International Finance最新文献

This paper shows that bilateral currency crises reduce bilateral trade up to 50% after controlling for the depreciation rate. Using a trade model, these reductions are connected to the welfare costs of currency crises. The results show that a single currency crisis can result in welfare reductions through changes in international trade corresponding to more than 10% (and up to 41%) of the costs of autarky for 23 different currency crisis episodes between 1960 and 2014. These welfare costs are also shown to be greater than the welfare gains from having free trade agreements and using common currencies for 25 different currency crisis episodes.

We compute steady-state economic growth—defined as the rate of growth that the economy would converge to in the absence of new shocks. As we show, this rate can be computed in real-time by means of a parsimonious time-varying parameter (TVP) vector autoregression model. Our procedure offers a relatively agnostic estimation of benchmark equilibrium growth rates. Estimates show that the steady-state gross domestic product growth rate in the case of the United States has declined from just above 3% per year in the 1990s to 2.4% at present. Results for other six advanced economies and the euro area indicate that the steady-state growth rate, which is consistent with stable inflation and financial conditions, has been relatively stable since 2010 in most cases in spite of a recent slowdown in actual GDP growth rates. In contrast, per capita steady-state growth rates during the last decade were typically lower than in the 1990s.

This paper proposes a simple but comprehensive structural vector autoregressive model to examine the underlying factors of oil price dynamics. The distinguishing feature is to explicitly assess the role of expectations about future aggregate demand and oil supply in addition to the traditional realized aggregate demand and supply factors. Our empirical analysis shows that identified future demand and supply shocks are as important as the traditional realized demand and supply shocks in explaining historical oil price fluctuations. The empirical result indicates that the influence of oil price changes on global output varies according to the nature of each shock.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis like no other in modern times, and there is a growing apprehension about handling potentially contaminated cash. This paper is the first empirical attempt in the literature to investigate whether the risk of infectious diseases affects demand for physical cash. Since the intensity of cash use may influence the spread of infectious diseases, this paper utilizes two-stage least squares methodology with instrumental variable to address omitted variable bias and account for potential endogeneity. The empirical analysis indicates that the spread of infectious diseases lowers demand for physical cash, after controlling for macroeconomic, financial, and technological factors. This effect, withstanding several robustness checks, is economically and statistically significant. While the transactional constraints imposed by the coronavirus pandemic could become a catalyst for the use of digital technologies around the world, electronic payment methods may not be universally available in every country owing to financial and technological bottlenecks.