unconventional Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies

This paper explores the direct effects and spillovers of unconventional monetary and exchange rate policies. We find that official purchases of foreign assets have a large positive effect on a country’s current account that diminishes considerably as capital mobility rises. There is an important additional effect through the lagged stock of official assets. Official purchases of domestic assets, or quantitative easing (QE), appear to have no significant effect on a country’s current account when capital mobility is high, but there is a modest positive impact when capital mobility is low. The effects of purchases of foreign assets spill over to other countries in proportion to their degree of international financial integration. We also find that increases in US bond yields are associated with increases in foreign bond yields and in stock prices, as well as with depreciations of foreign currencies, but that all of these effects are smaller on days of US unconventional monetary policy announcements. We develop a theoretical model that is broadly consistent with our empirical results and that highlights the potential usefulness of domestic unconventional policies as responses to the effects of foreign policies of a similar type.     

Influence of ADB Bond Issues and US Bonds on Asian Government Bonds*

This article examines whether there is a correlation between the government bond markets of Asian countries and those of the USA, and whether the efforts of international organizations to improve bond markets have had any effect in East Asia. Because the sizes of the government bond markets are larger than those of the corporate bond markets in East Asia, the present paper uses the daily data of government bonds to examine two questions: whether government bond yields in Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand correlate with US government bond yields, and whether bonds in these Asian countries are influenced by ADB bond issues. The present study analyzes these issues by demonstrating the fluctuations in bond yields and carrying out an estimation using the exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model. The results substantiate that there is indeed a correlation between Asian and US bond markets, and that ADB bond issuance in local markets can contribute to the development of Asian bond markets.     

Unconventional Monetary Policy in the Euro Zone

The European Central Bank adopted a policy of quantitative easing early in 2015, long after the US and UK, and after implementing a succession of measures to increase liquidity in the Euro zone financial markets, none of which proved sufficient eventually. The paper draws out lessons for the Euro zone from US and UK experience. Numerous event studies have been undertaken to uncover the effects of QE on yields on and prices of financial assets. Estimated effects on long-term government bond yields are then converted into the size of the cut in the policy rate that would normally have been needed to produce them. From these implicit cuts in policy rates, estimates of the effect on GDP and inflation are generated. Euro zone QE appears to have had a much smaller effect on bond yields for the core members states than did QE in the US or UK. Therefore its effects on output and inflation are likely to be proportionately smaller. Its effects on long-term government bond yields in periphery members are greater. QE is compressing interest differential among Euro zone member states. The dangers of QE to which various commentators draw attention, that it creates a danger of inflation in the future, that it creates asset price bubbles, that it allows zombie firms and banks to survive, slowing down the process of adjustment, seem remote. Meanwhile it makes a useful contribution to cutting the costs of debt service and allowing member states more fiscal room for maneouvre.     

The macroeconomic effects of the ECB’s evolving QE programme: a model-based analysis

This paper analyses the macroeconomic effects of the European Central Bank’s asset purchase programme in its initial version and subsequent modifications under the lens of a dynamic macroeconomic model, which includes assets of different types and maturity, and explicitly introduces asset purchases of long-term bonds (held by euro area and non-euro area residents) by the central bank. With imperfect substitutability between asset classes, portfolio rebalancing in the context of quantitative easing (QE) affects bond yields, stock prices, the exchange rate and the private sector’s saving decision. QE as announced in January 2015 generates 0.4% effective euro depreciation and raises real GDP in the euro area by 0.2% and prices by 0.3% by 2017 in the model. The subsequent extensions of the QE programme (extension in time and increase in volume) more than double the medium-term output and inflation effects according to the simulations.     

Who Influences the Asian–Pacific Real Estate Markets: The US,Japan or China?

As rapid economic growth in China has led to significant appreciation of urban real estate market values, this study examines China's influence on Asian–Pacific real estate markets by focusing on their respective market integration with the US, Japan and China during the period January 2005 to December 2017. Market integration is examined by unconditional and time‐varying conditional correlations, nonlinear Granger causality and dynamic connectedness effects. Overall, although the US and Japanese real estate markets have significantly influenced return and volatility in the regional markets, China has emerged as another major regional real estate volatility leader with rising influence over volatility integration, especially during the 2007–2011 crisis period. Financial crises have strengthened China's volatility connectedness effects and market integration with other Asian–Pacific real estate markets. Our results imply that the benefits of regional portfolio diversification may be declining as volatility integration across the Chinese and Asian–Pacific real estate markets becomes stronger. Therefore, diversified global investors should pay greater attention to these real estate markets.     

