Trade openness and the effectiveness of fiscal policy: some empirical evidence

Is the potency of fiscal policy lower for more open economies, as suggested by economic theory? Using annual data from the period 1951?C2007, for 62 developed and developing economies, the paper??s empirical findings show that the effectiveness of fiscal policy is indeed reduced by an economy??s trade openness, and that the effect is quantitatively substantial. In particular, the paper??s estimates suggest that an increase in trade openness by 10% of GDP reduces the magnitude of the long-run fiscal multiplier by 5?C6%.     

Interest Rates and Wage Indexation

The growth effects of European economic and monetary intergration and the progress of

regional convergence across Europe depend on whether economic in Europe is consistent with a neoclassical or an endogenous growth model. Using annual data from the 1950-1992 period for each of 20 European economies, the paper finds that steady-state real growth rates are generally unaffected by changes in the investment rate, population growth, and government consumption, evidence consistent with neoclassical growth theories. This Strengthens the likelihood of regional (perhaps conditional) convergence, and suggests that the effects of greater monetary and economic unification will be in terms of higher incomes per capita, but not in terms of permanently higher growth rates.[O40,F43]     

Testing the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis during the 1920s

This paper reexamines the forward rate unbiasedness hypothesis (FRUH) during the 1920s and it contributes to the literature as follows: first, it utilizes a database that includes currencies not studied before, as well as the 3 month forward rates; second, it applies three different approaches to test for cointegration and it shows that the choice of the technique is not of crucial importance; third, it tests for the temporal stability of the cointegration results; finally, it tests for the existence of the FRUH in the short run, by means of error correction models, whereas previous studies focused on cointegrated vectors only. Our analysis shows that for countries that did not undergo major financial turmoil during that period, there exists more favorable evidence for the FRUH.     

Financial freedom and bank efficiency: Evidence from the European Union

This paper investigates the dynamics between the financial freedom counterparts of the economic freedom index drawn from the Heritage Foundation database and bank efficiency levels. We rely on a large sample of commercial banks operating in the 27 European Union member states over the 2000s. After estimating bank-specific efficiency scores using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), we develop a truncated regression model combined with bootstrapped confidence intervals to test our main hypotheses. Results suggest that the higher the degree of an economy’s financial freedom, the higher the benefits for banks in terms of cost advantages and overall efficiency. Our results also show that the effects of financial freedom on bank efficiency tend to be more pronounced in countries with freer political systems in which governments formulate and implement sound policies and higher quality governance.     

CEO Pay Contracts and IFRS Reconciliations

Abstract

We examine whether UK managers exploit the discretion provided in the UK GAAP to IFRS reconciliation process to manage earnings and whether this earnings management is associated with the structure of the managers' compensation contracts. We use a comprehensive data set of mainly hand-collected information from the firms' annual reports to provide evidence that, given the existence of an accounting-related vesting target in their pay schemes, CEOs use UK GAAP to IFRS reconciliations as an earnings management tool. We test our hypotheses under a number of different specifications, including a propensity score matching analysis. Our study contributes to the literature on the relation between earnings management and contractual incentives by focusing on a major structural change in accounting policies.     

Accounting Accruals and Stock Returns: Evidence from European Equity Markets

Abstract

In this paper, I show a generalisation of the negative relation of traditional accruals and percent accruals with future returns in 11 of 16 European countries. Positive abnormal returns from hedge portfolios on both accrual measures summarise the economic significance of this generalisation. The magnitude of returns obtained from traditional accruals is higher than that obtained from percent accruals, contrary to existing evidence from the U.S. capital market. The magnitude of the accrual effect on stock returns based on both accrual measures is stronger in countries with higher individualism, lower uncertainty avoidance, higher equity-market development, higher equity-market liquidity, lower transaction costs, higher analyst coverage, lower analyst optimism, and lower ownership concentration. In markets where minorities have legal protection against expropriation by corporate insiders and where accrual accounting is permitted, the accrual effect based only on percent accruals is positive. Earnings opacity does not appear to exhibit a significant influence. Overall, the evidence suggests that cross-country differences in culture, equity-market setting, analysts' research output, investor protection, and ownership structure play an important role in explaining variation on the magnitude of the accrual anomaly in Europe.     

Volatility and Spillover Effects of Yen Interventions

We consider the effects of interventions by the Bank of Japan's (BoJ) on the intraday volatility of the US dollar/Japanese yen (USD/JPY) exchange rates and their spillovers to volatility of the euro/JPY exchange rates. We use 15‐minute data during the period 2000–2004 and employ multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) modeling and quartile plots of intraday volatility to analyze the intraday effects of the BoJ interventions on exchange rate volatility. The results indicate that the BoJ interventions decrease daily volatility of the USD/JPY exchange rate but increase the volatility of the euro/JPY series. On intervention days, the intraday volatility has different patterns to those on non‐intervention days.     

Forecasting exchange rate volatility using high-frequency data: Is the euro different?

We assess the performances of alternative procedures for forecasting the daily volatility of the euro’s bilateral exchange rates using 15 min data. We use realized volatility and traditional time series volatility models. Our results indicate that using high-frequency data and considering their long memory dimension enhances the performance of volatility forecasts significantly. We find that the intraday FIGARCH model and the ARFIMA model outperform other traditional models for all exchange rate series.     

Intra-Industry Growth Dynamics in the Greek Services Sector: Firm-Level Estimates for ICT-Producing,ICT-Using,and Non-ICT Industries

The stochastic patterns of firm growth are examined with the use of a data set of 4,975 firms surviving in the Greek services sector over the 1995–2001 period. The analysis first takes into account the intensity of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the services industries and then, through a system dynamic panel data technique, investigates how initial size and past growth influence firm growth. The classification of industries as three ICT-related groups provides interesting results at both the aggregated group level and the disaggregated industrial level. In general, Gibrat’s Law is accepted for firms in ICT intensive industries, while it is rejected in non-ICT industries.