Economic integration,economic crises and economic cycles in Mexico

This article analyzes the peculiarity of the dynamics of economic fluctuations of the Mexican economy, within the framework of its integration with the US and Canada; the article demonstrates how the Mexican economy make endogenous the macroeconomic crises from the USA (2001 and 2007), and how the business cycles of both countries became more aligned to each other.Based on the heterodox economic theory of crises and cycles, we check the “empirical law of economic dynamics” of the Mexican capitalist system according to the logic of the multiplier–accelerator theory that allowed us to study the dynamics of business cycles for the period of the study (1993–2013). To do this, we construct and estimate a stationary VAR model and utilize the Granger causality tests and quarterly data.     

Bank capital and economic activity

Banks argue that holding higher capital will have adverse implications on their lending activities and thereby on economic growth. Yet, the effect of a stronger capital base on economic growth remains largely unsettled. We argue that better capitalized banks improve financial stability conditions and, in dire times, they are able to sustain credit to the economy thereby containing adverse macroeconomic implications. Using various methods, we test for the presence and strength of a financial stability channel and a bank lending channel by drawing evidence from 47 advanced and developing countries over close to two decades. We find that higher capital ratios improve financial stability and help sustain bank lending, ultimately exerting a positive influence on economic activity. These effects on real GDP growth are economically significant, reaching up to 1¼ percentage points for each percentage point acceleration in capital. Our main results are robust to various sensitivity checks, supporting the conclusion that safer banking systems do not bridle economic activity.     

Insurance and economic policy uncertainty

Just as the world has witnessed the increased importance of the insurance sector over the past few decades, it has also witnessed a sharp rise in risks and uncertainties. Surprisingly, studies analyzing the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and the insurance sector are almost non-existent. Another major limitation of insurance literature is the choice of methodology. Most studies on the insurance sector do not take into consideration issues of heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence, and are therefore subject to errors. To address the identified gaps, this research investigates the impact of economic policy uncertainty on insurance premiums in a panel of 15 countries over the period 1998–2016 by employing heterogeneous panel estimation techniques with cross-sectional dependence. The Durbin-Hausman cointegration tests of Westerlund (2008) confirm that a long-run relationship exists between the variables. Findings from the error correction based panel estimations show that the insurance sector is not immune to the effects of economic policy uncertainty. Economic policy uncertainty raises insurance premiums both in the short and long run, although the long-run impact is greater than the short-run impact. In addition, economic policy uncertainty exerts a bigger influence on non-life insurance premium than on life insurance premium, indicating that the economic risks covered by non-life insurance are more sensitive to uncertainty than the mortality and longevity risks covered by life insurance. Our findings further show that national income, education, population, financial development and institutional quality all raise insurance premiums, while inflation lowers insurance premiums.     

Local economic effects of bank failures

This study tests the hypothesis that bank failures have adverse effects on economic activity in the communities where the failed banks are located. The literature on the economic effects of credit constraints provides the theoretical foundation for adverse economic effects of bank failures. The data are for rural counties in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. The measures of local economic activity are the value of sales and employment. The empirical results indicate that bank failures depress local sales, and, for some of the states, the closing of failed banks depresses local employment.Federal Reserve Bank of St. LouisThe views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.     

Bank stock returns and economic growth

Previous research has established (i) that a country’s financial sector influence future economic growth and (ii) that stock market index returns affect future economic growth. We extend and tie together these two strands of the growth literature by analyzing the relationship between banking industry stock returns and future economic growth. Using dynamic panel techniques to analyze panel data from 18 developed and 18 emerging markets, we find a positive and significant relationship between bank stock returns and future GDP growth that is independent of the previously documented relationship between market index returns and economic growth. We also find that much of the informational content of bank stock returns is captured by country-specific and institutional characteristics, such as bank-accounting-disclosure standards, banking crises, enforcement of insider trading law and government ownership of banks.     

