1,721,051 research outputs found
Let's make it clear: how central counterparties save(d) the day
Full text linkThe bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 will certainly be featured in history books as one of the greatest financial failures so far, but it will also be recorded as yet another episode of the historically successful performance of clearing arrangements in ensuring the resiliency of markets. Recognizing the usefulness of safe and sound clearing and settlement procedures, the Federal Reserve has recently supported the attempt to shift the clearing of some contracts to a central counterparty. In this article, Cyril Monnet outlines the arguments in favor of central counterparty clearing, the economic rationale for trade clearing through a central counterparty, and some possible limits to the advantages of clearing trades through a central counterparty.Bankruptcy ; Risk
Rehypothecation
Full text linkHow would you feel if even though you were making regular monthly payments, your mortgage bank sold your house? This may seem like an odd question, but this type of situation happens every day in financial markets in a practice known as rehypothecation. Although such practices may be hard for nontraders to understand, rehypothecation is widespread in financial markets. Following the crisis of 2007-2009, the Dodd-Frank Act put restrictions on rehypothecation for derivatives. To understand the scope of these restrictions, we need to understand the role of rehypothecation in financial trades. In this article, Cyril Monnet discusses questions such as: Which party to a financial trade does rehypothecation benefit? Are there limits to its advantages? And how should it be regulated? There are no hard and fast answers to the last question, but the author notes that we can make a more informed decision about the pros and cons of various forms of regulation if we understand the underlying economics.Financial markets ; Financial Regulatory Reform (Dodd-Frank Act)
The International Equity Holdings of Euro Area Investors
Full text linkWe provide a systematic analysis of bilateral, source and host factors driving portfolio equity investment by euro-area countries, using newly-released data on international equity holdings at the end of 2001. We find that bilateral equity holdings are strongly linked to bilateral trade in goods and services and are also associated with proxies for informational proximity. We further document that there exists a significant “euro-area bias”, with euro-area countries investing in other euro-area countries over and above the amount predicted by underlying fundamentals.International portfolio equity investment, international trade; gravity.
Export dynamics in Small Open Economies: Indigenous Irish Manufacturing Exports, 1985-2003
Full text linkThe aim of this paper is to explore how a recent methodology developed to look at export dynamics in a region in a large economy can be extended to look at export dynamics in a small open economy, where local market size means that enterprises tend to engage in exporting at an early stage in their development. Building on work by Wagner (2004) and in the context of the recent trade modelling of export heterogeneity (e.g., Melitz (2003)), this paper explores export dynamics in the Irish indigenous manufacturing sector using Davis, Haltiwanger and Schuh (1996) type decomposition techniques from the labour turnover literature. Overall export growth rates in the manufacturing sector vary widely, and we focus particularly on two years when exceptional rates of growth and decline were experienced. We conduct our analysis using a plant level panel data set constructed from the annual Irish Census of Industrial Production for the period 1985 to 2003. We find that there is considerable entry/re-entry and exit/re-exit in the export market but most of the export dynamics are dominated by the activities of continuing exporters.Exports; decomposition, manufacturing, plant-level panel data
Global bond portfolios and EMU
Full text linkWe examine the bilateral composition of international bond portfolios for the euro area and the individual EMU member countries. We find considerable support for “euro area bias”: EMU member countries disproportionately invest in one another relative to other country pairs. Another striking pattern is the positive connection between trade linkages and financial linkages in explaining asymmetries across EMU member countries in terms of their outward and inward bond investments vis-à-vis external counterparties. At the aggregate level, it is those countries physically closest to the euro area that are both the most important destinations and sources for external bond investment vis-à-vis the euro area. Our empirical results support the notion that financial regionalization is the leading force underlying financial globalization. JEL Classification: E4, F2, F3, F4bond portfolios, EMU, financial integration
Global Bond Portfolios and EMU
Full text linkWe examine the bilateral composition of international bond portfolios for the euro area and the individual EMU member countries. We find considerable support for "euro area" bias: EMU member countries disproportionately invest in one another relative to other country pairs. Another striking pattern is the positive connection between trade linkages and financial linkages in explaining asymmetries across EMU member countries in terms of their outward bond investments vis-a-vis external counterparties. Our empirical results underline the impact of currency union on financial integration and support the notion that financial regionalization is the leading force underlying financial globalization.
Global Bond Portfolios and EMU
Full text linkWe examine the bilateral composition of international bond portfolios for the euro area and the individual EMU member countries. We find considerable support for âeuro area bias”: EMU member countries disproportionately invest in one another relative to other country pairs. Another striking pattern is the positive connection between trade linkages and financial linkages in explaining asymmetries across EMU member countries in terms of their outward and inward bond investments vis-a-vis external counterparties. At the aggregate level, it is those countries physically closest to the euro area that are both the most important destinations and sources for external bond investment vis-a-vis the euro area. Our empirical results support the notion that financial regionalization is the leading force underlying financial globalization.
On prosperity and posterity: the need for fiscal discipline in a monetary union
Full text linkWe show how in a Blanchard-Yaari, overlapping generations framework, perfect substitutability of government bonds in Monetary Union tempts governments to exploit the enlarged common pool of savings. In Nash equilibrium all governments increase their bond financed transfers to current generations (prosperity effect) at the expense of future generations (posterity effect). The resulting deficit bias occurs even if one assumes that before Monetary Union countries had eliminated their deficit bias by designing appropriate domestic institutions. The paper provides a rationale for an increased focus on fiscal discipline in Monetary Union, without the need to assume imperfect credibility of existing Treaty provisions or to refer to extreme situations involving sovereign default. We draw on existing empirical evidence to argue that the degree of government bond substitutability within the European Monetary Union is an order of magnitude larger than in the global economy. JEL Classification: D62, E61, E63bond market integration, common pool, European Monetary Union, fiscal discipline, fiscal rules, fiscal spillover effects, overlapping generations
Monetary Policy in a Channel System
Full text linkChannel systems for conducting monetary policy are becoming increasingly popular. Despite their popularity, the consequences of implementing policy with a channel system are not well understood. We develop a general equilibrium framework of a channel system and investigate the optimal policy. A novel aspect of the channel system is that a central bank can "tighten" or "loosen" its policy without changing its target rate by increasing the interest-rate spread symmetrically around the target rate. This questions the characterization of optimal policy through interest-rate rules, as done in a large body of the literature on the optimal design of interest-rate rules.monetary policy, interest rates, search
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