You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Episodes of increased global risk aversion, also known as risk-off episodes, have become more frequent and severe since 2007. During these episodes, currency markets exhibit recurrent patterns, as the Japanese yen, Swiss franc, and U.S. dollar appreciate against other G-10 and emerging market currencies. The pattern of these moves can be explained by a combination of fundamental factors, such as the nominal interest rate, the international investment position and measures of exchange rate misalignment, and market-liquidity factors, such as bid-offer spreads and restrictions on international capital flows. We also find that currency performance in a risk-off episode has become more related to a currency?s yield and relationship to broader risks in recent years.
This paper assesses the vulnerability of emerging markets and their banks to aggregate shocks. We find significant links between banks' asset quality, credit and macroeconomic aggregates. Lower economic growth, an exchange rate depreciation, weaker terms of trade and a fall in debt-creating capital inflows reduce credit growth while loan quality deteriorates. Particularly noteworthy is the sharp deterioration of balance sheets following a reversal of portfolio inflows. We also find evidence of feedback effects from the financial sector on the wider economy. GDP growth falls after shocks that drive non-performing loans higher or generate a contraction in credit. This analysis was used in chapter 1 of the Global Financial Stability Report (September 2011) to help evaluate the sensitivity of banks' capital adequacy ratios to macroeconomic and funding cost shocks.
This paper examines the economic and financial linkages between Morocco and Tunisia and their European partners. Using structural vector autoregressions, we find that growth shocks in European partner countries generate significant responses on growth in Morocco and Tunisia. For Tunisia, exports and, to a much lesser extent, tourism appear to be the major transmission channels. In Morocco, exports, remittances and tourism play relatively equal roles. An analysis with sectoral data supports these results.
Trade flows data show that the composition and cyclical properties of imports are similar in developed economies and emerging markets (EM) but this is not the case for exports. Unlike developed economies, (i) EM export few or only a selective set of capital goods and (ii) capital good and overall exports tend to be acyclical. The lack of procyclicality in exports drives the strong countercyclicality of EM trade balances observed in previous studies. A quantitative exercise demonstrates how the standard small open economy business cycle model can be improved for EM by incorporating these features.
We show that US natural gas prices have decoupled from oil prices following substantial institutional and technological changes. We then examine how this interrelationship has evolved in Europe using data for Algeria, one of Europe’s key gas suppliers. Taking into account total gas exports and cyclical conditions in partner countries, we find that gas prices remain linked to oil prices, though the nexus has loosened. Both high oil prices and a modest industrial recovery in partner countries have kept gas exports at low levels in recent years, suggesting changing market forces. The paper then shows how such shifts can have important macroeconomic implications for a big gas exporter such as Algeria.
This paper assesses the vulnerability of emerging markets and their banks to aggregate shocks. We find significant links between banks' asset quality, credit and macroeconomic aggregates. Lower economic growth, an exchange rate depreciation, weaker terms of trade and a fall in debt-creating capital inflows reduce credit growth while loan quality deteriorates. Particularly noteworthy is the sharp deterioration of balance sheets following a reversal of portfolio inflows. We also find evidence of feedback effects from the financial sector on the wider economy. GDP growth falls after shocks that drive non-performing loans higher or generate a contraction in credit. This analysis was used in chapter 1 of the Global Financial Stability Report (September 2011) to help evaluate the sensitivity of banks' capital adequacy ratios to macroeconomic and funding cost shocks.
This paper proposes an approach to track US$1 trillion of emerging market government debt held by foreign investors in local and hard currency, based on a similar approach that was used for advanced economies (Arslanalp and Tsuda, 2012). The estimates are constructed on a quarterly basis from 2004 to mid-2013 and are available along with the paper in an online dataset. We estimate that about half a trillion dollars of foreign flows went into emerging market government debt during 2010–12, mostly coming from foreign asset managers. Foreign central bank holdings have risen as well, but remain concentrated in a few countries: Brazil, China, Indonesia, Poland, Malaysia, Mexico, and South Africa. We also find that foreign investor flows to emerging markets were less differentiated during 2010–12 against the background of near-zero interest rates in advanced economies. The paper extends some of the indicators proposed in our earlier paper to show how the investor base data can be used to assess countries’ sensitivity to external funding shocks and to track foreign investors’ exposures to different markets within a global benchmark portfolio.
Europe’s banking system is weighed down by high levels of non-performing loans (NPLs), which are holding down credit growth and economic activity. This discussion note uses a new survey of European country authorities and banks to examine the structural obstacles that discourage banks from addressing their problem loans. A three pillared strategy is advocated to remedy the situation, comprising: (i) tightened supervisory policies, (ii) insolvency reforms, and (iii) the development of distressed debt markets.
In Everyday Conceptions of Emotion, prominent anthropologists, linguists and psychologists come together for the first time to discuss how emotions are conceptualised by people of different cultures and ages, speaking different languages. Anger, fear, jealousy and emotion itself are concepts that are bound up with the English language, embedded in a way of thinking, acting and speaking. At the same time, the metaphors underlying such concepts are often similar across languages, and children of different cultures follow common developmental pathways. The book thus discusses the interplay of social and cultural factors that humans share in their development of an understanding of the affective side of their lives. For researchers interested in emotion, development of concepts and language, cultural and linguistic influences on psychological processes.