Worldwide impact of IMF policies during the Asian crisis: who does the IMF help,creditors or crisis countries?

This paper examines the effects of International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy announcements on financial markets worldwide. We investigate reactions from stock, bond, foreign exchange and futures markets and banking and financial companies during the Asian crisis. We explore the impact of IMF bailouts not only on crisis countries, but also on main creditor countries. We study the impact of local governments’ and public responses in crisis countries to account for interaction between the IMF and local parties. We show IMF involvement and local governments’ co-operation actually helps crisis countries but not creditors. We show that in crisis countries, financial markets generally react unfavourably to their governments’ initial demands for IMF assistance, while compliance of the crisis countries with the IMF policy action is commonly perceived as good news. Financial markets in crisis countries react negatively to prolonged negotiations and government actions against IMF policy. Creditor countries’ financial markets are not responsive to IMF actions in crisis countries. We discuss policy implications of findings.     

Dynamic correlation and equicorrelation analysis of global financial turmoil: evidence from emerging East Asian stock markets

This study investigates the dynamic conditional correlations (DCCs) between eight emerging East Asian stock markets and the US stock market and analyses the dynamic equicorrelation among these nine stock markets. We find a significant increase in the conditional correlations and equicorrelation in the first phase of the global financial crisis. We refer to this finding as contagion from the US stock market to the emerging East Asian markets. We also find an additional significant process of increasing correlations and equicorrelation (herding) in the second phase of the global financial crisis. Further, we employ two new models, namely DCCX-MGARCH (a DCC Multivariate GARCH model with exogenous variables) and DECOX-MGARCH (a dynamic equicorrelation multivariate GARCH model with exogenous variables), to identify the channels of contagion. We find that an increase in the VIX Index increases the conditional correlations and equicorrelation, while increases in TED spreads decrease the conditional correlations of six emerging East Asian countries with the USA. We compare the accuracy of the conditional correlation estimates of the DCC and DCCX models (or DECO and DECOX models) by constructing a loss function. We find that the DCCX (DECOX) model provides more accurate conditional correlation estimates than the DCC (DECO) model by extracting additional information from exogenous variables.     

Typology for flight-to-quality episodes and downside risk measurement

We propose a total return-based framework to measure downside risk associated with phenomenon of capital outflows from riskier to safer financial markets. The proposed method consists of three elements: (i) the general definition of the flight-to-quality (FtQ) phenomenon, (ii) the typological classification of the flight-to-quality occurrences for associating them with the phases of the business cycle and (iii) the automated technique to diagnose the time frames and to measure the impact of flight-to-quality on financial instruments. The proposed framework is applied to analyse the global-scale capital inflows/outflows from emerging markets public debt to the US Treasuries and vice versa. The results show that different phases of business cycles and GDP growth rates, including turning points, could be associated with flights-to-quality of different types and causality origins. Addressing downside risk crystallizations in flight-to-quality occurrences, new perspectives of integrated interest rate risk and credit risk management are discussed. For strengthening financial stability, we suggest the use of flight-to-quality windows as scenarios for stress testing, both for banks and financial institutions.     

鲁比尼视野中的金融危机和经济危机

美国经济学家鲁里埃尔·鲁比尼因在西方经济学家中最早预言有可能爆发金融危机和经济危机而备受瞩目。危机爆发后,他跟踪研究,对危机提出了自己的若干独特见解。他尝试分析危机的原因,展望经济发展前景,提出应对危机的政策建议。但是,作为西方经济学家,他对危机根源等问题的认识具有明显的局限性。     

Liquidity in Asian markets: Intensity of Regional and global linkages

This study investigates cross-market linkages and the intensity of liquidity spillovers across nine Asian markets and five developed markets during 2006 to 2016. Further, the study examines the contagion caused by recent global financial crisis and its impact on the market liquidity. The direction and intensity of spillovers has been measured using forecast error variance decomposition method as suggested by Diebold and Yilmaz (2012). Among the developed markets, the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom significantly affect liquidity changes in Asian countries like India, China, Singapore and Japan. The results revels that on average, each Asian market receives 7% spillover from the global markets and 16% from regional markets. During the financial crisis, the average regional spillover increased to 20% and the global spillover increased to 11%. Thus, in Asia, the regional spillover is higher than the global spillover. Our results support the demand side hypothesis and suggest that it is the trade and portfolio investments that drive the liquidity spillovers. Our findings have potential implications for international investors, policy makers and market regulators.     

