Central banks have won in credibility as from the mid-eighties by keeping inflation under control. However, confidence in low inflation might have encouraged agents to excessive risk-taking, leading asset prices to rise. Moreover, the belief in a Federal Reserve guarantee against a sharp market decline spread across US markets as from the nineties. This belief, commonly referred to as the Greenspan put, raised again the question about the role of asset prices in monetary policy decisions. The problem is addressed by modeling the reaction of the Fed to stockmarket deviations from fundamentals over the period stretching from August 1987 to October 2008, which corresponds to the periods where Greenspan until January 2006 and Bernanke from thereon were chairmen. A Taylor rule describing the Fed's nominal feedback rule to inflation and economic activity on a monthly basis is extended to take account of asset prices. The indicators considered are deflation and volatility in stock prices. Furthermore, a Markov switching process allows to capture contemporaneous as well as forward-looking monetary policy responses to asset prices over the period. We find out that taking asset price deflation improves the Taylor rule fit by some 8%. In periods when the Fed was actively pursuing an expansive or restrictive monetary policy, its reaction to volatility or deflation of financial markets was significant. We also see that the reaction of the Fed to asset prices was greater during financial crises, especially when modeling a forward-looking decision process. Agents' confidence in a stronger response of the US central bank to significant market declines urging to an easing of monetary conditions in their favour was therefore not unfounded.
To date, various central banks have lacked detailed statistical evidence on developments in the unsecured interbank money market. Furfine (1999) introduced the idea of calculating unsecured overnight interbank lending by using data of a RTGS system. Based on data from the Swiss payment system (SIC) we developed an algorithm to identify unsecured interbank loans in Swiss francs. In contrast to Furfine (1999) we also identify longer-term transactions. We thereby gain a deeper insight on the size and structure of the unsecured interbank money market in Swiss francs. This is the first time that SIC data have been used to identify transactions and market rates in the unsecured Swiss franc money market. Overall, the estimates show that after the collapse of Lehman Brothers loss of confidence led to a freezing-up of the market for several months and a decrease in daily turnover.
Using 10 years of high-frequency foreign exchange data, we present evidence of time-of-day effects in foreign exchange returns through a significant tendency for currencies to depreciate during local trading hours. We confirm this pattern across a range of currencies and find that, in the case of EUR/USD, it can form a simple, profitable trading strategy. We also find that this pattern is present in order flow and suggest that both patterns relate to the tendency of market participants to be net purchasers of foreign exchange in their own trading hours. Data from alternative sources appear to corroborate that interpretation.
The decomposition of the market return into its cash-flow and discount-rate news driven components reveals that excess returns on low forward discount currency portfolios load positively on "good" news about the stock market's discount rates while high forward discount currencies load negatively on this news. Average currency portfolio returns are hence explained by different sensitivities to discount-rate news. A two-beta version of the CAPM, distinguishing between cash-flow and discount-rate betas, is able to price both currency and stock portfolio returns at the same time. Finally, we find that the relation between stock market news and foreign currency returns varies across the two either discount-rate news or both discount-rate and cash-flow news driven stock market booms of the past two decades.
Motivated by concerns over foreign currency exposures of banks in Emerging Europe, we examine the currency denomination of business loans made in Bulgaria during the period 2003-2007. We analyze a unique dataset including information on the requested and granted currency for more than hundred thousand loans granted by one bank to sixty thousand different firms. This data set allows us to disentangle demand-side from supply-side determinants of foreign currency loans. We find that 32% of the foreign currency loans disbursed in our sample were actually requested in local currency by the firm. Our analysis suggests that the bank lends in foreign currency, not only to less risky firms, but also when the firm requests a long-term loan and when the bank itself has more funding in euro. These results imply that foreign currency borrowing in Eastern Europe is not only driven by borrowers who try to benefit from lower interest rates but also by banks hesitant to lend longterm in local currency and eager to match the currency structure of their assets and liabilities.
This paper uses survey data for 29,000 households from 29 transition economies to explore how the use of banking services is related to household characteristics, bank ownership structure and the development of the financial infrastructure. At the household level we find that the holding of a bank account or bank card increases with income, wealth and education in most countries and also find evidence for an urban-rural gap, as well as for a role of religion and social integration. Our results show that foreign bank ownership is associated with more bank accounts among high-wealth, high-income, and educated households. State ownership, on the other hand, does not induce financial inclusion of rural and poorer households. We find that higher deposit insurance coverage, better payment systems and creditor protection encourage the holding of bank accounts in particular by highincome and high-wealth households. All in all, our findings shed doubt on the ability of policy levers to broaden the financial system to disadvantaged groups.
We study the dynamic general equilibrium of an economy where risk averse shareholders delegate the management of the firm to risk averse managers. The optimal contract has two main components: an incentive component corresponding to a non-tradable equity position and a variable "salary" component indexed to the aggregate wage bill and to aggregate dividends. Tying a manager's compensation to the performance of her own firm ensures that her interests are aligned with the goals of firm owners and that maximizing the discounted sum of future dividends will be her objective. Linking managers' compensation to overall economic performance is also required to make sure that managers use the appropriate stochastic discount factor to value those future dividends. General equilibrium considerations thus provide a potential resolution of the "pay for luck" puzzle. We also demonstrate that one sided "relative performance evaluation" follows equally naturally when managers and shareholders are differentially risk averse.
This paper starts by documenting that during the last decades, the human capital embodied in imports from skill abundant nations has noticeably reduced skill accumulation in the less developed world. To identify the causal relation between these variables, the analysis utilizes over-time variation in the supply of skilled labor and the extent to which this variation affects the skill content of trade given the bilateral distance between im- and exporter. In a panel estimation covering 41 non-OCED members, a one standard deviation higher geographic pressure to import human capital is associated with a 12% reduction in the national average length of schooling. The paper next develops a model to analyze the income and welfare consequences of such trade-induced human capital disaccumulation. The model is based on heterogeneous workers who make educational decisions in the presence of complete markets. When heterogeneous workers invest in schooling, high type agents earn a surplus from their investment. Trade shifts this surplus to rich countries that can use skills more efficiently. Consequently, the dynamic effects of liberalization tend to occur to initially rich countries, thus leading to divergence.
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 found to hoard less CHF 1,000 banknotes than natives. This result says that immigration reduces seigniorage (per person) as measured by currency orders. A 1% increase in the immigrant-to-native ratio is coincident with a reduction in currency orders by CHF 4,000. The dampening effect is attributed to specific traits linked to immigrants.
This study examines the behavior of Swiss house prices to immigration flows for 85 districts from 2001 to 2006. The results show that the nexus between immigration and house prices holds even in an environment of low house price inflation, nationwide rent control, and modest immigration flows. An immigration inflow equal to 1% of an area's population is coincident with an increase in prices for single-family homes of about 2.7%: a result consistent with previous studies. The overall immigration effect for single-family houses captures almost two-thirds of the total price increase.
