Coherence and Entropy of Credit Cycles across the Euro Area Candidate Countries

The pattern of financial cycles in the European Union has direct impacts on financial stability and economic sustainability in view of adoption of the euro. The purpose of the article is to identify the degree of coherence of credit cycles in the countries potentially seeking to adopt the euro with the credit cycle inside the Eurozone. We first estimate the credit cycles in the selected countries and in the euro area (at the aggregate level) and filter the series with the Hodrick–Prescott filter for the period 1999Q1–2020Q4. Based on these values, we compute the indicators that define the credit cycle similarity and synchronicity in the selected countries and a set of entropy measures (block entropy, entropy rate, Bayesian entropy) to show the high degree of heterogeneity, noting that the manifestation of the global financial crisis has changed the credit cycle patterns in some countries. Our novel approach provides analytical tools to cope with euro adoption decisions, showing how the coherence of credit cycles can be increased among European countries and how the national macroprudential policies can be better coordinated, especially in light of changes caused by the pandemic crisis.

Risky Mortgages and Macroprudential Policy: A Calibrated DSGE Model for Lithuania

Following the financial crisis of 2009 there was an emergence of macroprudential policy tools, as well as a need to model the macroeconomy and the financial sector in a coherent framework. This paper develops and calibrates a small open economy DSGE model for Lithuania to shed some light on the interactions between the macroeconomy and the banking sector, regulated by macroprudential policy. The model features housing market, and endogenous credit risk a la de Walque et al. (2010), whereby the household can default on mortgage repayments, what leads to housing collateral seizure. Foreign-owned banks, that are subject to risk-sensitive macroprudential capital requirements, take into account not only the mortgage default rate but also the cap on loan to value (LTV) ratio when making lending decisions. Using this mechanism, we show that while a more stringent LTV constraint reduced credit demand, it can also lead to an expansion in credit supply via lower credit risk. Therefore, a tightening of LTV requirement should result in only a slight reduction in mortgage lending, coupled with lower interest rate margins. The article compares the impact of the tightening of three macroprudential tools, namely, bank capital requirements, mortgage risk weights and LTV limit. We find that broad-based capital requirements, such as the counter-cyclical capital buffer, are less efficient in leaning against the housing credit cycle, because of a relatively large cost incurred on the firm sector.

Research on multiple bubbles in China’s multi-level stock market

Financial bubbles have always been a topic of long-term concern for economists. Understanding bubble phenomenon and dating the period of bubbles in real time can provide an early warning diagnosis for financial bubbles and help regulatory authorities to control it and maintain market order. The generalized sup ADF (GSADF) and backward sup ADF (BSADF) tests with flexible window width can effectively detect and date periodically collapsing bubbles in real time. Based on the financial present value model, this paper applies right-tail recursive ADF test to test multiple bubbles in China’s multi-level stock market. Unlike the other researches in China, the ratios of the real stock prices’ natural logarithm to the real dividends’ natural logarithm are used for our testing instead of stock price index. Empirical results show that there are 8 bubbles in the Main-Board Market, 6 bubbles in the Small and Medium Enterprises Board (SMEs), and 4 bubbles in the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM). These bubbles are liquidity-driven and presuppose a loose credit cycle, with the exception of bubbles in 2014–2015. The frequent emergence of bubbles in a short time indicates that China’s stock market is still emerging market. In addition, frequent fluctuations imply there is a serious “herd effect” and a lack of monitoring mechanism for bubble risk. This study not only enrich the real-time dynamic research on periodical bubbles of China’s stock market, but also provide an empirical reference for investors’ investment choices, financial decisions of listed companies and warning mechanism of regulatory authorities.

Are interest rate changes comoving with financial cycle?

We explore to what extent official interest rate changes can potentially in a procyclical manner impact different financial cycle indicators (credit/GDP, debt service ratio, house prices and stock market indices). We test this on data covering 1995−2016 in 21 countries and the euro area using the Concordance index and Monetary policy procyclicality ratio. Results show that this was not a widespread phenomenon, but there was significant heterogenenity across countries. The procyclicality of interest rate changes was usually higher when financial cycle gaps were increasing and lower when they were decreasing. On average, central banks in several larger economies were running potentially less procyclical monetary policy than those in the smaller ones. The resulting propensity of conflicts between achieving price and financial stability by central banks was low, as only in 10% of the cases the objectives were conflicting (usually when inflation was below the target and the credit cycle was in an expansion phase).

