A revisit to the dependence structure between the stock and foreign exchange markets: A dependence-switching copula approach

This paper develops a dependence-switching copula model to examine dependence and tail dependence for four different market statuses, namely, rising-stocks/appreciating-currency, falling-stocks/depreciating-currency, rising-stocks/depreciating-currency, and falling-stocks/appreciating-currency. The model is then applied to daily stock returns and exchange rate changes for six major industrial countries over the 1990–2010 period. The dependence and tail dependence among the above four market statuses are asymmetric for most countries in the negative correlation regime, but symmetric in the positive correlation regime. These results enrich the findings in the existing literature and suggest that analyzing cross-market linkages within a time-invariant copula framework may not be appropriate.     

Foreign Banks and the Dual Effect of Financial Liberalization

In emerging countries, credit market liberalization is often motivated with the financial deepening generated by the entry of foreign financial institutions. However, there is a risk that liberalization may benefit internationally active, export‐oriented businesses at the expense of domestically oriented ones. This paper models a two‐sector economy in which foreign lenders are more efficient than local lenders at extracting value from internationally tradable collateral assets. Under some conditions the entry of foreign lenders eases entrepreneurs’ access to the credit market and raises asset prices and output, but in other circumstances it reduces the depth of the credit market and depresses the price of nontradables and output. Liberalization can have a contractionary impact by inducing a reallocation of credit from the nontradables to the tradables sector.     

Does proximity matter in international bond underwriting?

In this study, we analyze a sample of 3982 international bond issues from 31 countries to examine the impact of geographic proximity on the selection of lead underwriter in the international bond market. We find that proximate banks are more likely to lead underwrite risky bonds and non-rated bonds. On average, the total issue cost is lower if the lead underwriter is a proximate bank. The overall results suggest that geographically proximate banks have better access to private information about issuing companies. We also find that the cost reduction effect of proximate underwriting only appears in developed markets. In addition, this cost reduction effect is relatively weak in countries with a legal system that provides good investor protection.     

Monetary Policy Transmission with Interbank Market Fragmentation

This paper shows how interbank market fragmentation disrupts the transmission of monetary policy. Fragmentation is the fact that banks, depending on their country of location, have different probabilities of default on their interbank borrowings. Once fragmentation is introduced into standard theoretical models of monetary policy implementation, excess liquidity arises endogenously. This leads short-term interest rates to depart from the central bank policy rates. Using data on monetary policy operations, I show that this mechanism has been at work in the euro area since 2008. The model is used to analyze conventional and unconventional monetary policy measures.     

Creditor rights and debt allocation within multinationals

We analyze the optimal debt structure of multinational corporations choosing between centralized or decentralized borrowing. We identify how this choice is affected by creditor rights and bankruptcy costs, taking into account managerial incentives and coinsurance considerations. We find that partially centralized borrowing structures are optimal with either weak or strong creditor rights. For intermediate levels of creditor rights fully decentralized (centralized) borrowing structures are optimal if managers have strong (weak) empire-building tendencies. Decentralized borrowing is more attractive for companies focussing on short-term profitability. Credits are rather taken in countries with better creditor rights and more efficient insolvency systems.     

Risk sharing,finance, and institutions in international portfolios

We develop a standard model to show how transaction costs in international investment affect conventional tests of consumption risk sharing, both in a multilateral and a bilateral setting. We implement the tests in a novel international data set on bilateral holdings of equity, bonds, foreign direct investment (FDI) and bank loans. In our data, high foreign capital holdings are associated with international consumption risk sharing as implied by our theory. This is especially true of investment in equity or bonds, but not of foreign direct investment or bank loans. In our model, the implication is that transaction costs are higher for FDI and international loans. The discrepancy could reflect technological differences, but also the prospect of expropriation, perhaps most stringent for FDI or loans. We argue that expropriation risk is endogenous to both the borrower's institutions and its openness to international markets. The detrimental impact of poor institutions is muted in open economies, where the possibility of subsequent exclusion from world markets deters expropriation of foreign capital. We show the implied effects of institutions prevail in both the cross-section of consumption risk sharing and in observed international investment patterns.     

The dampening effect of bank foreign liabilities on monetary policy: Revisiting monetary cooperation in East Asia

This paper addresses the cost of formal monetary cooperation from the perspective of monetary policy effectiveness. As banks tend to borrow from abroad in foreign currencies to fund domestic lending, monetary policy may have a reduced effect on the credit market and the economy. Results derived from bank level data in East Asia indicate that bank foreign liabilities significantly reduce the effectiveness of the credit channel of monetary policy, implying a relatively low cost of giving up monetary autonomy.     

How do very open economies adjust to large immigration flows? Evidence from Spanish regions

We study the labor market effects of the large immigration wave in Spain between 2001 and 2006. In this period the foreign-born share increased from 6% to 13%, with a total inflow exceeding three million immigrants. Our analysis exploits the large variation in the size of immigration flows across Spain's regions. To identify causal effects, we take advantage of the fact that immigrants' location choices were strongly driven by early migrant settlements that arrived during the 1980s. We find that the relatively unskilled migration inflows did not affect the wages or employment rates of unskilled workers in the receiving regions. The growth of the unskilled labor force was absorbed mostly through increases in total employment. This increase did not originate in changes in the composition of regional output, but was instead driven by changes in skill intensity at the industry level. Regions that received a large inflow of unskilled immigrants increased the intensity of use of the now more abundant (unskilled) labor, relative to other regions. The key industries responsible for this absorption were retail, construction, hotels and restaurants and domestic services. These results are inconsistent with standard open economy models but are in line with recent empirical studies for the United States and Germany.     

Labour migration in the enlarged EU: a new economic geography approach

This paper studies the impact of migration policy liberalisation on international labour migration in the enlarged European Union (EU) in a structural economic geography approach. The liberalisation of migration policy would induce an additional 1.80–2.98% of the total EU workforce to change their country of location, with most of migrant workers relocating from the East to the West. The average net migration rate is decreasing in the level of integration, suggesting that from an economic point of view no regulatory policy responses are necessary to labour migration in the enlarged EU.     

The optimal sequencing of carrots

When aid organizations contract with local agents aid funds have the potential to be diverted to purposes other than the intended project. A multi-stage game is presented where the benefit from the project is cumulative, with the application of funds in each stage increasing both the agent's and the organization's benefit from the project. As the agent's utility of diversion increases, the allocation in each stage decreases and the project takes more stages to complete. When contracting with agents with high utilities of diversion the optimal contract involves bloated projects and a side payment to the agent upon completion. If the organization's commitment to the contract is not credible both the agent's and the organization's benefit is reduced.