Euro Area Periphery Research Articles

Do We Want These Two to Tango? On Zombie Firms and Stressed Banks in Europe

We show that the speed and type of corporate deleveraging depends on the interaction between corporate and financial sector health. Based on granular bank-firm data pertaining to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) from five stressed and two non-stressed euro area economies, we show that 'zombie' firms generally continued to lever up during the 2010-2014 period. Whereas relationships with stressed banks reduce SME leverage on average, we also show that zombie firms that are tied to weak banks in euro area periphery countries increase their indebtedness even further. Sustainable economic recovery therefore requires both: deleveraging of banks and firms.

The risk of the sovereign debt default: the Eurozone crisis 2008–2013

ABSTRACTWe investigate the relationship of the market pricing of sovereign risk to default, through credit default swap (CDS) spreads for 16 Eurozone countries during 2008q1–2013q3. We take into account, through appropriate non-linear generalized method of moments (GMM) estimations the endogeneity problem. We focus on ‘fiscal space’ (DEBT or FISCAL), and the downgrade announcements (DOWN). We find DEBT (FISCAL) to have significant (insignificant) effects on the CDS concave function, as well as, DOWN in a linear one. It has also been confirmed significant pricing discrimination between South and West Euro Area Periphery (SWEAP) and the core Eurozone, highlighting asymmetries discovered either by the respective size of estimated DEBT coefficients or by the significant effects of DOWN that have only on CDS of SWEAP countries. The current account balance or the inflation rate, as well as, relevant interaction terms seem not to affect the spreads of the EMU. These findings, together with the estimated structural change on CDS pattern in early 2011, coinciding with significant either the DOWN in the pre-crisis period (2008–2010) or the DEBT in the post-crisis one (2011–2013) on the CDS, seem to be consistent with self-fulfilling crises literature and the inherent vulnerability of EMU, on other words, the ‘fragility hypothesis of the Eurozone’.

Inflation aversion in the European Union: exploring the myth of a North–South divide

Our study seeks to prove that German Stability Culture is a myth. The concept is a core legitimizing element of economic policy discourse in Germany and used regularly to juxtapose Germany and northern Europe and the euro area periphery. Using Eurobarometer surveys we construct a measurement for Stability Culture which is based on the priority assigned to the fight against inflation. Our empirical analysis covers the 2002 to 2010 timespan and includes 27 European Union Member States. Our results show that the distinction between northern states with an allegedly strong and southern states with an allegedly weak Stability Culture is a myth. Controlling for actual inflation, we find that the northern Member States with an allegedly high Stability Culture are less concerned with price stability than the rest of the EU.

The Determinants of Long-Term Debt Issuance by European Banks: Evidence of Two Crises

This paper is one of the first to investigate the determinants of bond issuance by European banks. We use a unique database of around 50,000 bonds issued by 63 banks from 14 European countries, allowing us to differentiate between different types of long-term debt securities. By investigating at the individual bank level, we are able to test explicitly a broad set of hypotheses from both the corporate finance and banking literature on the drivers of bond issuance. We use both country and bank-specific financial characteristics as explanatory variables. With respect to the country determinants, our findings suggest that "market timing" (low interest rates) drove issuance before but not during the crisis, when access to funding became more important than its cost. Moreover, during the crisis years, country-risk characteristics became drivers of bond issuance, while for banks from the euro area periphery central bank liquidity substituted for unsecured long-term debt. We also show that heightened financial market tensions were detrimental to bond issuance, and more strongly so during crisis episodes. Our results yield strongly significant coefficients for the bank-specific variables, with signs as expected. We find evidence of "leverage targeting" by issuing long-term debt during the crisis years. The positive and significant coefficient for the capital ratio supports the "risk absorption" hypothesis, suggesting that larger capital buffers enhanced the risk-bearing capacity of banks and allowed them to issue more debt. Moreover, banks with deposit supply constraints and relatively large loan portfolios issued more bonds, both before and since the crisis years. We also find that higher rated banks were more likely to issue bonds, also during the crisis period. Stronger banks issued especially unsecured debt, while weaker banks resorted more to issuance of covered bonds. Overall, our results suggest that stronger banks - including those from peripheral countries - maintained better access to longer-term funding markets, even during crisis periods. Our results pass several robustness tests. We present an additional aggregated country analysis in a separate appendix.

