Financial stress and sovereign debt composition

Using a panel of 13 advanced economies for the period 1980–2012, we find that periods of impaired financial intermediation mainly accrue to maturity mismatches in sovereign debt. Thus, a higher (lower) share of short-term (medium and long-term) debt leads to an increase in the financial stress index. From a policy perspective, our work suggests that debt management policies translated into longer average maturities of sovereign debt not only reduce the expected debt servicing cost, but also mitigate strains in the financial sector.     

European bank stress test and sovereign exposures

We use an event study methodology to revisit the bank stress test conducted by the European Banking Authority in 2011. Instead of only considering the final results disclosure, we consider six key official announcements during the stress test. Our results indicate that abnormal returns reversed over the course of the stress test and that the emerging sovereign crisis contributed to the stock market perception of bank health.     

The elusive costs of sovereign defaults

The evidence supporting the presence of output losses associated with sovereign defaults is based on annual observations and suffers from measurement and identification problems. This paper examines the impact of default on growth using quarterly data and finds that output contractions precede defaults and that output starts growing after the quarter in which the default took place. This indicates that default episodes mark the beginning of the economic recovery and that the negative effects of a default on output are likely to be driven by the anticipation of default, independently of whether or not the country ultimately decides to validate it.     

Exchange restrictions and devaluation crises

This paper develops a model of devaluation cycles for an economy in which foreign exchange transactions take place through both an official and a parallel market. The exchange rate differential determines the propensity to under-invoice exports. The authorities are assumed to follow a devaluation rule that relates official parity changes to the level of reserves. The analysis shows that such a rule leads to periodic cycles of erosion and recovery of foreign reserves, which bear some similarities to recent devaluation episodes in developing countries.     

Locational restructuring and financial crises

Since 1800, modern economic growth has caused an unprecedented locational restructuring of economies experiencing rapid economic development, a redistribution of population from farms and villages to towns and cities. In free market economies of the past, this urbanization process occurred in Kuznets cycles, averaging 15–25 years in duration. During these cycles, real investment typically occurred in a two-stage sequence — investment in a new production technology followed by investment in urban infrastructure — and resulted eventually in financial crisis and collapse. Recent developments in today’s less developed economies suggest the possible re-birth there of the Kuznets cycles of the past.     

Gauging potential sovereign risk contagion in Europe

This study adopts the CoVaR methodology to analyse the tail risk relationships among European sovereigns, which provide arguably important information for policymakers to identify countries that should come under close scrutiny during the current debt crisis.     

The single supervision mechanism and contagion between bank and sovereign risk

Journal of Regulatory Economics - The objective of this article is to analyse how the Single Supervision Mechanism (SSM), the first pillar of the European Banking Union, affects contagion between...     

Self-fulfilling crises with default and devaluation

We characterize optimal debt policy in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of defaults and devaluations in which self-fulfilling crises can arise. When the government cannot commit to repay its debt and cannot commit to maintain the exchange rate, consumers’ expectations of devaluation make the safe level of government debt very low. We show that, when the debt is in the crises zone—where self-fulfilling crisis can occur—the government finds it optimal to reduce the debt to exit the zone. The lower the probability that consumers assign to devaluation, however, the greater is the number of periods that the government will choose to take to exit the crisis zone. We argue that our model can help understand events in Argentina in 2001–2002 and throw light on some aspects of the current EMU sovereign debt crisis.     

中国的土地危机

我国土地资源总面积为144亿亩，具有如下主要特点:其一，山地(含丘陵)多(占土地总面积的2/3)，平地少（占1/3）;其二，较难利用的沙漠、戈壁、高寒荒漠、石山和冰川以及永久积雪地的面积较广，约占土地总面积的18%;其三，在可供农用的土地中，草地比重最大(占土地面积的41.58%，约60亿亩)，林地次之(占17.95%，约26亿亩)，耕地最少(仅占14.21%，约20亿亩);其四，耕地质量不高（高产田不到1/3），退化严重，且可耕地的后备资源少。近20～30年来，由于人口大量增长和粗放的经济增长方式，使我国土地资源的退化状况日趋严重。土地资源退化是指…     

Outward foreign direct investment and sovereign risks in developing host country

Outward foreign direct investment can affect developing, technology-receiving host countries mainly through tax revenue, technology spillover and the competition effect. With the consideration of these three effects of the outward foreign direct investment on host country, we develop a dynamic game model of interaction between foreign investors and host country from a dynamic perspective, to reveal the dynamic evolution mechanism of the sovereign risk faced by outward foreign direct investment. The result shows that: host governments usually give a specific tax holiday for outward foreign direct investors, and during the period of tax holiday investment decision of investors would be influenced by technology spillover effect, specifically, the greater the technology spillover the slower the growth of investment stock. Once the system reaches a stable state, the host country will impose a tax on multinational corporations. If the equilibrium tax rate of industries or regions which makes it easy to obtain technology spillover is high, then the equilibrium capital stock would be low.     

