Shadow rates as a measure of the monetary policy stance: Some international evidence

This paper examines the usefulness of shadow rates to measure the monetary policy stance by comparing them to the official policy rates and those implied by three types of Taylor rules in both inflation-targeting countries (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and others that have only targeted inflation at times (the United States, Japan, the Euro Area and Switzerland) over the period from the early 1990s to December 2021. Shadow rates estimated from a dynamic factor model are shown to suggest a much looser policy stance than either the official policy rates or those implied by the Taylor rules, and generally to provide a more accurate picture of the monetary policy stance during both ZLB and non-ZLB periods, since they reflect the full range of unconventional policy measures used by central banks. Furthermore, generalised impulse response analysis based on three alternative vector autoregression (VAR) models indicates that monetary shocks based on the shadow rates are more informative than those related to the official policy rates or to two- and three-factor shadow rates, especially during the Global Financial Crisis and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, when unconventional measures have been adopted. Finally, unconventional policy shocks seem to have less persistent effects on the economy in countries, which have adopted an inflation-targeting regime.

The Covid-19 pandemic and European trade flows: Evidence from a dynamic panel model

This paper investigates the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on trade flows in the case of the European countries. First, an ARDL dynamic panel model is estimated using the PMG method to analyse monthly data covering the most recent period (2019M1–2021M12);then, the GMM and PCSE approaches are applied to a much longer span of quarterly data (2000Q1–2021Q4), which also includes the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007–2009, in order to compare the trade impact of two different crises. The findings based on the monthly data provide clear evidence of the significant negative effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on both exports and imports in both the short and the long run, and also suggest that digitalisation was instrumental in mitigating the impact of the crisis and speeding up the recovery. The quarterly analysis over a longer time period indicates that both the GFC and the Covid-19 pandemic had negative effects on trade but of a different magnitude. The use of digital technology enabling remote work and e-commerce are again some of the factors likely explaining why international trade fell by less and also rebounded much more quickly during the Covid-19 pandemic compared to the GFC. © 2023 The Authors. International Journal of Finance & Economics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

U.S. House Prices by Census Division: Persistence, Trends and Structural Breaks

This paper uses fractional integration methods to examine persistence, trends and structural breaks in United States house prices, more specifically the monthly Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index for census divisions, and the United States as a whole over the period from January 1991 to August 2022. The full sample estimates imply that the order of integration of the series is above one in all cases, and is particularly high for the aggregate series, implying high levels of persistence. However, when the possibility of structural breaks is taken into account, segmented trends are detected. The subsample estimates of the fractional differencing parameter tend to be lower, with mean reversion occurring in a number of cases. This means that shocks in the series are expected to be transitory in these subsamples, disappearing in the long run by themselves. In addition, the time trend coefficient is at its highest in the last subsample, which in most cases starts around May 2020 coincident with the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. The results provide clear evidence of differences between census divisions, which implies that appropriate housing policies should be designed at the local (rather than at the federal) level. © 2023, The Author(s).

US policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and sectoral stock indices: A fractional integration approach

This paper uses fractional integration to assess the impact of US policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic on 10 US sectoral stock indices from 1 January 2020 to 11 June 2021. The results provide evidence of mean reversion in most cases and suggest that the Effective Federal Funds Rate and monetary and fiscal announcements are the most effective policy tools. © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Shadow rates as a measure of the monetary policy stance: Some international evidence

This paper examines the usefulness of shadow rates to measure the monetary policy stance by comparing them to the official policy rates and those implied by three types of Taylor rules in both inflation-targeting countries (the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and others that have only targeted inflation at times (the United States, Japan, the Euro Area and Switzerland) over the period from the early 1990s to December 2021. Shadow rates estimated from a dynamic factor model are shown to suggest a much looser policy stance than either the official policy rates or those implied by the Taylor rules, and generally to provide a more accurate picture of the monetary policy stance during both ZLB and non-ZLB periods, since they reflect the full range of unconventional policy measures used by central banks. Furthermore, generalised impulse response analysis based on three alternative vector autoregression (VAR) models indicates that monetary shocks based on the shadow rates are more informative than those related to the official policy rates or to two- and three-factor shadow rates, especially during the Global Financial Crisis and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, when unconventional measures have been adopted. Finally, unconventional policy shocks seem to have less persistent effects on the economy in countries, which have adopted an inflation-targeting regime. © 2022 The Authors. Scottish Journal of Political Economy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Scottish Economic Society.

The effects of us covid-19 policy responses on cryptocurrencies, fintech and artificial intelligence stocks: A fractional integration analysis

This paper assesses the impact of US policy responses to the Covid-19 pandemic on various technology-related assets such as cryptocurrencies, financial technology, and artificial intelligence stocks using fractional integration techniques. More precisely, it analyzes the behavior of the percentage returns in the case of nine major coins (Bitcoin-BITC, Stella-STEL, Litecoin-LITE, Ethereum-ETHE, XRP (Ripple), Dash, Monero-MONE, NEM, Tether-TETH) and two technology-related stock market indices (the KBW NASDAQ Technology Index-KFTX, and the NASDAQ Artificial Intelligence index-AI) over the period 1 January 2020-5 March 2021. The results suggest that fiscal measures such as debt relief and fiscal policy announcements had positive effects on the series examined during the pandemic, when an increased mortality rate tended instead to drive them down;by contrast, monetary measures and announcements appear to have had very little impact and the Covid-19 containment measures none at all.

Macro-financial linkages in the high-frequency domain: Economic fundamentals and the Covid-induced uncertainty channel in US and UK financial markets

This article contributes to our understanding of the macro-financial linkages in the high-frequency domain during the recent health crisis. Building on the extant literature that mainly uses monthly or quarterly macro proxies, we examine the daily economic impact on intra-daily financial volatility by applying the macro-augmented HEAVY model with asymmetries and power transformations. Our study associates US and UK financial with macroeconomic uncertainties in addition to further macro drivers that exacerbate equity market volatility. Daily local economic policy uncertainty is one of the main drivers of financial volatility, alongside global credit and commodity factors. Higher macro uncertainty is found to increase the leverage and macro effects from credit and commodity markets on US and UK stock market realized volatility. Most interestingly, the Covid-19 outbreak is found to exert a considerable impact on financial volatilities through the uncertainty channel, given the prevalent worry about controversial policy interventions to support societies and markets, particularly in the case of the severely censured US and UK governments' reluctant and limited response in the very beginning of the pandemic.