infonet-economy

Do immigrants have a higher demand for large denominated banknotes than natives? This micro study examines whether cash orders for CHF 1,000 notes, a banknote used for storage purposes, is concentrated in Swiss municipalities with a high foreign-to-native ratio. Controlling for a range of regional indicators across 251 Swiss municipalities, European immigrants in Switzerland are…

How should monetary authorities react to an oil price shock? The New Keynesian literature has concluded that ensuring perfect price stability is optimal. Yet, the contrast between theory and practice is striking: Inflation targeting central banks typically favor a longer run approach to price stability. The first contribution of this paper is to show that because oil cost shares vary…

While it is well established that across-country taste differences are associated with "home market effects", there is very limited analysis of how such preference heterogeneity impacts the aggregate volume of trade and the welfare gains from liberalization. I develop a structural model of aggregate demand featuring products with heterogeneous attributes, consumers with heterogeneous…

Momentum in foreign stock market returns is exploitable as signal of currency excess returns. Past stock market winner currencies offer higher returns than past stock market loser currencies. This finding is unrelated to interest rate differentials. Funding liquidity risk explains the time series variation in foreign stock market momentum sorted currency portfolio returns. Their…

Based on survey data covering 8,387 firms in 20 countries we compare credit demand and credit supply for firms in Eastern Europe to those for firms in selected Western European countries. We find that, while 30% of firms do not need credit in Eastern Europe, their need for credit is higher than in Western Europe. The firm-level determinants of credit needs in Eastern Europe are quite…

An increasing number of oil market experts argue that OPEC members substantially overstate their oil reserves. While the economic implications could be dire, the incentives for overreporting remain unclear. This paper analyzes these incentives, showing that oil exporters may overreport to raise expected future supply, thereby discouraging oil-substituting R&D and improving their…

This article studies the relationship between the degree of banking sector stability and the subsequent evolution of real output growth and inflation. Adopting a panel VAR methodology for a sample of 18 OECD countries, we find a positive link between banking sector stability and real output growth. This finding is predominantly driven by periods of instability rather than by very…

This paper develops a liquidity measure tailored to the foreign exchange (FX) market, quantifies the amount of commonality in liquidity across exchange rates, and determines the extent of liquidity risk premiums embedded in FX returns. The new liquidity measure utilizes ultra high frequency data and captures cross-sectional and temporal variation in FX liquidity during the financial…

We explain the currency carry trade performance using an asset pricing model in which factor loadings are regime-dependent rather than constant. Empirical results show that a typical carry trade strategy has much higher exposure to the stock market and is mean-reverting in regimes of high FX volatility. The findings are robust to various extensions, including more currencies, longer…