Sovereign risk and belief-driven fluctuations in the euro area

Sovereign risk premia in several euro area countries have risen markedly since 2008, driving up credit spreads in the private sector as well. We propose a New Keynesian model of a two-region monetary union that accounts for this “sovereign risk channel.” The model is calibrated to the euro area as of mid-2012. We show that a combination of sovereign risk in one region and strongly procyclical fiscal policy at the aggregate level exacerbates the risk of belief-driven deflationary downturns. The model provides an argument in favor of coordinated, asymmetric fiscal stances as a way to prevent self-fulfilling debt crises.     

Sources of business fluctuations: Financial or technology shocks?

Despite the widespread belief that technology shocks are the main source of business fluctuations, recent empirical studies indicate that in the absence of financial frictions, a shock to the marginal efficiency of investment is the main source and is closely related to financial conditions for investment. We incorporate a financial accelerator mechanism and two types of financial shocks to the external finance premium and net worth in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with shocks to the marginal efficiency of investment, the investment-good price markup, and the rates of neutral and investment-specific technological changes. This model is estimated using eleven US time series that include data on loan, net worth, the loan rate, and the relative price of investment. Our estimation results show that the (non-stationary) neutral and investment-specific technology shocks primarily drive output and investment fluctuations, while the external finance premium shock plays an important role for investment fluctuations. This financial shock induced substantial falls and subsequent sharp hikes in the external finance premium and caused boom–bust cycles over the past two decades.     

Floor-level premiums in private housing: the case of condominiums in Singapore

Using a sample consists of 3367 actual condominium sales transacted in resale market from May 2012 to April 2015 from the Singapore Urban and Redevelopment Authority, a hedonic pricing model is used to investigate for the presence of floor-level premiums in the private housing market, condominium, in District 23 of Singapore. Unit size, types of land tenure and the distance to the nearest mass rapid transit (MRT) station are also used as other independent variables. The estimated coefficient of each of these independent variables is statistically significant. Each of these independent variables also has positive estimated coefficient, suggesting that they have positive effects on condominium resale prices. Main findings are (a) there is a presence of floor-level premium; (b) the condominiums with a distance more than 400 m to the MRT station get higher resale prices; and (c) there is an increasing effect of floor level on condominium price.     

Revisiting the risk-return relation in the Chinese stock market: Decomposition of risk premium and volatility feedback effect

The empirical results of the risk-return relationship are mixed for both mature and merging markets. In this paper, we develop a new volatility model to revisit the risk-return relation of the aggregate stock market index by extending the Realized GARCH model of Hansen et al. (2012) with the Wang and Yang (2013) framework, in which the overall risk-return relation is decomposed into a risk premium and a volatility feedback effect. An empirical analysis of three major Chinese stock indices reveals positive risk premium and negative volatility feedback effect, and those findings are stable across different markets and sub-samples. However, their relative magnitudes differ between markets and varies through time.     

Contained crisis and socialized risk: Unconventional monetary policy by the Bank of Japan in the 1890s

In the 1880s, Japan experienced its first stock investment boom, which was highly leveraged by the banking sector. In 1890, its first financial crisis occurred and triggered a de-leveraging process. With a high lower bound of the conventional interest rate intervention under the fixed exchange rate regime, the Bank of Japan decided to implement a massive securities purchases first time among major industrial economies and continued this unconventional policy until the early 1900s. We examine how the unconventional intervention for a decade affected the stock prices and the trade volumes, and show that the upward distortion in market pricing was considerable and that the equity-risk premium accordingly dropped, which meant socialization of the risk associated with the industrial investment.     

Monetary Policy Uncertainty and the Response of the Yield Curve to Policy Shocks

This paper studies the nonlinear response of the term structure of interest rates to monetary policy shocks and presents a new stylized fact. We show that uncertainty about monetary policy changes the way the term structure responds to monetary policy. A policy tightening leads to a significantly smaller increase in long-term bond yields if policy uncertainty is high at the time of the shock. We also look at the decomposition of bond yields into expectations about future policy and the term premium. The weaker response of yields is driven by the fall in term premia, which fall more strongly if uncertainty about policy is high. Conditional on a monetary policy shock, higher uncertainty about monetary policy tends to make securities with longer maturities relatively more attractive to investors. As a consequence, investors demand even lower term premia. These findings are robust to the measurement of monetary policy uncertainty, the definition of the monetary policy shock, and to changing the model specification.     

News sentiment and sovereign credit risk

We explore the impact of media content on sovereign credit risk. Our measure of media tone is extracted from the Thomson Reuters News Analytics database. As a proxy for sovereign credit risk we consider credit default swap (CDS) spreads, which are decomposed into their risk premium and default risk components. We find that media tone explains and predicts CDS returns and is a mixture of noise and information. Its effect on risk premium induces a temporary change in investors’ appetite for credit risk exposure, whereas its impact on the default component leads to reassessments of the fundamentals of sovereign economies.     

The price of going green: the role of greenness in green bond markets

In this paper, we empirically investigate how greenness information is priced in the green bond market. Our comparison of liquidity-adjusted yield premiums of green bonds versus synthetic conventional bonds indicates that, on average, there is no robust and significant yield premium or discount on green bonds. However, green bonds certified by an external reviewer enjoy a discount of about 6 bps. Furthermore, green bonds that obtain a Climate Bonds Initiative certificate show a discount of around 15 bps. The findings suggest that a universally accepted greenness measure can benefit the development of the green bond market.     

Testing commodity futures market efficiency under time-varying risk premiums and heteroscedastic prices

We propose a novel test to measure market efficiency while estimating the time-varying risk premiums of commodity futures, given that the prices are heteroscedastic. The risk premium is estimated using a state-space model with a Kalman filter modified for heteroscedasticity. Using 79 commodity futures traded on 16 exchanges during the period 2000–2014 and a Monte Carlo simulation, we demonstrate that the proposal produces robust results compared with conventional approaches. The global financial crisis has improved the efficiency and affected the trading volumes of commodity futures, but it has had no effect on the average or the volatility of risk premiums.     

How psychological and contextual factors contribute to travelers’ propensity to choose green hotels?

Despite the growing popularity of green hotels, there remains a dearth of research examining travelers’ intentions to choose green hotels. The study addresses this research gap by developing and testing an integrated model of green hotel behavior in an emerging market of India. We use a sequential approach of SEM and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis on 347 responses collected from Indian travelers to gain a more in-depth understanding of the role of biospheric value, green trust, willingness to pay premium, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control in determining green hotel intentions. The findings show that presence of green trust is a significant and necessary condition for green hotel choice. Additionally, absence of willingness to pay premium, biospheric value, attitude, and subjective norm were found to deter travelers from choosing green hotels. These findings offer unique insights for managers in developing marketing strategies to enhance travelers’ green hotel adoption.