Journal of International Money and Finance最新文献

This paper examines net redemptions from bond funds domiciled in Ireland at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyse various empirical specifications to determine whether factors such as fund leverage, measures of liquidity, portfolio risk and portfolio concentration, among others, explain outflows from Irish-domiciled bond funds in March 2020. The findings indicate that funds with a larger share of short-term securities and riskier bond portfolios experienced higher redemptions. Our analysis also suggests that fund size and age are significant factors affecting outflows. When examining various sub-samples, we find evidence of more reactive behaviour among investors in actively managed funds compared to passively managed funds. We also find that retail bond funds demonstrate greater sensitivity to risk and leverage, while professional funds show evidence of lower risk aversion. These results provide insights that can help inform policymakers’ view of regulatory tools for market-based finance, a key priority internationally.

This paper develops a Bayesian VAR model to identify three structural shocks driving the European gas market: demand, supply, and inventory shocks. We document how gas price fluctuations have a heterogeneous pass-through to euro area prices depending on the underlying shock driving them. The pass-through is stronger and more persistent when gas prices are driven by aggregate demand or supply pressures, while inventory shocks have a weaker impact. Supply shocks, moreover, are found to pass through to all components of euro area inflation—producer prices, wages, and core inflation—which has implications for monetary policy. Finally, we document how the response of gas prices to shocks is non-linear and is significantly magnified in periods when the economy operates at capacity and, therefore, unemployment is low.

Using Chinese A-share market data, we empirically examine the impact of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on tail dependence of the underlying securities. Our results show that ETFs can increase the tail dependence of stocks in their basket, showing that the average tail dependence of a stock is higher when it has stronger ETF holding similarity with other stocks. We investigate the role of arbitrage activity and find that ETF holding similarity increases stocks’ ETF arbitrage activity. This effect is primarily on discount arbitrage rather than premium arbitrage, which leads to higher tail dependence among stocks. Alongside propagating demand shocks from the ETF market to underlying securities, ETFs also propagate tail event shock from one stock to other stocks in their baskets. Additionally, arbitrage activities through ETFs add a new layer of non-fundamental tail dependence to the underlying securities. Unlike mutual funds, ETFs lead to more frequent and idiosyncratic tail risk contagion among underlying securities. Our study sheds light on how ETFs provide new channels for risk contagion among underlying securities in emerging markets.

Using retail scanner data from Kazakhstan, an emerging economy with significant and unexpected exchange rate fluctuations, we observe an incomplete yet substantial exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) into prices. Specifically, we note a 50% change occurring a year after the initial shock. The ERPT demonstrates asymmetry in response to exchange rate movements. Notably, the direction of this asymmetry is opposite for imported versus domestic products. Furthermore, our findings indicate that ERPT is non-linear; the price response is more pronounced when the exchange shock is small, aligning with the existence of menu costs. Understanding these asymmetric and non-linear price responses to exchange rate shocks may be crucial for formulating effective inflation targeting policies, especially in emerging economies prone to high inflation.

The paper analyzes the growth impact of public and private investment shocks based on a large sample of emerging and developing countries over the period 1980–2021 with a particular focus on the Asian region. We develop new measures of investment shocks based on cyclically adjusted investment data. Estimations using local projections suggest that public investment shocks play a much greater role in boosting economic growth in comparison with private investment shocks. In EMDEs (including in Asia) the growth response to investment shocks is positive and much stronger in recessions (relative to economic expansions) and in countries with more fiscal space. Finally, public investment shocks in EMDE and Asian samples crowd-in private investment and private consumption.

Using a new set of trilemma indexes for exchange rate stability, financial market openness, and monetary policy independence, this paper first locates more than one hundred economies in the trilemma triangle over time. Second, the paper depicts individual economies’ trilemma regimes, defined by combinations of the three indexes, in the global map. Third, the paper tests econometrically the impact of monetary and fiscal policies on key macroeconomic variables (i.e., the real GDP growth rate gap, inflation, and their variability/volatility) under alternative trilemma regimes. Fourth, it examines the roles of trilemma regimes in influencing the macroeconomic variables. Econometric analysis uses a sample of 61 emerging market & developing economies over the period 1971–2020. The two-stage least squares estimation results largely support the Mundell-Fleming predictions made for three “corner” regimes. Monetary policy is effective in raising the real GDP growth rate gap and its variability under the “flexible exchange rate” corner regime, but not under the “financially open fixed rate” regime. Monetary policy is most effective in stimulating inflation and inflation volatility under the “flexible rate” regime. Fiscal policy has a positive impact on the GDP growth rate gap under the “flexible rate” regime and positive impacts on inflation and variability/volatility measures under the “financially closed fixed rate” regime, while it has no such impact under the “financially open fixed rate” regime, a somewhat surprising finding. The “financially open fixed rate” regime has a role of achieving price stability in a financially open economy.

This study explores the impact of adverse financial shocks on Chinese firms through the bank lending channel and the firm borrowing channel. Using new data linking Chinese firms to their bank(s) and three measures of exposure to international markets, we find that banks with greater exposure to the international markets cut lending more during the financial and sovereign debt crises or when there is a negative shock to OECD GDP growth. Furthermore, state-owned bank loans are more pro-cyclical than private bank loans, and would have been even more pro-cyclical if state-owned banks had not assumed any responsibility for stimulus policies. With regard to the firm borrowing channel, we find that firms with higher weighted aggregate exposure to the international markets through banks have lower net debt, cash, employment, and capital investment during crises or when there is a negative shock to OECD GDP growth. Our results have significant implications for how global financial shocks are transmitted in a regulated financial market such as China.

This study focuses on two of the most liquid assets—currencies and international equity futures indices—and investigates whether cross-momentum enhances momentum portfolios. We uncover that a combination of equity futures and currency portfolios sorted by cross-momentum outperforms a combination of those sorted by normal-momentum. The change in the Sharpe ratio is 0.32 and the economic gain based on the performance fee measure differs by 4.11% per annum. Moreover, we observe that the cross-momentum strategy is more strongly associated with commodity exporting countries. This stems from the positive relationship between equity futures and macroeconomic conditions for commodity exporting countries.

Fiscal policy is an important tool for business cycle stabilization and has significant spillover through real and financial channels. This paper estimates the spillover of US fiscal policy shock in emerging economies which is distinct from US monetary policy spillover. We find that - similar to its effect in advanced economies as documented in the literature - the shock lowers both the nominal and real policy rates in emerging economies. Results suggest a disconnect between long-term and policy rates that leads to the steepening of the yield curve in emerging economies in the medium term due to the shock. Most of these effects of US government expenditure shock on the policy rate and the yield curve in emerging economies are direct effects (financial channel) and not indirectly driven by the effect of this shock on GDP growth and inflation (real channel). Contrary to its effect in the US, we find that this shock leads to a prolonged appreciation of real effective exchange rates in emerging economies, hurts their external competitiveness, and leads to a contraction in output in emerging economies. As expected, countries having higher exports and trade-to-GDP ratio experience a bigger decline in output.