Search Results
Report
U.S. Monetary Policy Spillovers to Emerging Markets: Both Shocks and Vulnerabilities Matter
We use a macroeconomic model to explore how policy drivers and country vulnerabilities matter for the transmission of U.S. monetary policy shifts to emerging markets. Our model features imperfections in domestic and international financial markets and imperfectly anchored inflation expectations. We show that higher U.S. interest rates arising from stronger U.S. demand generate modestly positive spillovers to activity in emerging markets with stronger fundamentals, but can be adverse for vulnerable countries. In contrast, U.S. monetary tightenings driven by a more-hawkish policy stance cause a ...
Journal Article
How COVID-19 Has Affected the Municipal Bond Market
Between increased spending related to COVID-19, a delayed tax-filing deadline and lack of liquidity, March was a challenging month for the municipal bond market.
Working Paper
Bond Flows and Liquidity: Do Foreigners Matter?
In their search for yield in the current low interest rate environment, many investors have turned to sovereign debt in emerging economies, which has raised concerns about risks to financial stability from these capital flows. To assess this risk, we study the effects of changes in the foreign-held share of Mexican sovereign bonds on their liquidity premiums. We find that recent increases in foreign holdings of these securities have played a significant role in driving up their liquidity premiums. Provided the higher compensation for bearing liquidity risk is commensurate with the chance of a ...
Discussion Paper
Should Emerging Economies Embrace Quantitative Easing during the Pandemic?
Emerging economies are fighting COVID-19 and the economic sudden stop imposed by lockdown policies. Even before COVID-19 took root in emerging economies, however, investors had already started to flee these markets–to a much greater extent than they had at the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis (IMF, 2020; World Bank, 2020). Such sudden stops in capital flows can cause significant drops in economic activity, with recoveries that can take several years to complete (Benigno et al., 2020). Unfortunately, austerity and currency depreciations as enacted during the global financial crisis ...
Working Paper
U.S. Unconventional Monetary Policy and Transmission to Emerging Market Economies
We investigate the effects of U.S. unconventional monetary policies on sovereign yields, foreign exchange rates, and stock prices in emerging market economies (EMEs), and we analyze how these effects depend on country-specifc characteristics. We find that, although EME asset prices, mainly those of sovereign bonds, responded strongly to unconventional monetary policy announcements, these responses were not outsized with respect to a model that takes into account each country's time-varying vulnerability to U.S. interest rates affected by monetary policy shocks.
Report
Measuring Global Financial Market Stresses
We propose measures of financial market stress for forty-six countries and regions across the world. Our measures indicate that worldwide financial market stresses rose significantly in March following the widespread economic shutdowns in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, hardly anywhere in the world did these March peaks in financial stresses reach those seen during the trough of the 2007-09 Global Financial Crisis. Since March, financial market conditions normalized rapidly with financial market stresses around average levels. We also show that our financial stress measures ...
Working Paper
Nowcasting Turkish GDP and News Decomposition
Real gross domestic product (GDP) data in Turkey are released with a very long delay compared with other economies, between 10 and 13 weeks after the end of the reference quarter. To infer the current state of the economy, policy makers, media, and market practitioners examine data that are more timely, that are released at higher frequencies than the GDP. In this paper, we propose an econometric model that automatically allows us to read through these more current and higher-frequency data and translate them into nowcasts for the Turkish real GDP. Our model outperforms nowcasts produced by ...
Discussion Paper
Financial Intermediaries and the Changing Risk Sensitivity of Global Liquidity Flows
Global risk conditions, along with monetary policy in major advanced economies, have historically been major drivers of cross-border capital flows and the global financial cycle. So what happens to these flows when risk sentiment changes? In this post, we examine how the sensitivity to risk of global financial flows changed following the global financial crisis (GFC). We find that while the risk sensitivity of cross-border bank loans (CBL) was lower following the GFC, that of international debt securities (IDS) remained the same as before the GFC. Moreover, the changes in risk sensitivities ...
Working Paper
Euro Area and U.S. External Adjustment: The Role of Commodity Prices and Emerging Market Shocks
The trade balances of the Euro Area (EA) and of the U.S. have improved markedly after the Global Financial Crisis. This paper quantifies the drivers of EA and U.S. economic fluctuations and external adjustment, using an estimated (1999-2017) three-region (U.S., EA, rest of world) DSGE model with trade in manufactured goods and in commodities. In the model, commodity prices reflect global demand and supply conditions. The paper highlights the key contribution of the post-crisis collapse in commodity prices for the EA and U.S. trade balance reversal. Aggregate demand shocks originating in ...
Report
The emerging market economies in times of taper-talk and actual tapering
The emerging market economies (EME) experienced financial distress during two recent periods, both linked to the prospect of the Federal Reserve starting to slow its asset purchases. This policy change was expected to reverse the capital flows directed to the EME. Despite this aggregate effect, a closer analysis shows that there were significant differences across the EME during the time when talk of the upcoming taper began and the period when the policy was implemented. The author makes use of the literature on currency crises to analyze the different cross-country responses and to identify ...