Working Papers
2011
November 1, 2011
Determinants of Property Prices in Hong Kong SAR: Implications for Policy
Description: This paper uses an econometric model of residential property prices in Hong Kong SAR to assess the effectiveness of alternative policies in slowing the increase in property prices. The rapid rise in property prices is well explained by macroconomic fundamentals; real GDP per capital, real domestic credit, construction costs, land supply, and the real interest rate. Policy can influence the property market though land supply and prudential and tax policy, with the latter policies taking the form of a stamp duty on property transactions and a tighter loan-to-value ratio (LTV) on lending. Land supply is the most effective policy insturment for restraining property price increases but it operates with a significant lag. The LTV and stamp duty dampen speculative activity that drives up property prices. While these policies can slow the increase in the short run, they should be guided by their long run objectives of financial stability and counteracting speculation.
November 1, 2011
Monetary Policy Transmission in Ghana: Does the Interest Rate Channel Work?
Description: This paper analyzes interest rate pass-through in Ghana. Time series and bank-specific data are utilized to highlight linkages between policy, wholesale market, and retail market interest rates. Our analysis shows that responses to changes in the policy interest rate are gradual in the wholesale market. Prolonged deviation in the interbank interest rate from the prime rate illustrate the challenges the Bank of Ghana faces when targeting a short-term money market interest rate. Asymmetries in the wholesale market adjustment possibly relate to monetary policy signaling, weak policy credibility, and liquidity management. In the retail market, pass-through to deposit and lending interest rates is protracted and incomplete.1
November 1, 2011
Intangible Capital, Relative Asset Shortages and Bubbles
Description: We analyze an overlapping generations economy with financial frictions and accumulation of both physical and intangible capital. The key difference between them is that intangible capital cannot be used as collateral for borrowing. As intangibles become more important in production, financial frictions tighten and equilibrium interest rates decline, creating the conditions for the emergence of rational bubbles. We also analyze the question of dynamic efficiency, demonstrating that, in the presence of financial frictions, neither the interest rate test nor the test proposed by Abel et al. (1989) are appropriate. Finally we show that, in general, rational bubbles are not Pareto improving in our framework.
November 1, 2011
Oil-Price Boom and Real Exchange Rate Appreciation: Is there Dutch Disease in the Cemac?
Description: The paper employs a heuristic comparative approach suggested by Ismail (2009) to search for evidence of Dutch disease in oil-rich countries of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC). While these countries have benefitted from high international oil prices in recent years, they have also experienced relatively large real exchange rate appreciations, raising concerns regarding the presence of Dutch disease and casting doubts on their ability to achieve high growth and employment in the long run. To isolate from any dynamics related to the exchange rate regime, we focus on the 14 member countries that constitute the CFA franc zone. We separate them into net oil importers and net oil exporters and look at economic growth, the real exchange rate, and the agricultural and external sectors. Based on traditional models, our findings are broadly consistent with the presence of Dutch disease in the second group during the oil-price boom. Departing from these models yields mixed results, suggesting the need to employ a case-by-case approach.
November 1, 2011
Low-Income Countries' BRIC Linkage: Are there Growth Spillovers?
Description: Trade and financial ties between low-income countries (LICs) and Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRICs) have expanded rapidly in recent years. This gives rise to the potential for growth to spill over from the latter to the former. We employ a global vector autoregression (GVAR) model to investigate the extent of business cycle transmission from BRICs to LICs through both direct (FDI, trade, productivity, exchange rates) and indirect (global commodity prices, demand, and interest rates) channels. The estimation results show that there are significant direct spillovers while indirect spillovers also matters in many cases. Based on these results, we show that growing LIC-BRIC ties have significantly helped alleviate the adverse impact of the recent global financial crisis on LIC economies.