Tőkeáttételi ciklus vizsgálata a Nagy Recesszióban: Az Amerikai Egyesült Államok gazdaságában végbemenő hitelciklus felépülésének empirikus vizsgálata = Leverage cycle in the Great Recession: An empirical study of the credit cycle in the United States

Jelen cikk egyes makrogazdasági változók hatását vizsgálja a tőkeáttételi ciklus felépülésében az Amerikai Egyesült Államok gazdaságában 1990 és 2015 között. A tőkeáttétel –ahogyan azt a Nagy Recesszió is bebizonyította –sérülékennyé teszi a gazdaságot, amiszélsőséges esetben katasztrófához vezet. A tőkeáttétel a gazdaság egészéhez hasonlóan ciklikusan alakul, ezért ahitelállomány felépülésénekmegértése kritikus.A hitelezésre ható tényezők és más kutatások eredményeinek összefoglalását követően acikkkísérletet tesz arra, hogygazdaságiszektorok szintjén vizsgálja meg,mely változók játszanak fontos szerepet ajelenség mögött.A vizsgálatok elvégzéséhez a szerzők a többváltozós lineáris módszert választottákannak kiderítésére, mennyire mutat egységes képet a gazdaságon belül a tőkeáttétel felépülése.Az elemzés nem terjedki a háztartási hitelezésre, kizárólag a nagyvállalati szegmens folyamataira koncentrál. A szerzők arra amegállapításajutottak, hogy megéri a makrogazdasági változókszerepét iparági szinten vizsgálni, mivel az egyes szektorok esetében eltérő változókbizonyultak szignifikánsnakaz empirikus vizsgálatokalapján. = This article examines the impact of macroeconomic variables over the leverage cycle in the US economy between 1990 and 2015. Leverage –as demonstrated by the Great Recession –makes the whole economy vulnerable, leading to a catastrophe in extreme cases. As in the case of the economy as a whole, leverage is cyclical, so understanding the recovery of the loan portfolio is crucial. After summarizing the results of factors affecting lending and other researches, the article attempts to investigate at the level of economic sectors, which variables play key roles behind this phenomenon. To carry out the examinations, the authors chose the multivariate linear method to find out the general characteristics of the leverage cycle within the economy. The analysis does not include the household lending activity, it concentrates solely on the processes of the large corporate segment. The authors have come to the conclusion that it is worth considering the role of macroeconomic variables at industry level as different variables have proved to be significant on the basis of empirical studies.

Do investors value frequent issuers in securitization?

We assess the value of frequent issuers to investors in securitization markets by examining the initial yield spread of 6132 European mortgage-backed securities (MBS), covering a 20-year period between 1999 and 2018. We find that frequent issuers have certification value, and it increases as the credit cycle approaches its peak, as lending standards loosen, and information asymmetries in securitization markets increase. Investors value frequent issuers more favourably on riskier, difficult to evaluate MBS. We find that after the great financial crisis (GFC), investors began to attribute more value to frequent issuers, regardless of MBS credit quality. We also find that in the pre-crisis period, investors required higher yields to compensate for perceived rating shopping, which is not observed after the GFC. Finally, we show that investors expect higher yields on deals closed by subsidiaries of foreign banks.

Cyclical Patterns of Systemic Risk Metrics

We analyze a range of macrofinancial indicators to extract signals about cyclical systemic risk across 107 economies over 1995–2020. We construct composite indices of underlying liquidity, solvency and mispricing risks and analyze their patterns over the financial cycle. We find that liquidity and solvency risk indicators tend to be counter-cyclical, whereas mispricing risk ones are procyclical, and they all lead the credit cycle. Our results lend support to high-level accounts that risks were underestimated by stress indicators in the run-up to the 2008 global financial crisis. The policy implications of conflicting risk signals would depend on the phase of the credit cycle.