News-driven international credit cycles

How does news about future economic fundamentals affect within-country and cross-country credit allocation? How effective is unconventional policy when financial crises are driven by unfulfilled favorable news? I study these questions by employing a two-sector, two-country macroeconomic model with a banking sector in which financial crises are associated with occasionally binding leverage constraints. In response to positive news on the valuation of non-traded sector capital which turns out to be incorrect at a later date, the model captures the patterns of financial flows and current account dynamics in Spain between 2000–2010, including the changes in the sectoral allocation of bank credit and movements in cross-country borrowing during the boom and the bust. When there are unconventional policies by a common authority in response to unfulfilled favorable news, liquidity injections perform better in ameliorating the downturn than direct assets purchases from the non-traded sector.     

商业银行高额利润现象的平抑对策

合理的利润分配是社会经济持续稳定和协调发展的基础。目前,商业银行在社会利润分配结构中享有固定利润分配特征。其原因主要在于我国商业银行的准入门槛高、市场对社会资金供不应求以及利率市场化程度不高。保持我国商业银行合理利润区间,必须进一步推进商业银行利率市场化进程,推进商业银行与企业间利益共享、风险共担机制,推进金融自由化进程。     

欠发达农村地区布放自助金融服务机具的难点及对策

银行卡发展是一项利国利民的工程,对减少现金流通、降低交易成本具有重要意义。而在农村地区,银行卡的推广和使用受制于自助金融服务机具如ATM、POS机的布放。本文着重分析了欠发达农村地区布放自助金融服务机具的难点,并提出相应的对策建议。     

我国房地产泡沫与银行信贷规模的相关性研究

本文首先从理论上深刻剖析了房地产泡沫与银行信贷规模相互之间的作用与传导机制,在此基础上选取2006年-2018年相关指标的年度数据,对房地产泡沫与银行信贷规模进行了图形拟合与周期性波动规律分析,分析发现二者存在极高的契合度。建立房地产泡沫的函数,构建协整方程实证发现银行信贷规模对房地产泡沫的长期弹性系数为0.51,从长期来看银行信贷规模每增加1%,房地产泡沫也相应增加0.51%,进一步建立VAR模型实证发现房地产泡沫与银行信贷规模互为格兰杰因果关系,二者相互影响、相互促进。通过方差分解实证发现银行信贷规模对房地产泡沫的变动具有重要的影响,另一方面,房地产泡沫是影响银行信贷规模变动最主要的因素。     

COMMUNICATION ABOUT FUTURE POLICY RATES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: A SURVEY

We discuss the theoretical rationale for central bank communication about future policy rates, either as part of inflation targeting or in the form of forward guidance. We also summarize both actual central bank communication about future policy rates and empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these types of communication. We argue that there is a disconnect between the theory and practice of forward guidance, as theory assumes commitment on the part of the central bank, while in practice central banks generally do not commit. Future theoretical research on forward guidance should therefore take the absence of commitment by central banks into account.     

Does bond market development enhance the banking sector’s efficiency in resource allocation? Industry-level evidence from Korea

Korea’s financial system used to be bank-based, with banks playing the leading role in financing corporations. As highlighted by Park et al. (2019), however, bond markets have developed rapidly in Korea and other Asian countries. The corporate bond market competes with banks as a source of finance for large borrowers. As such, bond markets may affect banking sector operation, a process known as disintermediation. In this paper, we examine whether bond market development improves the efficiency of resource allocation in Korean bank lending. We propose two channels through which bond market development affects the efficiency of bank lending. Since the two channels have opposing effects on the efficiency of banking, the issue must be settled by empirical analysis. We find that bank loans are much less efficient than bond financing in allocating resources across industries. Furthermore, banks are particularly inefficient in resource allocation in industries that rely more on bond financing. This suggests that competition from bond financing does not improve allocative efficiency of bank loans.     

Open Market Operation Effectiveness in China

This paper examines the effectiveness of target rate guidance in open market operation by the central bank in China (PBOC). We find that target rate change in open market operation is effective in adjusting the short-term Treasury rates. The target rate changing direction is more effective than the target rate changing level. There is no significant asymmetry in the effectiveness between the target rate increase and target rate decrease. We also document that the effectiveness of the target rate is conditional on liquidity operation of the same direction, especially when they both aim to loosen the monetary policy. Furthermore, consecutive operations with higher intensity appear to be more effective in adjusting the market interest rate.     

Financial liberalization and bank risk-taking: International evidence

This paper analyzes the channels through which financial liberalization affects bank risk-taking in an international sample of 4333 banks in 83 countries. Our results indicate that financial liberalization increases bank risk-taking in both developed and developing countries but through different channels. Financial liberalization promotes stronger bank competition that increases risk-taking incentives in developed countries, whereas in developing countries it increases bank risk by expanding opportunities to take risk. Capital requirements help reduce the negative impact of financial liberalization on financial stability in both developed and developing countries. However, official supervision and financial transparency are only effective in developing countries.     

Country terms of trade: trends,unit roots,over-differencing,endogeneity, time dummies,and heterogeneity

The debate about the Prebisch-Singer thesis has focused on primary commodities with some extensions to manufactures. We analyse trends in country terms-of-trade for goods and services rather than those for commodities according to the World Bank income classification. We find that the natural logarithm of the terms of trade for all groups except for the poorest has common unit roots, but none has individual unit roots. As low-income countries have no unit roots over-differencing is inefficient and biases significance levels in first differences against the fall in the terms of trade. For the low-income countries the terms of trade of goods and services are falling at a rate that is significantly negative without and with endogeneity treatment by system GMM. A comprehensive analysis of the effects of time dummies supports the result of falling terms of trade for low-income countries. When all coefficients are country-specific 50% of all low-income countries have falling terms of trade in a simultaneous equation estimation using the SUR method. Food and financial crisis have no effect on the number of countries with falling terms of trade, but (dis-)improve the terms of trade or the significance of the results for a very small number of countries.     

Poverty, food security, and nutrition in Central Asia: a case study of the Kyrgyz Republic

This paper attempts to provide insights into poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition in Central Asia in the period following independence, and presents the available evidence from household-level data in the Kyrgyz Republic. It finds that although some improvement has been made in recent years, significant levels of poverty, food insecurity, and child malnutrition still exist. The paper argues that, in the short run, efforts should be made to protect vulnerable groups by investing in information generation and building capacity to design and implement food security and nutrition policies and programs. Increasing the speed of policy reforms and investment in productivity-enhancing agricultural research and rural infrastructure are fundamental for long-tern sustainable development in Central Asia.