International Finance最新文献

This paper examines the effect of tax progressivity on optimal monetary policy in a two-country new Keynesian model. We first address the issue that coefficients in both structural equations and the central bank's loss function are crucially affected by a change in tax progressivity in both countries. Second, we show that a change in tax progressivity significantly affects the properties of international monetary policy transmission. Third, we demonstrate that the impact of tax progressivity on international monetary policy transmission depends on the value of the constant relative risk-aversion coefficients.

This paper studies the dynamics of unemployment (u) and its natural rate (u*), with u* measured by real-time estimates for 29 countries from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. We find strong evidence of hysteresis: an innovation in u causes u* to change in the same direction, and therefore has permanent effects. For our baseline specification, a one-percentage-point deviation of u from u* for 1 year has a long-run effect of 0.16 points on both variables. When we allow asymmetry, we find, perhaps surprisingly, that decreases in u have larger long-run effects than increases in u.

Prolonged rapid growth, that is, the ‘catching-up’ process through which countries close the gap to the development frontier, is known to be accompanied by high rates of household saving. This phenomenon is central in explaining the direction of international capital flows and trade imbalances in the past several decades, yet it is very much in contradiction to prevailing macroeconomic theory. This paper finds that a standard life-cycle model, even when integrated with uncertainty about future growth and with credit constraints, is completely unable to replicate the relations between growth and saving, represented by three stylized facts gleaned from the empirical literature. However, adding utility from relative consumption to the model allows for the full replication of these relations.

This study examines the informativeness of individual investors in the stock market. Specifically, we study the EasyInteraction Platform administrated by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange of China. This public platform allows individual investors to openly ask corporate insiders questions and requires the corporate insiders to answer these questions. Conducting a content analysis on the investor–firm conversations, we find that the negative tones in the investor questions have a permanent negative effect on stock prices, followed by a lower degree of earnings surprises. This effect is robust after controlling for media coverage as well as firm-specific financial variables, and after ruling out short-sellers and the firm competitors as the source of the negative messages. Overall, our results suggest that individual investors disclose value-related information through public communications with corporate insiders.

This study analyzes the role of push–pull factors on the level, volatility and comovement of capital flows in emerging markets (EMs). Taking the commonality of capital flows into account, we employ the panel Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity model developed by Cermeño and Grier for 16 EMs. This method not only accounts for country-specific heterogeneity and cross-section dependence but also allows the examination of the sources of the level, volatility and comovement of capital flows in a single step. The results show that domestic factors explain two-thirds of the variation in net capital-flow volatility. While both global and domestic factors, with the prominent ones being global risks and domestic economic growth, influence the comovement, their impacts somewhat vary by the types of capital flows.

This study revisits the foreign direct investment (FDI)–growth nexus in Africa, categorizing countries as resource-rich or resource-scarce for the period 2000–2017 in an attempt to capture the impact that cross-country natural resource endowment differences may have on the FDI–growth relationship. Thus, the study is an attempt to answer the question: Does being a natural resource-abundant or resource-scarce country alter the FDI‒growth nexus? Using the System Generalized Method of Moments, it is found that the effects of FDI on economic growth vary depending on countries' resource richness. While FDI affects growth positively and significantly in the resource-scarce category, the size of such an effect varies across countries within the group. The better the human capital and institutions, the higher the FDI-induced growth. However, no effect of FDI on growth has been identified for the resource-rich category. The findings suggest that African countries in general, and resource-rich economies in particular, need to look carefully and critically at the type of FDI inflows they receive.

Using bilateral capital-flow data from 10 advanced reporting economies, with over 186 bilateral country pairs, from 2000 to 2016, this paper provides evidence of the significance of gravity factors, such as information asymmetries and economic ties, in explaining cross-border bilateral financial-asset flows. In addition, this study offers new evidence of regional contagion, with bilateral capital flows decreasing more for pairs of countries with closer geographic proximity (or with less information friction) than for those that are farther apart when global risk aversion rises. These findings have policy implications for the importance of information frictions, bilateral trade ties and regional cooperation in determining the level of bilateral financial-asset flows.

This paper offers a detailed investigation of the foreign-exchange risk premium using a structural relationship in the inflation-index bond market, first introduced by Clarida. Unlike the conventional vector autoregressive (VAR) approach, this approach estimates risk premium through the non-arbitrage relationship between investing in inflation-indexed bonds from two countries and works in the market information set. A rise in the estimated foreign-currency risk premium helps to forecast dollar depreciation in subsequent periods. And the forecasting power is stronger than that of the other existing VAR approaches.

We evaluate the macroeconomic effects of long-term sovereign-bond purchases by the central bank in an economy that is likely to be characterized by a low equilibrium real interest rate and a non-negligible probability of hitting the zero lower bound (ZLB) on the monetary-policy rate. Our analysis is based on simulations of a dynamic general equilibrium model for the euro area. The main results are the following. First, long-term sovereign-bond purchases reacting to a positive inflation gap help stabilize macroeconomic conditions when the monetary-policy rate hits the ZLB. Second, these purchases are an effective stabilization tool following positive shocks to the sovereign term premium and negative shocks to aggregate demand. Third, to stabilize the effects of expansionary demand shocks, the central bank can increase the monetary-policy rate according to an ‘aggressive’ Taylor rule, instead of selling long-term sovereign bonds.