On the time-varying relationship between EMU sovereign spreads and their determinants

We use a dynamic multipath general-to-specific algorithm to capture structural instability in the link between euro area sovereign bond yield spreads against Germany and their underlying determinants over the period January 1999–August 2011. We offer new evidence suggesting a significant heterogeneity across countries, both in terms of the risk factors determining spreads over time as well as in terms of the magnitude of their impact on spreads. Our findings suggest that the relationship between euro area sovereign risk and the underlying fundamentals is strongly time-varying, turning from inactive to active since the onset of the global financial crisis and further intensifying during the sovereign debt crisis. As a general rule, the set of financial and macro spreads' determinants in the euro area is rather unstable but generally becomes richer and stronger in significance as the crisis evolves.     

Inflation targeting credibility and sovereign risk: evidence from Colombia

This article relates to the literature on sovereign risk in developing countries. In particular, we present empirical evidence to address the effect of inflation targeting credibility on sovereign risk based on the Colombian experience. The findings denote that credibility is an important improvement in the institutional framework to reduce the sovereign risk premium.     

Political uncertainty,risk of Frexit and European sovereign spreads

Using data from a prediction market (crowd-based forecasts), we build a daily measure capturing the risk of Frexit related to the 2017 French presidential elections. We study how unexpected changes in this new measure of political uncertainty in France affect European sovereign spreads vis-à-vis Germany. We show that our uncertainty proxy drives not only the French sovereign spread but also the spreads of those EU countries deemed the most vulnerable to the risk of desegregation of the Euro Zone. These results suggest that specific political uncertainty affects short-term investor’s expectations and may outweigh other economic determinants of sovereign spreads shortly prior to high stake elections     

Debt crisis and 10-year sovereign yields in Ireland and in Portugal

We assess the determinants of the 10-year sovereign yield for the period 2000–2015, in Portugal and in Ireland. Results show that the long-term Portuguese sovereign yield increased with the rise of the 10-year Bund yield and during the Securities Markets Programme, but decreased due to financial integration. Additionally, during the period of the economic and financial adjustment programme, there was evidence of additional rises (decreases) due to increases (decreases) in the 3-month Euribor rate, and the level of public debt. EU/IMF funding reduced sovereign yield.     

Banking crises in monetary economies

Abstract.  This paper analyzes the effect of inflation on banking crises in a model in which money and banks play essential roles. The model's equilibrium replicates some key features of actual banking crises, namely, the partial suspension of payments and the desire to hold cash even in the absence of pressing liquidity needs. When banks have access to a stable foreign currency, inflation has a threshold effect on banking crises: higher inflation reduces the likelihood of crises when inflation is below the threshold; the reverse happens when inflation exceeds the threshold. This result appears to be broadly consistent with available evidence.     

Modelling European sovereign bond yields with international portfolio effects

This paper proposes a portfolio choice model with two countries to evaluate the specific role of volatility and co-volatility risks in the formation of long-term European interest rates over the crisis and post-crisis periods with an active role of the European Central Bank. Long-term equilibrium rates depend crucially on the covariances between international bond yields anticipated by investors. Positively anticipated covariances amplify the phenomena of fundamental contagions related to the degradations of public finance and solvency of sovereign debt issuer, while negatively anticipated covariances amplify the phenomena of Flight-to-quality. The two-step econometric approach over the period January 2006 to September 2016 analyses 21 European market pairs in a bivariate GARCH framework. Empirical results show that the decline in German and French long-term rates from March 2011 is partially due to the decrease in both risk premium and covariances with periphery countries. These declines actually amplify the mechanisms of Flight-to-quality. Finally, a lower sensitivity of rate to volatility and co-volatility risks during the crisis period gives credit to the hypothesis of a occasional fragmentation of the European sovereign bond markets (De Santis and Stein, 2016, Ehrmann and Fratzscher, 2017).     

Where states and markets meet: the financialisation of sovereign debt management

Financial markets play an indispensable role in the management of sovereign debt, that is, the mechanics of how and from whom governments borrow. This paper suggests a novel, two-dimensional concept to measure the financialisation of sovereign debt management (SDM): (1) the reliance on financial markets as a governance mechanism and (2) the adoption of a sense-making framework grounded in financial economics. We split this concept into nine indicators and apply it to data from 23 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. Our analysis illustrates the predominant commonalities across countries, but at the same time, country-specific differences. We interpret them as two sides of the same coin in the light of an overarching trend of increasing alignment to financial markets. This article is not only one of the first cross-national as well as longitudinal studies of the dynamics in SDM; it also reveals that the relationship between finance and governments in the SDM is by no means one-sided.     

Discretionary policy in a monetary union with sovereign debt

This paper examines the interactions between multiple national fiscal policymakers and a single monetary policy maker in response to shocks to government debt in some or all of the countries of a monetary union. We assume that national governments respond to excess debt in an optimal manner, but that they do not have access to a commitment technology. This implies that national fiscal policy gradually reduces debt: the lack of a commitment technology precludes a random walk in steady-state debt, but the need to maintain national competitiveness avoids excessively rapid debt reduction. If the central bank can commit, it adjusts its policies only slightly in response to higher debt, allowing national fiscal policy to undertake most of the adjustment. However, if it cannot commit, then optimal monetary policy involves using interest rates to rapidly reduce debt, with significant welfare costs. We show that in these circumstances the central bank would do better to ignore national fiscal policies in formulating its policy.