Monetary Policy, Bank Bailouts and the Sovereign-Bank Risk Nexus in the Euro Area

The paper analyses the empirical relationship between bank risk and sovereign credit risk in the euro area. Using structural VAR with daily financial markets data for 2003-13, the analysis confirms two-way causality between shocks to sovereign risk and bank risk, with the former being overall more important in explaining bank risk, than vice versa. The paper focuses specifically on the impact of non-standard monetary policy measures by the European Central Bank and on the effects of bank bailout policies by national governments. Testing specific hypotheses formulated in the literature, we find that bank bailout policies have reduced solvency risk in the banking sector, but partly at the expense of raising the credit risk of sovereigns. By contrast, monetary policy was in most, but not all cases effective in lowering credit risk among both sovereigns and banks. Finally, we find spillover effects in particular from sovereigns in the euro area periphery to the core countries.

Post-Keynesian alternative policies to curb macroeconomic imbalances in the Euro area

In this paper we outline alternative post-Keynesian policy recommendations addressing the problems of differential inflation, divergence in competitiveness and associated current account imbalances within the Euro area. We provide a basic framework in order to systematically address the related issues making use of Anthony P. Thirlwall?s (1979, 2002) model of a ?balance-of-payments-constrained growth rate? (BPCGR). Based on this framework, we outline the required stance for alternative economic policies and then we discuss the implications for alternative monetary, wage/incomes and fiscal policies in the Euro area as a whole, as well as the consequences for structural and regional policies in the Euro area periphery, in particular.

Rescuing the Phillips curve

Despite the increased importance of cyclically-adjusted measures of labour market slack for policymaking, estimates of the NAIRU have become increasingly fragile. Particularly for euro area countries, NAIRU estimates represent a crucial input to compute cyclically-adjusted budget balances adopted to formulate medium-term fiscal objectives under the EU fiscal surveillance framework. However, the apparent reduced sensitivity of inflation to labour market dynamics and unemployment gaps seriously undermines the use of Phillips curve equations in estimating the NAIRU. Estimates of the NAIRU are particularly problematic when changes in unemployment are both very large and rapid as in the aftermath of the global crisis. This paper proposes a refinement to the standard OECD approach of using a Kalman filter to estimate the NAIRU in the context of the Phillips curve. The proposed refinement strengthens the relationship between inflation and labour market developments by considering the risk of hysteresis effects associated with changes in long-term unemployment. Testing the revised methodology on a broad selection of OECD countries gives mixed results. For a group of countries in the euro area periphery (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain) there is an increase in the magnitude and statistical significance of the unemployment gap, with the NAIRU revised upward by on average 1¾ percentage points. However, the revised methodology provides less improvement to the standard OECD methodology for a second set of countries considered, namely the G7 excluding Italy. The United States is an interesting intermediate case as the statistical evidence for the proposed methodology is marginal, but the policy implications of the revised point estimate of the NAIRU are major. JEL classification: C32, E24, E31, E32, J64. Keywords: Long-term unemployment, flattening Phillips curve, NAIRU, euro area periphery, Kalman filter.

Stress Tests as a Policy Tool: The European Experience During the Crisis

When properly employed, bank stress tests can be effective as a supervisory tool to strengthen the resilience of a banking institution or a banking system overall. During the global financial crisis, stress tests were also used in public exercises intended to increase confidence in the banking sector, and facilitate the process of economic recovery from the crisis. A stress test performed in the United States in 2009 was used to strengthen capital in a number of banking institutions and succeeded in re-establishing confidence in the banking sector. However, stress tests performed in 2010 and 2011 in the euro area did not have the same success. This paper reviews this experience and argues that a key difference was the absence of a well-defined and credible backstop in the case of the euro area. As a result, the stress tests led to a policy-induced credit crunch and severe slowdown of economic activity, particularly in the euro area periphery.

Banking sector fragility linkages in the euro area: Evidence for crisis years 2007–2010

We investigate fragility linkages among national banking sectors in the euro area during the crisis years 2007–2010. We find that their number increased sharply with the outbreak of the subprime crisis in the US in the first half of 2007 and then remained at a relatively constant and high level until the Greek bailout and the creation of the Eurozone-wide bailout funds in mid-2010. The epicenter of spillover risk shifted from banking sectors in the euro area periphery towards banking sectors in the core countries during the period.