Turkish trade unionists and Turkey’s membership of the European Union

In all the discussions regarding Turkey’s accession to the EU, little attention has been paid to the views of workers. This paper provides a statistical analysis of the views of over 6000 Turkish trade union members on Turkey’s EU membership. Parameters are estimated using multilevel probit models where the nested structures of workers into trade unions and federations were taken into account since they shared some joint characteristics because of belonging to these organisations. It confirms the extensive disillusion with the EU found elsewhere in Turkish society but more interestingly it disconfirms an idea that those inside the EU may too easily assume to be the case: that it is those with what might be considered modernist characteristics among the Turkish population who are most likely to be in favour of EU entry. The idea seems to chime well with assumptions that the EU is a progressive, modern force. But whatever the validity of such a view, EU entry is not in fact found to be the favoured goal of the young and the best educated: it is older workers who are the most likely to support entry and those who are educated to the highest level the most likely to oppose it. Amongst the main three trade union federations there is also a greater propensity of members of trade unions affiliated to Hak Is (the Islamic federation) to support entry than those in Turk Is (centre right) or DISK (historically the most militant).     

美国缘何反对国际货币基金组织扩大援助贷款规模

20世纪90年代以来，发展中国家成了国际金融危机的多发中心(尽管危机的源头不一定全在这些国家)，危机不仅给发展中国家带来了巨大的经济损失，也给整个国际经济环境增添了许多变数，因此，国际金融体系的重构，尤其是国际货币基金组织(IMF)改革问题，便成了近20年来国际社会普遍关心的话题。在IMF贷款问题上，主张取消IMF的长期贷款业务，不主张扩大国际金融危机救助规模，是目前美国的主流观点。由于美国是当今国际金融体系中的“霸主”，其意见将直接左右着国际金融体制的改革走向，所以美国在国际金融机构改革上的一些观点值得发展中国家关注。     

Financial crisis and hotels’ labour productivity growth: evidence from Spanish islands

The article examines hotels’ labour productivity growth over the period of financial crisis. We decompose hotels’ labour productivity into three components: technological change, technological catch-up (efficiency improvement/convergence) and capital deepening. Specifically, we apply our analysis over a sample of 820 Spanish hotels from Balearic and Canary Islands distinguishing three different stages during the crisis period. The results suggest that average terms hotels’ labour productivity was resistant to the financial crisis.     

Determinants of non-life insurance expenditure in developed and developing countries: an empirical investigation

The determinants of non-life insurance expenditure in a panel data set covering 36 developed countries and 31 developing countries for the period 2000–2011 are analysed. Results of our instrumental variable analysis indicate that economic freedom, income, bank development, urbanization, culture and law systems are the key drivers of the non-life insurance expenditure across countries. However, their impacts differ significantly between the groups of developed and developing countries, suggesting that the heterogeneity among countries in terms of the level of development plays an important role. The global financial crisis is also found to influence the direction of those effects, especially in developed countries. The article yields useful policy and economic implications for governments and multinational non-life insurance companies with regard to the development of the non-life insurance sector, an important engine for economic growth and prosperity.     

经济刺激计划与农村消费启动——基于我国农村居民收入分解的实证分析

文章在对我国农村居民收入构成进行分解的基础上,利用协整等计量工具时影响我国农村居民消费的各种因素进行了量化分析,并由此对照我国政府为应对世界经济危机而出台的一揽子经济刺激计划,分析经济刺激计划中各项具体政策措施在促进农村消费方面的作用.实证分析和政策分析的结果表明:(1)当前对农村居民消费具有显著影响的因素主要是农村居民经营性收入、工资性收入及国家财政农村救济费支出;(2)已出台的经济刺激计划,既有消费价格补贴等短期措施,也有旨在提高农村居民收入、完善农村社会保障、优化农村消费环境的长期性政策,时于促进农村消费具有很强的针对性;(3)未来促进农村居民消费仍需继续着眼于各种长期性政策.国家在加大财政支农力度时,应注重提高农林水事业费以外的支农支出比重;(4)县域经济是启动农村消费的关键.未来的政策着力点可以考虑将启动农村消费与发展县域经济、推动城乡一体化发展相结合.