International Spillovers of Policy Uncertainty Staff Working Paper 2014-57 Stefan Klößner, Rodrigo Sekkel Using the Baker et al. (2013) index of policy uncertainty for six developed countries, this paper estimates spillovers of policy uncertainty. We find that spillovers account for slightly more than one-fourth of the dynamics of policy uncertainty in these countries, with this share rising to one-half during the financial crisis. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, D, D8, D80, F, F4, F42
High-Frequency Trading around Macroeconomic News Announcements: Evidence from the U.S. Treasury Market Staff Working Paper 2014-56 George Jiang, Ingrid Lo, Giorgio Valente This paper investigates high-frequency (HF) market and limit orders in the U.S. Treasury market around major macroeconomic news announcements. BrokerTec introduced i- Cross at the end of 2007 and we use this exogenous event as an instrument to analyze the impact of HF activities on liquidity and price efficiency. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Financial markets JEL Code(s): G, G1, G10, G12, G14
Persistent Leverage in Portfolio Sorts: An Artifact of Measurement Error? Staff Working Paper 2014-55 Michael Mueller Studies such as Lemmon, Roberts and Zender (2008) demonstrate how stable firms’ capital structures are over time, and raise the question of whether new theories of capital structure are needed to explain these phenomena. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C1, C18, G, G3, G32
International House Price Cycles, Monetary Policy and Risk Premiums Staff Working Paper 2014-54 Gregory Bauer Using a panel logit framework, the paper provides an estimate of the likelihood of a house price correction in 18 OECD countries. The analysis shows that a simple measure of the degree of house price overvaluation contains a lot of information about subsequent price reversals. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Housing JEL Code(s): C, C2, E, E4, E43, R, R2, R21
The Impact of U.S. Monetary Policy Normalization on Capital Flows to Emerging-Market Economies Staff Working Paper 2014-53 Tatjana Dahlhaus, Garima Vasishtha The Federal Reserve’s path for withdrawal of monetary stimulus and eventually increasing interest rates could have substantial repercussions for capital flows to emerging-market economies (EMEs). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E5, E52, F, F3, F33, F4, F42
Targeting Inflation from Below - How Do Inflation Expectations Behave? Staff Working Paper 2014-52 Michael Ehrmann Inflation targeting (IT) had originally been introduced as a device to bring inflation down and stabilize it at low levels. Given the current environment of persistently weak inflation in many advanced economies, IT central banks must now bring inflation up to target. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, Inflation targets JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E31, E5, E52, E58
Bootstrap Tests of Mean-Variance Efficiency with Multiple Portfolio Groupings Staff Working Paper 2014-51 Sermin Gungor, Richard Luger We propose double bootstrap methods to test the mean-variance efficiency hypothesis when multiple portfolio groupings of the test assets are considered jointly rather than individually. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Asset pricing, Econometric and statistical methods, Financial markets JEL Code(s): C, C1, C12, C14, C15, G, G1, G12
The Effect of the Federal Reserve’s Tapering Announcements on Emerging Markets Staff Working Paper 2014-50 Vikram Rai, Lena Suchanek The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE) program has been accompanied by a flow of funds into emerging-market economies (EMEs) in search of higher returns. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International financial markets, International topics, Monetary policy transmission JEL Code(s): C, C3, C33, E, E5, E58, F, F3, F32, G, G1, G14
Credit Market Frictions and Sudden Stops Staff Working Paper 2014-49 Yuko Imura Financial crises in emerging economies in the 1980s and 1990s often entailed abrupt declines in foreign capital inflows, improvements in trade balance, and large declines in output and total factor productivity (TFP). Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Credit and credit aggregates, Financial markets, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E2, E22, E3, E32, F, F4, F41, G, G0, G01
The Propagation of Industrial Business Cycles Staff Working Paper 2014-48 Maximo Camacho, Danilo Leiva-Leon This paper examines the business cycle linkages that propagate industry-specific business cycle shocks throughout the economy in a way that (sometimes) generates aggregated cycles. The transmission of sectoral business cycles is modelled through a multivariate Markov-switching model, which is estimated by Gibbs sampling. Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Domestic demand and components, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C2, C22, E, E2, E27, E3, E32