Real Effects of Financial Distress: The Role of Heterogeneity

Which firms are more sensitive to an aggregate financial shock? What can be learnt from these heterogeneous responses? We evaluate and answer these questions from both empirical and theoretical perspectives. Using micro data from Portugal during the sovereign debt crisis we find that highly leveraged firms and firms with a larger share of short-term debt on their balance sheets contracted more in the aftermath of the financial shock. We analyse the conditions under which leverage and debt maturity determine the sensitivity of firms’ investment decisions to financial shocks in standard models of investment under financial frictions. In doing so, we extend these models to feature a maturity choice. We show that simple versions of these models are not consistent with the observed heterogeneous responses. The model needs the presence of frictions when issuing long-term debt to rationalise the empirical findings.

Real Estate, Economic Stability and the New Macro-Financial Policies

The influence of real estate on finance and the whole economy has captured significant attention, especially since the aftermath of the Great Recession, because of the potential of this sector to destabilize markets. This paper explores the other way around: housing markets’ capacity to stabilize the economy through different macroprudential policies facing several types of shocks to achieve financial stability as a driver of sustainability. Specifically, a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model is used to evaluate the effectiveness to stabilize the economy of different macroprudential tools based on the loan-to-value ratio for real estate, on the countercyclical capital buffer for the financial sector and a combination of both tools, facing a housing price shock, a technology shock and a financial shock. The model presents three types of agents (borrowers, entrepreneurs and banks) in an economy with a real estate market, a financial sector, a labor market and a production sector. The government can use different macroprudential policies to stabilize the economy, leaning against the wind of several shocks to achieve economic and financial sustainability. The assessment of the effectiveness of each policy shows that, in the case of a housing sector shock and a technology shock, the more effective policy is the one based on a countercyclical rule on the loan-to-value ratio for the real estate sector as a macroprudential tool. Furthermore, with a house price shock, if the macroprudential authority applies a macroprudential policy based on the countercyclical capital buffer, the shock may be exacerbated. Additionally, when there is a financial shock, the macroprudential authority may face a trade-off between several macro-financial policies depending on its objective. Therefore, it is not recommendable to automatically apply a macroprudential policy without a meticulous analysis of the nature of the shock that the economy is experimenting with and how different policies can stabilize or destabilize the different markets and, therefore, reach higher or lower sustainability.

An Analysis of Romanian Capital, Forex and Monetary Markets: Volatilities and Contagion

This paper focuses on stability relations for the Romanian main financial markets: capital, ForEx and monetary markets, as well as the intensity of the link between them and how they are interconnected, because this represents the best indicator of the situation of an economy, which is seen as a complex, adaptive and dynamic system, that is continuously changing. This analysis examines their deviation from the state of equilibrium, and what are the factors that modify this state. The study incorporates the markets evolution, their estimated volatilities, it shows that the most sensitive to the impact of a financial shock are the currency and the stock market. All the obtained results are correlated with events, news and market information from those particular moments to find explanations and understand the behavior of investors and how their decisions affected the market. Because of instability on some markets, investors started moving their finances to other markets, where they had more confidence, causing imbalances. Behavior of investors, as they react to the emergence of a shock, is decisive and extremely important in anticipating the effects that such a financial shock can produce. The values of the estimated volatilities were embedded into a volatility table to be easier to track their evolution over the period under review (2007 – 2018). Besides the financial crisis, there have been other events that have translated into a higher degree of volatility: raising the minimum wage, the Brexit, protests against corruption, the raise of salaries for the public workers which has created instability in the monetary market. The analysis continues with an estimate of a spillover index that only confirms the significant vulnerability period in the markets: 2010-2012, period during which the phenomenon of contagion may have occurred.

What is the impact of financial shock on reaching happiness frontier?

This paper provides a framework to reveal happiness frontier based on British Household Panel Survey. Thereafter we focus on what is the impact of financial shock on reaching the frontier. By doing so we also explore the nexus between personality traits, such as extraversion, neuroticism, and openness, and the financial shock. We further reveal the underlying causality threads.

The 2008 Global Crisis and Israel-Economy Resilience

The global financial crisis generated the deepest and longest recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The defining event of the 2008 global financial crisis was a “hemorrhagic stroke”: a paralytic implosion of the loanable funds markets. Depression forces such as they exist in the US, Europe, or Japan, do not appear to hold in the case of Israel. Its resilience to the external financial shock during the global crisis is rooted in (a) the absence of credit boom in the wake of the crisis, and (b) the relatively small commercial banks' exposure in terms of toxic assets that for the European countries played a major role. Reacting to the global trade-diminishing shocks, policy makers’ concern was three-fold: First, banks exposures to toxic assets such as mortgage based securities and foreigners’ debt obligations. Partly because Israel skipped the credit bubble, and bank regulations were relatively tight, Israel showed a sound resilience to the global financial shock. Second, Israel export markets softened and demand conditions deteriorated. Third, Israel domestic currency got strengthened. Bank of Israel addressed the last two issues by a massive foreign exchange market intervention to weaken the value of the domestic currency, and stimulate exports. The need to prolong the stimulus policies dissipated relatively fast.