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Discussion Paper
U.S. Interest Rates and Emerging Market Currencies: Taking Stock 10 Years After the Taper Tantrum
In 2013, a shift in expectations of market participants for the timing of the tapering of the Federal Reserve's asset purchases, and its ramifications for normalization of U.S. monetary policy, led to sharp increases in longer-term U.S. Treasury yields and volatility in broader financial markets. The episode came to be known as the "taper tantrum" because the strong market reaction came in response to Federal Reserve communications that were largely consistent with market analysts' expectations.
Working Paper
Financial Stress and Equilibrium Dynamics in Money Markets
Interest rate spreads are widely-used indicators of funding pressures and market functioning in money markets. Using weekly data from 2002 to 2015, we analyze money market dynamics in a long-run equilibrium framework where commonly-monitored spreads serve as error correction terms. We find strong evidence for nonlinearities with respect to levels of the spreads. We provide point and interval estimates for spread thresholds that quantify funding pressure points from a long-run perspective. Our results indicate significant asymmetry in the adjustment toward long-run equilibrium. We show that ...
Working Paper
Non-linearity in the Inflation-Growth Relationship in Developing Economies: Evidence from a Semiparametric Panel Model
Using data on developing economies, we estimate a flexible semiparametric panel data model that incorporates potentially nonlinear effects of inflation on economic growth. We find that inflation is associated with significantly lower growth only after it reaches about 12 percent, which is notably lower than the comparable estimate obtained from a threshold model. Our results also suggest that models with restrictive functional form assumptions tend to underestimate marginal effects of inflation on economic growth. We also document significant variation in the effect of inflation on growth ...
Working Paper
Government debt and macroeconomic activity: a predictive analysis for advanced economies
This paper explores the empirical relationship between government debt and future macroeconomic activity using data on twenty advanced economies throughout the post-war era. We use robust inference techniques to deal with the bias arising from the persistent nature of debt to GDP ratio as an endogenous predictor of GDP growth. Our results show that statistical significance of the coefficient on the debt ratio in predictive regressions changes considerably with the use of robust inference techniques. For countries with relatively low average debt ratios we find a negative threshold effect as ...
Discussion Paper
Drivers of Inflation Compensation: Evidence from Inflation Swaps in Advanced Economies
In this note, we provide a comparative analysis of inflation swaps for three advanced economies: the United States, the euro area, and the United Kingdom. We consider empirical proxies for energy prices, economic activity, exchange rates, and risky asset prices as potential drivers of inflation expectations and risk premiums in a regression framework.
Working Paper
What does financial volatility tell us about macroeconomic fluctuations?
This paper provides an extensive analysis of the predictive ability of financial volatility measures for economic activity. We construct monthly measures of aggregated and industry-level stock volatility, and bond market volatility from daily returns. We model log financial volatility as composed of a long-run component that is common across all series, and a short-run component. If volatility has components, volatility proxies are characterized by large measurement error, which veils analysis of their fundamental information and relationship with the economy. We find that there are ...
Discussion Paper
The Impact of COVID-19 on Emerging Market Economies' Financial Conditions
The emerging market economies (EMEs) – and the lower-income developing economies to an even greater extent – generally are extremely vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many EMEs have weak public health systems, poor and financially vulnerable populations, inadequate social safety nets, limited monetary and especially fiscal policy space, and high exposure to global trade and commodity prices.