November 1, 2011
Modeling Correlated Systemic Liquidity and Solvency Risks in a Financial Environment with Incomplete Information
Description: This paper proposes and demonstrates a methodology for modeling correlated systemic solvency and liquidity risks for a banking system. Using a forward looking simulation of many risk factors applied to detailed balance sheets for a 10 bank stylized United States banking system, we analyze correlated market and credit risk and estimate the probability that multiple banks will fail or experience liquidity runs simultaneously. Significant systemic risk factors are shown to include financial and economic environment regime shifts to stressful conditions, poor initial loan credit quality, loan portfolio sector and regional concentrations, bank creditors' sensitivity to and uncertainties regarding solvency risk, and inadequate capital. Systemic banking system solvency risk is driven by the correlated defaults of many borrowers, other market risks, and inter-bank defaults. Liquidity runs are modeled as a response to elevated solvency risk and uncertainties and are shown to increase correlated bank failures. Potential bank funding outflows and contractions in lending with significant real economic impacts are estimated. Increases in equity capital levels needed to reduce bank solvency and liquidity risk levels to a target confidence level are also estimated to range from 3 percent to 20 percent of assets. For a future environment that replicates the 1987-2006 volatilities and correlations, we find only a small risk of U.S. bank failures focused on thinly capitalized and regionally concentrated smaller banks. For the 2007-2010 financial environment calibration we find substantially elevated solvency and liquidity risks for all banks and the banking system.
November 1, 2011
A Theory of Domestic and International Trade Finance
Description: This paper provides a theory model of trade finance to explain the "great trade collapse." The model shows that, first, the riskiness of international transactions rises relative to domestic transactions during economic downturns, and second, the exclusive use of a letter of credit in international transactions exacerbates a collapse in trade during a financial crisis. The basic model considers banks' optimal screening decisions in the presence of counterparty default risks. In equilibrium, banks will maintain a higher precision screening test for domestic firms and a lower precision screening test for foreign firms, which constitutes the main mechanism of the model.
November 1, 2011
The Economic Crisis: Did Financial Supervision Matter?
Description: The Asian financial crisis marked the beginning of worldwide efforts to improve the effectiveness of financial supervision. However, the crisis that started in 2007?08 was a crude awakening: several of these improvements seemed unable to avoid or mitigate the crisis. This paper brings the first systematic analysis of the role of two of these efforts - modifications in the architecture of financial supervision and in supervisory governance - and concludes that they were negatively correlated with economic resilience. Using the emerging distinction between macro- and micro-prudential supervision, we explore to what extent two separate institutions would allow for more checks and balances to improve supervisory governance and, thus, reduce the probability of supervisory failure.
November 1, 2011
Monetary Policy and Risk-Premium Shocks in Hungary: Results from a Large Bayesian VAR
Description: We document the transmission of monetary policy and risk-premium shocks in Hungary, by applying recent advances in the Bayesian estimation of large VAR models. The method allows extracting information from over 100 series, opening the "black box" of the transmission mechanism to provide the most comprehensive description to date of the impact of these two shocks on the economy under the inflation-targeting regime. We find novel evidence that most of the channels of transmission are operational in Hungary, in spite of large liability euroization and high foreign ownership of banks and corporations. Due to financial stability concerns, monetary policy responds procyclically to risk-premium shocks. We also find that the use of such a large panel of data improves inflation forecasting performance over smaller models and renders this model suitable for policy purposes.
November 1, 2011
Velocity of Pledged Collateral: Analysis and Implications
Description: Large banks and dealers use and reuse collateral pledged by nonbanks, which helps lubricate the global financial system. The supply of collateral arises from specific investment strategies in the asset management complex, with the primary providers being hedge funds, pension funds, insurers, official sector accounts, money markets and others. Post-Lehman, there has been a significant decline in the source collateral for the large dealers that specialize in intermediating pledgeable collateral. Since collateral can be reused, the overall effect (i.e., reduced ?source' of collateral times the velocity of collateral) may have been a $4-5 trillion reduction in collateral. This decline in financial lubrication likely has impact on the conduct of global monetary policy. And recent regulations aimed at financial stability, focusing on building equity and reducing leverage at large banks/dealers, may also reduce financial lubrication in the nonbank/bank nexus.