Is the COVID-19 pandemic more contagious for the Asian stock markets? A comparison with the Asian financial,the US subprime and the Eurozone debt crisis

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has sent shock waves across the global stock markets. Several financial crises in the past too have had a global impact with their reach extending beyond the country of origin. The current study compares the contagion effect of four such crises viz. the Asian financial crisis, the US subprime crisis, the Eurozone debt crisis, and the currently ongoing Covid-19 crisis on Asian stock markets to understand which of these has had the most severe impact. It finds that among all the four crises, the US subprime crisis has been the most contagious for the Asian stock markets. The study also highlights the difference between severities of a liquidity crisis versus a real crisis and identifies the markets that remained insulated from all these crises, a finding which will be useful for portfolio managers in devising their asset allocation.     

Estimating time-varying currency betas with contagion: New evidence from developed and emerging financial markets

This paper examines the conditional time-varying currency betas from five developed and six emerging financial markets with contagion and spillover effects. We employ a trivariate asymmetric BEKK-type GARCH-in-Mean (MGARCH-M) approach to estimate the time-varying conditional variance and covariance of returns of stock market index, the world market portfolio and bilateral exchange rate between the US dollar and the local currency. The results show that the world market and currency risks are not only priced in the stock markets, but also time-varying. It is found that currency betas are much more volatile than the world market betas, and currency betas in the emerging markets are more volatile than those in the developed markets. We find empirical evidence of contagion effect and spillovers between stock market and foreign exchange market during the recent global financial crisis, and the effect is stronger in the emerging markets than that in the developed markets. Two applications are provided to illustrate the usefulness of time-varying currency betas.     

The ‘Visible Hand’ of the ECB’s first quantitative easing

Quantitative easing à la ECB has produced significant impact on long-term nominal rates through ex ante channels, such as signalling channels, term duration channels, and risk premia channels, well before it materially started. Ex post difference-in-differences estimation suggests a significant impact on long-term government bond yields, while the impact of the ECB’s first QE on the key inflation rate is very weak. The term duration channel may also lead to a lengthening of the average maturity of government debts, with possible implications for fiscal policy. The ECB’s determination to buy government bonds in a fragmented market with a low net supply is also producing an ex post impact, i.e. during the actual asset purchases. High rates volatility suggests that this impact is less on nominal rates and more on financial plumbing. As the effects of scarce supply in collateral markets are felt, repo rates remain well below zero. Low supply and limited re-usability of high quality collateral, capped by regulatory requirements, is an additional constraint on market liquidity and compresses dealers’ balance sheets. By keeping a depressed yield curve and asset prices high, QE is also accelerating the consolidation of both traditional and capital-market based (dealer) bank business models, raising questions about implications for global collateral flows and deposit-like funding channels.     

Intensified lending competition and search-for-yield under prolonged monetary easing

We present a structural estimation of regionally heterogeneous demand elasticity and the degree of competition in Japanese local loan markets under prolonged monetary easing. Our estimates show that lending competition intensifies in markets where banks hold more slack liquidity caused by monetary easing, and where loan demand is less elastic against lowering interest rates due to a rapidly aging population. We also find evidence for “search-for-yield”, i.e., banks in more competitive markets are driven to extend riskier loans.     