Interaction between economic and financial development

This paper presents a model of financial and economic development which assumes the consumption of real resources by the financial sector. Financial development occurs endogenously as the economy reaches a critical threshold of economic development. Compared to financial autarky, financial intermediaries allocate savings, net of their costs of operation, to more productive investments. Whenever the technology financed by intermediaries is more capital-intensive than that operated in financial autarky, the growth effect of financial development is ambiguous. As a result, financial development may be unsustainable. However, when financial development is sustainable, the credit market becomes more competitive and more efficient over time, and this could eventually contribute to economic growth. Nonetheless, given monopolistic competition in the financial sector, the level of entry into the credit market is generally inefficient. For instance, with diminishing returns to specialisation, entrants might be too few at the early stages of economic development and too many later on.     

Market timing under multiple economic regimes

This article models the US equity premium as a regime‐switching process where the regimes are dependent on economic variables. To characterise the economic regimes, we employ the dimension reduction technique of a principal components analysis to extract business cycle signals from a set of observed macroeconomic variables. We use these conditioning agents to infer the ex ante economic regime. We then test a dynamic asset allocation strategy, which invests in equity and cash on the basis of the predicted regimes. This timing strategy is shown to outperform a simple buy and hold strategy on a risk‐adjusted basis.     

The economic value of VIX ETPs

The fairly new VIX ETPs have been promoted for providing effective and easily accessible diversification, while at the same time having large negative returns. We examine the economic value of using VIX ETPs for diversification of stock–bond portfolios. Our analysis begins in 2009, when the first VIX ETPs are introduced, and therefore only considers the period after the recent financial crisis. For investors with a constant allocation strategy, the diversification benefits of the VIX ETPs do not offset their negative returns. This implies negative economic value of a constant allocation. For a dynamic allocation strategy, including short VIX ETPs in the investment opportunity set can have substantial positive economic value.     

The economic situation in Belarus

The economic situation in BelarusFrom reluctant reform to the reversal of reform     

Does sukuk market development spur economic growth?

We investigate the impact of sukuk market development on economic growth using a sample comprising all sukuk-issuing countries spanning the period 1995–2015. We use the system GMM estimator to tackle potential omitted variable bias, endogeneity, and simultaneity issues. We report a strong and robust evidence that sukuk market development is conducive to economic growth, even after controlling for various measures of financial market development, institutional quality, and classical determinants of economic growth. In addition, the evidence does not support the well-known positive association between financial development and economic growth. We conclude that the development of sukuk markets may have promoted financial inclusion by eliminating the negative effects of religious self-exclusion, which stimulates investment and economic growth.     

Banking industry volatility and economic growth

Utilizing the recent dynamic panel GMM estimation techniques for 36 markets, this research investigates the relationship between banking industry volatility and future economic growth, and provides empirical evidence complementary to Cole et al. (2008) who examine the finance-growth nexus from a unique asset pricing theory perspective and document a positive relationship between bank stock returns and future economic growth that is significantly influenced by a series of country-specific and banking institutional characteristics. We find that the negative link between banking industry volatility and future economic growth is significantly affected by government ownership of banks, the enforcement of the insider trading law, systemic banking crises, and bank accounting disclosure standards, while the impact of financial development is ambiguous. The significant results are primarily driven by the data from emerging markets.     

Asset price bubbles and economic welfare

In this paper, we provide the first empirical evidence on whether or not asset price bubbles predict economic welfare. Using a time-series model, we show that asset price bubbles both positively and negatively predict economic welfare, although the evidence that asset price bubbles are welfare-enhancing is much stronger. These results are also robust to out-of-sample forecasting as well as to a predictive regression model augmented by structural break dates.     

Do return prediction models add economic value?

We compare statistical and economic measures of forecasting performance across a large set of stock return prediction models with time-varying mean and volatility. We find that it is very common for models to produce higher out-of-sample mean squared forecast errors than a model assuming a constant equity premium, yet simultaneously add economic value when their forecasts are used to guide portfolio decisions. While there is generally a positive correlation between a return prediction model’s out-of-sample statistical performance and its ability to add economic value, the relation tends to be weak and only explains a small part of the cross-sectional variation in different models’ economic value.     

Can digital financial inclusion promote China's economic growth?

