Gains from international monetary policy coordination: Does it pay to be different?

In a two country world where each country has a traded and a non-traded sector and each sector has sticky prices, optimal independent policy in general cannot replicate the natural-rate allocations. There are potential welfare gains from coordination since the planner under a cooperating regime internalizes a terms-of-trade externality that independent policymakers overlook. If the countries have symmetric trading structures, however, the gains from coordination are quantitatively small. With asymmetric trading structures, the gains can be sizable since, in addition to internalizing the terms-of-trade externality, the planner optimally engineers a terms-of-trade bias that favors the country with a larger traded sector.     

Should the government directly intervene in stock market during a crisis?

Unlike foreign exchange markets where central banks frequently intervene, the governments strive not to intervene in the stock markets since intervention transmit negative signals and carry market-related side effects. The main reasons often cited in support of intervention are to bring price stability and to restore investors’ confidence. During the recent economic turmoil, opportunities for the governments to intervene in the stock markets were mainly exploited in emerging and developing countries. We study the outcome of the Russian government's intervention in its major stock market between September and October 2008. This intervention was intended to reverse the sudden and swift declining trend in traded security prices by altering the market's expectations. By using a combination of event study and a multivariate GARCH model, our findings does not support direct government intervention in the stock market during a crisis.     

From indirect to direct rule? Transnational policy planning bodies and global governance in the COVID crisis

The origins of contemporary supra-national power go back to the second British Empire, which, unlike the first, faced organized labor as a potential revolutionary force. The formation of the Rhodes–Milner Group was meant to better manage the formation of the public mood, and the Boer War in South Africa demanded close integration of imperial affairs. A central figure in the Rhodes–Milner Group, Lord Esher, was also the architect of the Committee of Imperial Defense, created to take up the latter task. Esher's idea of a secretariat confidentially preparing solutions to issues of the day before they emerged in the public domain was introduced into the structure of international organizations after World War I and the Russian Revolution. Escher also laid the foundations of today's model of transnational politics in which groups such as Bilderberg or the Trilateral Commission and many others, shape certain areas of consensus before the public is allowed to make its voice heard. In this process, the circumvention of democracy has assumed the nature of an outright assault on it. In the process the World Economic Forum, formally joining forces with the United Nations, has become the most visible supranational body applying direct rule.     

The hidden costs of control revisited: Should a sanctioning policy be announced in advance?

Sanctions are widely used to enhance compliance in principal agent relationships. Although there is ample evidence confirming the predicted positive incentive effect of sanctions, it has also been shown that imposing sanctions may reduce compliance by crowding out intrinsic motivation. We add to the literature on the hidden costs of control by showing that these costs are restricted to situations where the principal actively chooses to sanction low performance and where this choice is known to the agent. In such a situation, the principal's commitment to sanction low performance might indicate that she or he is a distrustful “type” and hence conveys a negative signal. To the contrary, if (a) an agent is not informed about whether low performance will be sanctioned or if (b) the computer determines whether low performance will be sanctioned, the principal's “type” is not revealed, and we find no evidence of crowding out.     

Should employment policy making be entrusted to regions?

This paper argues that decentralizing macroeconomic policy may be undesirable from the national welfare standpoint. When the objective of each local government is to maximize the welfare of its own residents, while taking the policy choices of the national and other regional governments as given, then the type of equilibrium which results is shown to be Pareto dominated by the centralized solution. This argument is illustrated with a policy of employment subsidy.     

Are universal banks bad for financial stability? Germany during the world financial crisis

This case study explores the contribution of universal banking to financial stability in Germany during the recent financial crisis. Germany is a prototype for universal banking and has suffered from a rather small number of banking crises in the past. We review the banking literature and analyze the major institutional and regulatory features of the German financial system to establish a nexus between universal banking and stability. We focus on the following questions. First, which banks failed and did they because they were universal or because of other reasons? Second, which types of distress beside outright bank failures resulted from the crisis and how did German universal banks dealt with them? We show that only few German banks failed and these banks did so not because they were universal banks but because they were publicly owned. Most banks instead contributed to reduce the impact of the recent crisis.     

Was the 2007 crisis really a global banking crisis?

We argue that the 2007 crisis was not a global banking crisis. Stock prices of banks in emerging countries faced a temporary shock but quickly recovered, while stock prices of banks located in industrial countries remained much lower than before the 2007 crisis. Our results also suggest that stock prices of large banks were affected more during the crisis than those of small banks. We also find that managerial efficiency, loan quality, leverage, and the volume of outstanding loans affect bank stock prices.     

Has the Basel Accord improved risk management during the global financial crisis?

The Basel II Accord requires that banks and other Authorized Deposit-taking Institutions (ADIs) communicate their daily risk forecasts to the appropriate monetary authorities at the beginning of each trading day, using one or more risk models to measure Value-at-Risk (VaR). The risk estimates of these models are used to determine capital requirements and associated capital costs of ADIs, depending in part on the number of previous violations, whereby realised losses exceed the estimated VaR. In this paper we define risk management in terms of choosing from a variety of risk models, and discuss the selection of optimal risk models. A new approach to model selection for predicting VaR is proposed, consisting of combining alternative risk models, and we compare conservative and aggressive strategies for choosing between VaR models. We then examine how different risk management strategies performed during the 2008–09 global financial crisis. These issues are illustrated using Standard and Poor's 500 Composite Index.     