Price expectations and consumption under deflation: evidence from Japanese household survey data

The Japanese economy has experienced price deflation since the mid-1990s. Despite the importance of overcoming deflation, there has been little recent research on price expectations in Japan. This paper takes advantage of an original and rich quarterly household-level data set from the “Kokumin Seikatsu Monitors” to estimate average price expectations, examine the factors that affect price expectations, and examine how changes in price expectations have affected household consumption. Our estimates indicate that average price expectations ranged from minus 0.2 to 0% in 2001 and 2002. However, there was an increase to 1% in the first quarter of 2003, followed by a decline to 0.2% in the second quarter, and a steady increase toward 0.8% by the first quarter of 2004. Price expectations depend on current price movements and lagged expectations. A series of quantitative easing monetary policies were not very effective in changing the price expectations, since the policy announcements caused revision of price expectations only for a small portion, i.e., 5–10% of people surveyed. The jump observed in the first quarter of 2003 was a reaction to the outbreak of the Iraq war. Our study also confirms that deflationary expectations discourage household consumption, mainly durable consumption, by delaying the timing of purchases, suggesting that the deflationary expectations should be upwardly revised to restore a vital Japanese economy.     

Spillover across sovereign bond markets between the US and ASEAN4 economies

This study employs the VAR-MGARCH model to investigate the spillover across the sovereign bond markets between the US and ASEAN4 economies. The empirical results confirm the unidirectional spillover in bond return from the US to ASEAN4, while there is a bidirectional influence in volatility. Additionally, dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) analysis is employed to depict the changing correlation in volatility. The empirical results also show that the yields of ASEAN4 bonds increase with emerging market risks, and the exchange rate can act as a buffer to reduce spillover. Given that ASEAN4 governments have issued a large number of government bonds to finance their large fiscal spending during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the return and volatility spillovers from the US to ASEAN4 could be important factors to consider when the US unwinds its unconventional monetary policy and normalizes its interest rates in the medium to long term.     

Interdependencies among Asian bond markets

There is an ongoing intraregional attempt to develop bond markets in Asia. This is to some extent a result of the Asian financial crisis, which showed the need for well-functioning fixed income markets in the region. This paper analyzes the relationships among four Asian bond markets. Cointegration tests show that the markets exhibit strong long-term interdependencies. In addition, all markets show signs of short-run cross-dependencies in the mean. The correlations between the markets are time-varying and high, except for in short turbulent periods. The results indicate that a regional bond portfolio would allow for some level of risk diversification for investors and that policymakers need to pay attention to movements in different markets.     

The costs and benefits of exchange rate protection in China

From 2002 to 2011, China ran large surpluses in both the current and capital accounts of its balance of payments, which the People's Bank of China (PBOC) purchased and held at official foreign reserves to avoid nominal appreciation of the currency. Concurrently, with its massive purchases of foreign exchange, the PBOC compelled commercial banks to buy PBOC ‘sterilisation bonds’ and raised commercial bank reserve requirement ratios to avoid monetisation of its foreign exchange purchases and concomitant upward pressure on the price level (that is, real appreciation of the currency). Sterilising foreign exchange intervention, as China did for a decade, constitutes a violation of the implicit rules of a fixed exchange rate regime and as such can be seen as a mercantilist policy of manipulating the real exchange rate to gain, or avoid losing, international price competitiveness—what Corden (1981) termed ‘exchange rate protection’. This paper sets out the simple theory of the costs and benefits of exchange rate protection and provides back‐of‐the‐envelope estimates of their magnitude in China in the 2000s. It also explores the ‘other side of the story’, the decline in US manufacturing employment in the 2000s, which recent literature attributes to a ‘China Trade Shock’ that allegedly resulted from the US granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China in 2001. Here, it is argued that the so‐called China Trade Shock resulted from China's sterilised intervention policy, not the granting of PNTR. The implications of these competing hypotheses are considered in the conclusions.     

World Trade in Used Automobiles: A Gravity Analysis of Japanese and US Exports*

We estimate a gravity model of Japanese and US exports of used automobiles that incorporates an original, ordered measure of protection in global, used automobile markets. The model confirms that, overall, protection by our measure is suppress‐ive and often statistically significant and that what we term ‘Grubel income effects’ are present. However, Japanese export behavior appears to differ in some important respects from that of the USA, with distance and protection levels being less significant and left‐hand side driving patterns being a critical explanatory variable.     