Can digital financial inclusion as an emerging and innovative financial service promote economic growth? Based on a Bayesian macroeconomic analysis framework, this paper introduces the level of Internet development as a threshold variable, analyzes the impact of digital financial inclusion on economic growth based on provincial panel data from 2011 to 2019 in China, and finally explores the mediating effect of digital financial inclusion on economic growth through a multiple mediation model. The results show that ① digital financial inclusion development has a significant contribution to economic growth. ② The impact of digital financial inclusion development on economic growth has a significant Internet threshold effect. ③Promoting small and medium-sized enterprise entrepreneurship and stimulating residents' consumption are two important channels through which digital financial inclusion development affects economic growth.     

经济增长下行周期中商业银行的经营策略研究

本文指示,美国次贷危机只是导致全球经济增长下滑的导火索,本轮全球经济增长步入了周期性调整,其本质原因在于决定经济周期的三股核心力量发生了根本性的转折。面对宏观形势的变化,商业银行应认真审视各项业务面临的挑战,积极调整业务结构,采取多项应对措施,以经受经济周期性波动的考验。     

On the individual optimality of economic integration

Which countries find it optimal to form an economic union? We emphasize the risk-sharing benefits of economic integration. Consider an endowment world economy model, where international financial markets are incomplete and contracts not enforceable. A union solves both frictions among member countries. We uncover conditions on initial incomes and net foreign assets of potential union members such that forming a union is welfare-improving over standing alone in the world economy. Consistently with evidence on economic integration, unions in our model occur (i) relatively infrequently, and (ii) emerge more likely among homogeneous countries, and (iii) rich countries.     

Entropy,environment, and endogenous economic growth

This paper investigates the proper modeling of the interaction between economic growth and environmental problems, summarizes under which conditions unlimited economic growth with limited natural resources is feasible, and describes how sustainable growth can be achieved. It synthesizes the results from various environmental endogenous growth models.The physical dimension and the value dimension of economic activity have to be treated as conceptually distinct. Accumulation of natural variables is bounded due to biophysical laws (notably, the entropy law). However, economic value may grow through the substitution of reproducible human inputs for natural inputs. The properties of knowledge, which is the primary human input, do not contradict unlimited new knowledge creation.     

当前宏观经济分析和政策前瞻

文章综合分析今年以来我国经济运行情况后指出,当前我国宏观经济增长的内生动力尚未真正确立,结合新的外部冲击,我国经济增长的下行风险有所显现;随着国内外需求放缓,整体价格水平特别是PPI将出现回落,但粮食、生猪等部分食品价格存在较大上涨压力。总体看,短期政策无论放松或收紧都不具备大动的条件,需要在密切关注经济形势变化和前期政策效果的基础上及时动态微调。     

Pricing structured products with economic covariates

We introduce a top-down no-arbitrage model for pricing structured products. Losses are described by Cox processes whose intensities depend on economic variables. The model provides economic insight into the impact of structured products on financial institutions’ risk exposure and systemic risk. We estimate the model using CDO data and find that spreads decrease with higher interest rates and increase with volatility and leverage. Volatility is the primary determinant of variation in tranche spreads. Leverage and interest rates are more closely associated with rare credit events. Model-implied risk premiums and the probabilities of tranche losses increase substantially during the financial crisis.     

Homemade international diversification under economic policy uncertainty

We examine how US mutual funds that invest domestically make portfolio adjustments by incorporating US-listed foreign stocks (cross-listed stocks) when faced with US market economic policy uncertainty. We document a positive association between US economic policy uncertainty and US mutual funds’ weight of cross-listed stocks, and find that the effect is concentrated in funds that mainly invest in the US domestic market. The findings are not sensitive to the instrumental variable approach, model specification, sampling, variable definition, and controlling for macro characteristics. Funds with higher weight of cross-listed foreign stocks when US economic policy uncertainty increases outperform other funds, indicating the rationality of such an investment strategy. A long-short portfolio generates 3.4% annualized abnormal return in the immediate following quarter. Our study shields light not only on the international diversification benefit of US-listed foreign stocks but also on the importance of capital market openness for domestic investors.