Coping with Imbalances in the Euro Area: Policy Alternatives Addressing Divergences and Disparities between Member Countries

In this paper we outline alternative policy recommendations addressing the problems of differential inflation, divergence in competitiveness and associated current account imbalances within the Euro area. The major purpose of these alternative policy proposals is to generate sustainably high demand and output growth in the Euro area as a whole, providing high levels of non-inflationary employment, as well as preventing 'export-led mercantilist' and 'debt-led consumption boom' types of development, both within the Euro area and with respect to the role of the Euro area in the world economy. We provide a basic framework in order to systematically address the related issues making use of Thirlwall's (1979; 2002) model of a 'balance-of-payments-constrained growth rate' (BPCGR). Based on this framework, we outline the required stance for alternative economic policies and then we discuss the implications for alternative monetary, wage/incomes and fiscal policies in the Euro area as a whole, as well as the consequences for structural and regional policies in the Euro area periphery, in particular.

The European Monetary Union and Imbalances: Is it an Anticipation Story ?

This paper investigates the sources of current account imbalances accumulated within the European Monetary Union before the Great Recession. First, it documents that starting in 1996, before the actual introduction of the euro, countries in the euro area periphery experienced increasing current account deficits, appreciating real exchange rates and output growing faster than trends. Then, it develops and estimates a small open economy DSGE model which encompasses a variety of possible unanticipated and anticipated shocks. The main finding is that anticipated reductions in international borrowing costs can explain the observed evidence while productivity increases (anticipated or not) cannot: falling borrowing costs implies appreciation while increasing productivity implies depreciation. Quantitatively, anticipated shocks account for one third of output, half of real exchange rate and two third of current account fluctuations. In particular, anticipated fluctuations in international borrowing costs explain respectively 30 and 40 percent of current account and real exchange rate movements.

Current accounts and financial flows in the euro area

We construct a new database of bilateral financial flows among euro area countries and their major world partners and explore the role of financial links in the accumulation and then adjustment of current account imbalances in the euro area. The data show that the geography of financial flows can differ quite markedly from trade flow patterns and suggest that the nexus between surpluses in the 'core' with deficits in the periphery went along financial rather than trade interlinkages. In particular, the data document the dominant role of 'core' countries in financing the euro area periphery's current account deficits before the financial crisis, both directly and through intermediating financial flows from outside of the euro area. Most of this financing took the form of debt instruments. Following the withdrawal of private financing from 'core' countries during the crisis, the ECB-mediated funding and other official flows helped the periphery to refinance its liabilities and smoothen the external adjustment.

Sovereign CDS Spreads in Europe: The Role of Global Risk Aversion, Economic Fundamentals, Liquidity, and Spillovers

By analysing data from January 2007 to December 2012 in a panel GLS error correction framework we find that European countries’ sovereign CDS spreads are largely driven by global investor sentiment, macroeconomic fundamentals and liquidity conditions in the CDS market. But the relative importance of these factors changes over time. While during the 2008/09 crisis weak economic fundamentals (such as high current account decifit, worsening underlying fiscal balances, credit boom), a drop in liquidity and a spike in risk aversion contributed to high spreads in Central and Eastern and South-Eastern European (CESEE) countries, a marked improvement in fundamentals (e.g. reduction in fiscal deficit, narrowing of current balances, gradual economic recovery) explains the region’s resilience to financial market spillovers during the euro area crisis. Our generalised variance decomposition analyisis does not suggest strong direct spillovers from the euro area periphery. The significant drop in the CDS spreads between July 2012 and December 2012 was mainly driven by a decline in risk aversion as suggested by the model’s out of sample forecasts.

Progress Towards External Adjustment in the Euro Area Periphery and the Baltics

The euro area periphery countries and the Baltic countries, which had large current account deficits in the run-up to the crisis, needed adjustment of relative prices to achieve both internal and external balances. Thus far, tangible progress has been made through lower wages and/or higher productivity relative to trading partners (“internal devaluation”), which contributed to narrowing current account deficits and shifting output towards the tradables sector. While some early adjusters cut wages more rapidly followed by productivity improvement, others have only slowly improved productivity largely through labor shedding. This adjustment for most countries has come along with a substantial recession as the unit labor cost improvement has largely come from falling employment and much of the current account improvement from import compression. Going forward, these countries still need to generate growing tradables sector employment and to continue adjustment to prevent imbalances from returning as output gaps close.

Sovereign CDS Spreads in Europe: The Role of Global Risk Aversion, Economic Fundamentals, Liquidity, and Spillovers

By analysing data from January 2007 to December 2012 in a panel GLS error correction framework we find that European countries’ sovereign CDS spreads are largely driven by global investor sentiment, macroeconomic fundamentals and liquidity conditions in the CDS market. But the relative importance of these factors changes over time. While during the 2008/09 crisis weak economic fundamentals (such as high current account decifit, worsening underlying fiscal balances, credit boom), a drop in liquidity and a spike in risk aversion contributed to high spreads in Central and Eastern and South-Eastern European (CESEE) countries, a marked improvement in fundamentals (e.g. reduction in fiscal deficit, narrowing of current balances, gradual economic recovery) explains the region’s resilience to financial market spillovers during the euro area crisis. Our generalised variance decomposition analyisis does not suggest strong direct spillovers from the euro area periphery. The significant drop in the CDS spreads between July 2012 and December 2012 was mainly driven by a decline in risk aversion as suggested by the model’s out of sample forecasts.

