Volatility, Growth and Financial Crises
This research group analyses the build-up of financial vulnerabilities and real consequences of financial crises. Different policy shocks and the causal reaction of macroeconomic aggregates are identified. Early-warning models describe the cyclical nature of financial vulnerabilities.
IWH Data Project: Financial Stability Indicators in Europe
Research Cluster
Financial Stability and RegulationYour contact
Mitglied - Department Macroeconomics
EXTERNAL FUNDING
01.2018 ‐ 12.2018
International Monetary Policy Transmission
Deutsche Bundesbank
01.2017 ‐ 12.2018
Early-warning Models for Systemic Banking Crises
German Research Foundation (DFG)
Refereed Publications
Exchange Rate Regime, Real Misalignment and Currency Crises
in: Economic Modelling, No. 34, 2013
Abstract
Based on 69 sample countries, this paper examines the effect of macroeconomic fundamentals on real effective exchange rates (REER) in these sample countries. Using the misalignment of actual REER from its equilibrium level, we have estimated the factors explaining the extent of currency over- or under-valuation. Overall, we find that the higher the flexibility of the currency regime, the lower is the misalignment. The estimates are robust to different sub-samples of countries. We then explore the impact of such misalignment on the probability of a currency crisis in the next period, indicating the extent to which misalignment could be used as a leading indicator of a potential crisis. This paper thus makes a new contribution to the debate on the choice of exchange rate regime by bringing together real exchange rate misalignment and currency crisis literature.
Predicting Financial Crises: The (Statistical) Significance of the Signals Approach
in: Journal of International Money and Finance, No. 35, 2013
Abstract
The signals approach as an early-warning system has been fairly successful in detecting crises, but it has so far failed to gain popularity in the scientific community because it cannot distinguish between randomly achieved in-sample fit and true predictive power. To overcome this obstacle, we test the null hypothesis of no correlation between indicators and crisis probability in three applications of the signals approach to different crisis types. To that end, we propose bootstraps specifically tailored to the characteristics of the respective datasets. We find (1) that previous applications of the signals approach yield economically meaningful results; (2) that composite indicators aggregating information contained in individual indicators add value to the signals approach; and (3) that indicators which are found to be significant in-sample usually perform similarly well out-of-sample.
Sovereign Default Risk in the Euro-periphery and the Euro-candidate Countries
in: Journal of Comparative Economics, 2011
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The Role of Uncertainty in the Euro Crisis - A Reconsideration of Liquidity Preference Theory
in: Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, 2013
Abstract
With the world financial crisis came the rediscovery of the active role fiscal policy could play in remedying the situation. More recently, the Euro Crisis, with its mounting funding costs facing governments of a number of Southern EU member states and Ireland, has called this strategy into question. Opposing this view, the main point of this contribution is to elaborate on the link between rising sovereign risk premia in the Eurozone and a major feature of the financial crisis - elevated uncertainty after the Lehman collapse. Theoretically, this link is developed with reference to Keynes' liquidity preference theory. The high explanatory power of rising uncertainty in financial markets and the detrimental effects of fiscal austerity on the evolution of sovereign risk spreads are demonstrated empirically by means of panel regressions and supplementary correlation analyses.
Evidence on the Effects of Inflation on Price Dispersion under Indexation
in: Empirical Economics, No. 1, 2012
Abstract
Distortionary effects of inflation on relative prices are the main argument for inflation stabilization in macro models with sticky prices. Under indexation of non-optimized prices, those models imply a nonlinear and dynamic impact of inflation on the cross-sectional price dispersion (relative price or inflation variability, RPV). Using US sectoral price data, we estimate such a relationship between inflation and RPV, also taking into account the endogeneity of inflation by using two- and three-stage least-squares and GMM techniques, which turns out to be relevant. We find an effect of (expected) inflation on RPV, and our results indicate that average (“trend”) inflation is important for the RPV-inflation relationship. Lagged inflation matters for indexation in the CPI data, but is not important empirically in the PPI data.