Fear of floating or monetary policy as usual? A structural analysis of Mexico's monetary policy

This paper uses Bayesian methods to estimate a small open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model for the period in Mexico after the 1994 crisis. I consider a Taylor rule as the expression of the evolution of monetary policy to gauge its response to the exchange rate in the post-crisis period. The estimation results favor a consistent response of the nominal interest rate to the short-run nominal exchange rate after 1994. Although fear of floating is present, Mexico's monetary policy has taken steps toward a credible free-floating exchange rate that targets inflation.     

Does trade integration alter monetary policy transmission?

This paper explores the role of trade integration—or openness—for monetary policy transmission in a medium-scale new Keynesian model. Allowing for strategic complementarities in price setting, we highlight a new dimension of the exchange rate channel by which monetary policy directly impacts domestic inflation: a monetary contraction which appreciates the exchange rate lowers the local currency price of imported goods; this, in turn, induces domestic producers to lower their prices too. We pin down key parameters of the model by matching impulse responses obtained from a vector autoregression on time series for the US relative to the euro area. Our estimation procedure yields plausible parameter values and suggests a strong role for strategic complementarities. Counterfactual simulations show that openness alters monetary transmission significantly. While the contractionary effect of a monetary policy shock on inflation and output tends to increase in openness, we find that monetary policy's control over inflation increases, as the output decline which is necessary to bring about a given reduction of inflation is smaller in more open economies.     

Slowdown of credit flows in Jordan in the wake of the global financial crisis: Supply or demand driven?

This paper estimates a disequilibrium model of credit supply and demand to evaluate the relative role of these factors in the slowdown of credit flows in the Jordanian economy in the wake of the global financial crisis. The empirical analysis suggests that the credit stagnation is mainly driven by the restricted credit supply amid tighter monetary policy conditions in Jordan relative to the United States, as evidenced by the widened interest differential between the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) re-discount and the U.S. Federal Reserve funds rates. Although it appears that demand side factors related to the slowdown of economic activity have also had an impact, their role has been relatively modest. The estimation results imply that economic policies targeted towards stimulating the supply of credit are likely to be a more effective tool for expanding credit flows relative to demand stimulating policies.     

Who will be a good employee in the future?

This article examines the attributes necessary for the successful employee in the future. Many of these are already familiar to the manager: flexibility and adaptability, a team approach, and the ability to see the bigger picture. Implications for the educational process and its development of successful employees are also presented.     

Do contractionary monetary policy shocks expand shadow banking?

Using VAR models for the USA, we find that a contractionary monetary policy shock has a persistent negative impact on the level of commercial bank assets, but increases the assets of shadow banks and securitization activity. To explain this “waterbed” effect, we propose a standard New Keynesian model featuring both commercial and shadow banks, and we show that the model comes close to explaining the empirical results. Our findings cast doubt on the idea that monetary policy can usefully “get in all the cracks” of the financial sector in a uniform way.     

The dynamics of US inflation: Can monetary policy explain the changes?

We investigate the relationship between monetary policy and inflation dynamics in the US using a medium scale structural model. The specification is estimated with Bayesian techniques and fits the data reasonably well. Policy shocks account for a part of the decline in inflation volatility; they have been less effective in triggering inflation responses over time and qualitatively account for the rise and fall in the level of inflation. A number of structural parameter variations contribute to these patterns.     

Should rules be simple?

The principal argument of the paper is that in an incomplete information setting, where the private sector lacks information of government objectives and has to learn about the policy rule by direct observation and estimation, simple sub-optimal rules may outperform the more complicated rule which is optimal under complete information. This result is demonstrated by simulations using an overlapping contract rational expectations model. The paper thus provides some formal reasoning to support arguments for simplicity associated with credibility and the need for the private sector to be able to monitor policy.     

Does the use of stock incentives influence the payout policy of financial institutions?

We investigate the link between payouts and stock incentives among financial institutions. We hypothesize that the varying degree of regulation across depositories, insurers, and securities firms is likely to influence the observed relation to the extent that regulation substitutes for other monitoring mechanisms. We find that managerial stock ownership is inversely related to dividend payouts across the institutions, consistent with the notion that managerial stock ownership is an effective method of reducing agency problems. We do not find evidence that the relationship occurs because of regulation since all institutions, regardless of the degree of regulation, exhibit the same inverse relationship between dividend payouts and management stock ownership. Our results suggest that, among financial institutions, regulation complements managerial stock ownership in minimizing agency problems.     

Banks’ capital,regulation and the financial crisis

This paper investigates whether regulatory capital requirements play an important role in determining banks’ equity capital. We estimate equity capital regressions using panel data of a sample of 560 banks for 2004–2010. Our results suggest that regulatory capital requirements are not first order determinants of banks’ capital structure. We document differences on the effect of most factors on banks’ share of equity according to the type of bank and to the region of the bank. Finally, we show that the determinants of this share are sensitive to the recent international financial crisis and to a set of regulatory country factors.     

How does the economic policy uncertainty affect the relationship between financial slack and firm performance in emerging countries?

This study investigates the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the relationship between slack resources and firm performance in emerging countries. By using 47,523 firm-year observations from seven emerging market economies through the period of 2010–2018, the results show an inverse U-shaped relationship between slack resources and firm performance. The findings also demonstrate that EPU acts as a negative moderator for the slack–performance relationship. In high EPU environments, the marginal benefit from one additional unit of slack is smaller relative to low EPU environments. This study contributes to the slack resources-firm performance literature by emphasizing the role of the broader external environment as a moderator.