WTO financial services commitments: Determinants and impact on financial stability

The paper investigates the factors that have influenced WTO members to take on their chosen level of liberalization commitments in the framework of liberalization of trade in financial services and the impact of such commitments on financial sector stability. The most important factors are economic growth, current account, trends in banking sector development, policy restrictiveness, and peer-group effects. The econometric evidence suggests that more liberal commitments may be associated with greater vulnerability to currency and banking crises—most likely a short-term effect, which should be mitigated with time through increased market efficiency and better resource allocation.     

Cross‐Border Auction Cycle Effects of Sovereign Bond Issuance in the Euro Area

We provide evidence for the euro area of spillovers from foreign public debt auctions into domestic secondary‐market auction cycles. We also confirm existing evidence of such spillovers from domestic issues into the domestic secondary market. Consistent with a theory of primary dealers’ limited risk‐bearing capacity, we find that auction cycles from domestic issues are stronger during the recent crisis period, whereas cross‐border effects are stronger in the precrisis period, but this evidence is not strong. This finding likely reflects the opposing effects of reduced sovereign bond market integration during the crisis and higher yield covariances caused by more market volatility.     

Sustainability of macroeconomic policies in selected MENA countries: Post financial and debt crises

In the wake of the recent financial and debt crises, the conduct of macroeconomic policies in the emerging MENA economies has recently become critical in determining those countries future economic situation, due to the accumulation since the early 1990s of a sizable level of external debt, and the pursuit by some countries of a fixed exchange rate regime. Using time series econometric models, this study assesses the sustainability of macroeconomic policies in a selected sample of 4 MENA countries. The empirical results point to sustainable fiscal and exchange rate policies in Tunisia and Morocco, and unsustainable external debt and exchange rate policies in Egypt and Jordan. While Egypt has recently moved to a flexible exchange rate regime, if Jordan still opts for maintaining a fixed exchange rate arrangement, it will have to implement crisis-prevention measures, namely by exercising fiscal discipline, and managing properly its external debt and foreign reserves.     

On emerging stock market contagion: The Baltic region

This study provides new evidence on emerging stock market contagion during the Global Financial crisis (GFC) and the Euro zone Sovereign Debt Crisis (ESDC). Focusing on the three emerging Baltic markets and developed European markets, proxied by the EUROSTOXX50 stock index, we explore asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation dynamics across stable and crisis periods. Empirical evidence indicates a diverse contagion pattern for the Baltic region across the two crises. Latvia and Lithuania were contagious during the GFC, while they were insulated from the adverse effects of the ESDC. On the other hand, Estonia decoupled from the negative consequences during the global turmoil period, but recoupled during the ESDC. The results could be attributed to financial and macroeconomic characteristics of the Baltic countries before and after the turmoil periods and the introduction time of the Euro as a national currency.     

How Should Slovenia Design Fiscal Policies in the Government Debt Crisis?

We investigate how fiscal policies should be designed in Slovenia during the next few years. Using the SLOPOL model, an econometric model of the Slovenian economy, we analyze the effects of different fiscal policies using simulations and determine optimal fiscal policies for Slovenia. We show that the optimal design of fiscal policies is rather close to the austerity course as detailed in the Slovenian Stability Program, revealing the small scope of possible alternative fiscal stabilization policies available due to the relatively low effectiveness of the fiscal instruments with respect to their influence on the business cycle in the Slovenian economy.     

Beyond the Optimistic Curse: A New Multiscenario Approach to Debt Sustainability Assessment

While a careful and accurate debt sustainability assessment (DSA) is crucial for an efficient macroeconomic management, the most widely used framework introduced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suffers from several drawbacks that render its results overoptimistic and misleading. In this article, we correct the methodology by demonstrating how policy makers can develop country-specific “intermediate” forecasts of the determinants of debt dynamics, in addition to coherent “optimistic” and “pessimistic” scenarios. Our application to the case of Egypt illustrates that the debt-to-GDP ratio could increase to more than 100 percent by 2015, in contrast with the 61 percent projected by the IMF in 2010.     

Household indebtedness in Korea: Its causes and sustainability

This paper investigates why household debt in Korea has increased so rapidly over the past decade and whether it is sustainable, adopting a multi-faceted approach which includes a time series analysis, a quantitative analysis based on household panel data, and an analysis using a debt dynamics equation derived from the household budget constraint. A regression analysis reveals that household debt growth has been significantly related to house price increases, banks’ lax attitudes toward household lending, and financial institutions’ favorable funding conditions. Also 70–80% of the total debt increase has been accounted for by high income or newly indebted households. The debt dynamics equation analysis shows that the rapid rise in the ratio of household debt to disposable income is attributable not only to the increase in household asset purchases but also to the dampened growth in disposable income and the reduced savings rate. The sustainability analyses indicate that Korean households’ debt sustainability is unlikely to deteriorate sharply within a short period of time unless two extreme scenarios, under which house prices decline by 5% a year over the next five years, or a significantly large macroeconomic shock similar to the 1997 crisis hits the economy, would be realized.     

Why do commercial banks hold government bonds? The case of Japan

We investigate the determinants of the demand for Japanese government bonds (JGBs) by commercial banks in Japan. In particular, by estimating portfolio equations for JGB demand and bank loans, based on a panel data set from the late 1990s to the 2000s, we rigorously test the popular assertion that the long stagnation of the real economy caused a shift in the portfolios of commercial banks from bank lending to JGBs. We find that the popular assertion is not empirically supported. Rather, the portfolio shift from loans to JGBs has been caused by a fall in the ratio of the loan rate to unit lending costs, or the bank’s price–cost margin for lending.