Emerging Market Volatility


Book Description

Accommodative monetary policies in advanced economies have spurred increased capital inflows into emerging markets since the global financial crisis. Starting in May 2013, when the Federal Reserve publicly discussed its plans for tapering unconventional monetary policies, these emerging markets have experienced financial turbulence at the same that their domestic economic activity has slowed. This paper examines their experiences and policy responses and draws broad policy lessons. For emerging markets, good macroeconomic fundamentals matter, and early and decisive measures to strengthen macroeconomic policies and reduce vulnerabilities help dampen market reactions to external shocks. For advanced economies, clear and effective communication about the exit from unconventional monetary policy can and did help later to reduce the risk of excessive market volatility. And for the global community, enhanced global cooperation, including a strong global financial safety net, offers emerging markets effective protection against excessive volatility.




Market Volatility


Book Description

Market Volatility proposes an innovative theory, backed by substantial statistical evidence, on the causes of price fluctuations in speculative markets. It challenges the standard efficient markets model for explaining asset prices by emphasizing the significant role that popular opinion or psychology can play in price volatility. Why does the stock market crash from time to time? Why does real estate go in and out of booms? Why do long term borrowing rates suddenly make surprising shifts? Market Volatility represents a culmination of Shiller's research on these questions over the last dozen years. It contains reprints of major papers with new interpretive material for those unfamiliar with the issues, new papers, new surveys of relevant literature, responses to critics, data sets, and reframing of basic conclusions. Included is work authored jointly with John Y. Campbell, Karl E. Case, Sanford J. Grossman, and Jeremy J. Siegel. Market Volatility sets out basic issues relevant to all markets in which prices make movements for speculative reasons and offers detailed analyses of the stock market, the bond market, and the real estate market. It pursues the relations of these speculative prices and extends the analysis of speculative markets to macroeconomic activity in general. In studies of the October 1987 stock market crash and boom and post-boom housing markets, Market Volatility reports on research directly aimed at collecting information about popular models and interpreting the consequences of belief in those models. Shiller asserts that popular models cause people to react incorrectly to economic data and believes that changing popular models themselves contribute significantly to price movements bearing no relation to fundamental shocks.




Debt in Times of Crisis


Book Description

Debt, private and public, and in particular excessive debt, has been debated to be one of the root causes of economic crises. At the same time, economic crises are believed to lead to an increase of debt. This book, through a range of contributors, explores certain constituents of an economy and attempts to identify their contribution to debt (public and private), especially in times of crisis; namely, bonds, tariffs, social security and non-performing loans (NPLs). Furthermore, it captures the (implicit) impact of the demography on debt through tariffs and social security and investigates the effect of quantitative easing/purchase programs and as well as crises on debt. In addition, the (cost of the) reserve that a state may want to provision for, in order to secure its economy from defaulting within a certain time horizon, is also addressed and calculated. This calculation offers an alternative valuation, or pricing, of (excess) debt (default protection). This book aims to offer a comparative study of countries – especially those with a history of excessive debt - and intends to realize whether an economic crisis can genuinely deteriorate debt, or whether the debt unsustainability is preexisting to the crisis. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in economic policy and growth.




Determinants of Emerging Market Sovereign Bond Spreads


Book Description

This paper analyses the determimants of emerging market sovereign bond spreads by examining the short and long-run effects of fundamental (macroeconomic) and temporary (financial market) factors on these spreads. During the current global financial and economic crisis, sovereign bond spreads widened dramatically for both developed and emerging market economies. This deterioration has widely been attributed to rapidly growing public debts and balance sheet risks. Our results indicate that in the long run, fundamentals are significant determinants of emerging market sovereign bond spreads, while in the short run, financial volatility is a more important determinant of sperads than fundamentals indicators.




German Bond Yields and Debt Supply: Is There a “Bund Premium”?


Book Description

Are Bunds special? This paper estimates the “Bund premium” as the difference in convenience yields between other sovereign safe assets and German government bonds adjusted for sovereign credit risk, liquidity and swap market frictions. A higher premium suggests less substitutability of sovereign bonds. We document a rise in the “Bund premium” in the post-crisis period. We show that there is a negative relationship of the premium with the relative supply of German sovereign bonds, which is more pronounced for higher maturities and when risk aversion proxied by bond market volatility is high. Going forward, we expect German government debt supply to remain scarce, with important implications for the ECB’s monetary policy strategy.




Risk Management in Volatile Financial Markets


Book Description

intense competition on banks and other financial institutions, as a period of oligopoly ends: more rather than less innovation is needed to help share undi versifiable risks, with more attention to correlations between different risks. Charles Goodhart of the London School of Economics (LSE), while ques tioning the idea that volatility has increased, concludes that structural changes have made regulation more problematic and calls for improved information availability on derivatives transactions. In a thirteen country case study of the bond market turbulence of 1994, Bo rio and McCauley of the BIS pin the primary causes of the market decline on the market's own dynamics rather than on variations in market participants' apprehensions about economic fundamentals. Colm Kearney of the Univer sity of Western Sydney, after a six country study of volatility in economic and financial variables, concludes that more international collaboration in man aging financial volatility (other than in foreign exchange markets) is needed in Europe. Finally, Stokman and Vlaar of the Dutch central bank investigate the empirical evidence for the interaction between volatility and international transactions in real and financial assets for the Netherlands, concluding that such influence depends on the chosen volatility measure. The authors sug gest that there are no strong arguments for international restrictions to reduce volatility. INSTITUTIONAL ISSUES AND PRACTICES The six papers in Part C focus on what market participants are doing to manage risk.







Yield Curve Modeling and Forecasting


Book Description

Understanding the dynamic evolution of the yield curve is critical to many financial tasks, including pricing financial assets and their derivatives, managing financial risk, allocating portfolios, structuring fiscal debt, conducting monetary policy, and valuing capital goods. Unfortunately, most yield curve models tend to be theoretically rigorous but empirically disappointing, or empirically successful but theoretically lacking. In this book, Francis Diebold and Glenn Rudebusch propose two extensions of the classic yield curve model of Nelson and Siegel that are both theoretically rigorous and empirically successful. The first extension is the dynamic Nelson-Siegel model (DNS), while the second takes this dynamic version and makes it arbitrage-free (AFNS). Diebold and Rudebusch show how these two models are just slightly different implementations of a single unified approach to dynamic yield curve modeling and forecasting. They emphasize both descriptive and efficient-markets aspects, they pay special attention to the links between the yield curve and macroeconomic fundamentals, and they show why DNS and AFNS are likely to remain of lasting appeal even as alternative arbitrage-free models are developed. Based on the Econometric and Tinbergen Institutes Lectures, Yield Curve Modeling and Forecasting contains essential tools with enhanced utility for academics, central banks, governments, and industry.




Bond Markets in Africa


Book Description

African bond markets have been steadily growing in recent years, but nonetheless remain undeveloped. African countries would benefit from greater access to financing and deeper financial markets. This paper compiles a unique set of data on corporate bond markets in Africa. It then applies an econometric model to analyze the key determinants of African government securities market and corporate bond market capitalization. Government securities market capitalization is directly related to better institutions and interest rate volatility, and inversely related to the fiscal balance, higher interest rate spreads, exchange rate volatility, and current and capital account openness. Corporate bond market capitalization is directly linked to economic size, the level of development of the economy and financial markets, better institutions, and interest rate volatility, and inversely related to higher interest rate spreads and current account openness. Policy implications follow.