Quantitative easing and Japanese bank equity values

One of the primary motivations offered by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) for its quantitative easing program—whereby it maintained a current account balance target in excess of required reserves, effectively pegging short-term interest rates at zero—was to maintain credit extension by the troubled Japanese financial sector. We conduct an event study concerning the anticipated impact of quantitative easing on the Japanese banking sector by examining the impact of the introduction and expansion of the policy on Japanese bank equity values. We find that excess returns of Japanese banks were greater when increases in the BOJ current account balance target were accompanied by “non-standard” expansionary policies, such as raising the ceiling on BOJ purchases of long-term Japanese government bonds. We also provide cross-sectional evidence that suggests that the market perceived that the quantitative easing program would disproportionately benefit financially weaker Japanese banks. J. Japanese Int. Economies 20 (4) (2006) 699–721.     

The impact of central bank intervention on exchange-rate forecast heterogeneity

We investigate the impact of official foreign exchange intervention on forecast heterogeneity, on the basis of a sample of forecasts made by a large number of commercial banks over two distinct periods, for the DEM (or EUR) and the JPY against the USD. We show that heterogeneity increases as a result of foreign exchange intervention. In the case of the DEM–EUR/USD market this increase is due to unexpected intervention, while for the JPY/USD it is due to expected intervention. Our results also emphasise the role of rumours, especially for the JPY/USD. In sum, official interventions are shown to move market opinions, albeit differently across the two markets. J. Japanese Int. Economies 21 (1) (2007) 38–63.     

East Asian equity markets,financial crises,and the Japanese currency

The paper studies the interactions between the US and four East Asian equity markets. The focus is on the change in the information structure/flow between these markets triggered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis. It is shown that the information structure during the crisis period is different from that in the non-crisis periods. While the US market leads the four East Asian markets before, during, and after the crisis, it is Granger-caused by these markets during the financial crisis period but not in the post-crisis sample. Further, in accordance with concerns reported in the market, the Japanese currency is found to affect these equity markets during the crisis period. The Japanese yen effect, however, disappears in the post-crisis sample. The Japanese currency effect is quite robust as it is found from both local currency and US dollar return data and in the presence of Japanese stock returns. J. Japanese Int. Economies 21 (1) (2007) 138–152.     

Real financial market exchange rate volatility and portfolio flows

This paper studies the relationship between real financial market exchange rate volatility and US cross-border equity flows. We found strong evidence that causality goes from real financial market exchange rate volatility to equity flows. According to our results, real financial market exchange rate volatility negatively influences purchases of foreign equity. This finding is in line with the portfolio optimization theory. The impact of real financial market exchange rate volatility on sales of foreign equity is also negative. This result can be explained by the theory of behavioral finance which states that investors are reluctant to realize losses of their portfolios. This is why investors decrease sales of assets when riskiness of the assets increases. The impact of real financial market exchange rate on net purchases of foreign equity is positive. It follows from these results that sales of foreign equity decrease more strongly than purchases of foreign equity when riskiness of foreign assets increases.     

基于金融周期视角下股票市场的联动效应研究

世界经济全球化已成为趋势,发达经济体的股市之间以及发达经济体与新兴经济体股市之间的联动性也在经济全球化的趋势中更加紧密。各国金融领域以及金融市场间的快速融合,不断形成统一规范的金融行为准则,也使得全球金融周期性特征越来越明显。文章选取世界五个主要股票市场指数为研究对象,按照已有研究对全球金融周期的划分,将该样本区间分成了繁荣期、衰退期和正常期三个阶段,然后基于这三个阶段分析了在不同金融周期五国股票市场指数收益率联动效应。基于实证研究结论,认为美国和欧洲股市联动性较强,与亚洲股市联动性相对较弱,且美国和中国股市之间联动性最弱,基本捕捉不到下尾相关。相关实证结论有利于国际投资者的投资组合管理,也有助于各国股票市场的风险规避。     

Sluggish Recovery from the Financial Crisis: Crowding-out Effect and Contagion

Abstract

The stimulus plans by the US Government after the financial crisis in 2008 may decrease private investment by means of a crowding-out effect. The US Federal Reserve utilized quantitative easing policies to maintain the interest rate as low as possible to minimize crowding-out. The 2008 financial crisis also affects other economies through contagion effects. This paper investigates the existence of the crowding-out effect and contagion effect after the crisis using Temin and Voth's models. The empirical results from vector autoregession show that there is a crowding-out effect in the US economy as well as a contagion effect of the crisis on the Korean and Japanese economies.