Progress Towards External Adjustment in the Euro Area Periphery and the Baltics

The euro area periphery countries and the Baltic countries, which had large current account deficits in the run-up to the crisis, needed adjustment of relative prices to achieve both internal and external balances. Thus far, tangible progress has been made through lower wages and/or higher productivity relative to trading partners (“internal devaluation”), which contributed to narrowing current account deficits and shifting output towards the tradables sector. While some early adjusters cut wages more rapidly followed by productivity improvement, others have only slowly improved productivity largely through labor shedding. This adjustment for most countries has come along with a substantial recession as the unit labor cost improvement has largely come from falling employment and much of the current account improvement from import compression. Going forward, these countries still need to generate growing tradables sector employment and to continue adjustment to prevent imbalances from returning as output gaps close.

Bank Funding Costs for International Banks

This paper investigates the determinants of bank funding costs for a sample of internationally active banks from 2001–12. We find that changes in banks’ unsecured funding costs are associated with bank-specific characteristics such as an institution’s credit worthiness and the return on its market value, and importantly, on the level and quality of capital. Similarly, market factors such as the level of investor risk appetite, as well as shocks to financial markets—notably the US subprime crisis and the Euro Area sovereign debt crisis—have also been key drivers of the sharp rise in bank funding costs. We also find evidence that large systemically important institutions have enjoyed a funding advantage, and that this advantage has risen since the onset of the two crises. With the exception of Euro Area periphery banks, by end-2012 the rise in funding costs had generally been reversed for most major banks as a result of improvments in bank asset quality as well as steps taken to increase resilience, notably higher capitalization. Our results suggest increased capital buffers may potentially support bank lending to the real economy by reducing bank funding costs.

The euro area sovereign debt crisis: Can contagion spread from the periphery to the core?

We examine the determinants of joint default risk of euro area countries during 2007–2011. To accomplish this, we recover joint default probabilities from individual CDS contracts. In contrast to earlier theoretical studies, we find that financial linkages are an active contagion transmission channel only in the case of the troubled periphery euro area economies. During the current sovereign debt crisis, real economy linkages play a more important role in transmitting shocks from the euro area periphery towards its core. Countries that have stronger trade interconnections with troubled economies tend to have a higher expected joint default risk.

Weathering the crisis and beyond: perspectives for the Euro area

The Euro area is experiencing a severe and highly complex crisis. It comprises three problem areas: the difficulties of some highly indebted European sovereigns to ascertain funding at palatable cost, the disconcerting fragility of the European banking system and disappointing growth prospects in the Euro area periphery. To make matters even worse, these problems have developed into a systemic crisis of the European Monetary Union (EMU), since observers have apparently developed fundamental doubts over its integrity. To overcome this systemic crisis, it would not be sufficient, if only the stronger Euro area economies provided more solidarity, nor would it be sufficient, if only all of Europe adhered to ironclad budgetary discipline from now on. A European Redemption Pact could be a strong political commitment to the EMU and offer a bridge between the proponents of fiscal discipline and structural reform and those governments advocating more support. This pact would entail two indispensable aspects, the codification of a credible and coherent reform path and a temporary and limited instrument for joint refinancing.

Weathering the Crisis and Beyond: Perspectives for the Euro Area

The euro area is experiencing a severe and highly complex crisis. It comprises three problem areas, the diffi culties of some highly indebted European sovereigns to ascertain funding at palatable cost, the disconcerting fragility of the European banking system and disappointing growth prospects in the euro area periphery. To make matters even worse, these problems have developed into a systemic crisis of the European Monetary Union (EMU), since observers have apparently developed fundamental doubts over its integrity. To overcome this systemic crisis, it would not be sufficient, if only the stronger euro area economies provided more solidarity, nor would it be sufficient, if only all of Europe adhered to ironclad budgetary discipline from now on. A European Redemption Pact could be a strong political commitment to the EMU and off er a bridge between the proponents of fiscal discipline and structural reform and those governments advocating for more support. This pact would entail two indispensable aspects, the codification of a credible and coherent reform path and a temporary and limited instrument for joint refinancing.