Liquid Liabilities Research Articles

The impact of quantitative easing on liquidity creation

• We study the impact of the Fed’s three rounds of QE on bank liquidity creation. • Banks create liquidity by financing illiquid assets with liquid liabilities. • We use a sample of US banks over 2006-14 and a difference-in-difference methodology. • Banks more exposed to QE increased lending during the first and third round of QE. • Liquidity creation among treated banks was higher only during the last round of QE. We study the effects of the US Federal Reserve’s large-scale asset purchase programs during 2008–2014 on bank liquidity creation. Banks create liquidity when they transform the liquid reserves resulted from quantitative easing (QE) into illiquid assets. As the composition of banks’ loan portfolio affects the amount of liquidity it creates, the impact of quantitative easing on liquidity creation is not a priori clear. Using a difference-in-difference identification strategy, we find that banks more affected by the policy increased lending relative to those less affected, mainly during the first and third round of QE. However, we only find a strong effect of the policy on liquidity creation during the third round of QE. This points to a weaker impact on the real economy during the first two rounds, when more exposed banks transformed the reserves created through QE into less illiquid assets, such as real estate mortgages.

Assessing the finance led growth hypothesis: Empirical evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

Financial development and economic growth nexus is still an ongoing debate. Several studies have indicated the positive benefits associated with enhancing financial development. Nevertheless, more work can still be done to reap the full benefits of financial development. With growing social disparities in African countries, identifying the channels through which financial services can be effective is important to maintain stability on the continent. This paper employs a system generalized methods of moments (GMM) technique, to attempt to identify the channels through which financial services can be effective. The paper tests such an effect using a panel of 30 countries in sub-Saharan Africa from 2005 to 2016. The results suggest that credit provided by financial institutions and liquid liabilities affect economic growth negatively. Credit to the private sector, on the other hand, contributed significantly to GDP growth. The study underlines the important role of a vibrant private sector to serve as an engine for growth and reduce poverty.

Finance‐growth nexus: New insight from Ghana

AbstractWe re‐examine the links between financial development and the real economy in Ghana given the gaps in the literature, recent happenings in the financial sector, new dataset, and the more active interventions by the Bank of Ghana to inform good policy decisions. By employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Bounds Cointegration approach (ARDL) and the Fully Modified OLS model (FMOLS), the study documented broad money supply, domestic credit provided by the financial sector, domestic credit to the private sector, bank deposit to GDP, liquid liabilities to GDP, deposit money banks assets to GDP, deposit money bank assets to deposit money bank assets and central bank assets, non‐life insurance premium volume to GDP, stock market capitalization to GDP and the number of listed companies to have a significant negative effect on Ghana's economic growth in the long‐run. The joint effect of financial development was also found to have a significant negative effect on Ghana's economic growth from the FMOLS model. The study recommended the imperative for policymakers to increase infrastructure investment by promoting reforms to boost cooperation between civil societies, the public sector, and the private sector to address the high cost of investment to improve the macroeconomic performance of the country. The study further recommended policymakers to support the financial sector by injecting liquidity during these distress times.

Economic analysis of growth finance and liquid liabilities in Nigeria

Liquid liabilities are required to develop key sectors that drive the Nigerian economy by ensuring that loans are available for investment purposes. However, controversies concerning the effectiveness of growth finance in fostering liquid liabilities in Nigeria exist. Thus, this study examines the relationship between growth finance and liquid liabilities in Nigeria, with insight into Nigeria’s real sector. In achieving its objective, the study utilizes secondary data from the annual reports of the Central Bank of Nigeria (1980–2018). The study finds that gross domestic savings significantly drive liquid liabilities in the long run compared to other growth finance indicators, which include stock market development and remittance inflows. Therefore, the study recommends that to improve liquid liability, gross domestic savings, among other growth finance indicators, should be harnessed as a tool to efficiently influence liquid liabilities in the Nigerian economy. The study concludes that attention should be paid to development policies that drive all stakeholders’ gross domestic savings.

Financial sector foreign aid and financial intermediation

The effectiveness of foreign aid is typically measured by the effect of aid on economic growth. Prior literature provides ambiguous results on this effect partly due to the aggregation of aid to different sectors and the small amount of foreign aid relative to the economy in most countries. Because growth in financial intermediation and financial markets has been shown to play a key role in spurring economic growth, in this paper we focus on aid to the financial sector and seek to identify the causal effects of foreign aid to the financial sector on financial intermediation. Using fixed effects OLS and system GMM methods for a panel of countries from 1993 to 2016, we find that foreign aid to the financial sector primarily increases claims on the government sector, and has negative or neutral effect on claims to the private sector and no effect on liquid liabilities of the banking sector and interest rate spread between borrowing and lending rates. This effect persists even after controlling for country institutional characteristics, such as trade openness and rule of law. Thus, foreign aid increases public sector borrowing but does not appear to have any benefits for financial intermediation in the private sector. We verify that the relation is not spurious by using aid to the health sector for falsification tests.

Financial development and trade in services: Perspective from emerging markets of Asia, South and Central America and Africa

AbstractThis study empirically identifies the impact of financial development, particularly exports, on trade in services. Three proxies used for measuring financial development are financial systems deposits, liquid liabilities, and private credit. After conducting statistical tests and robustness checks, we show that financial development has a positive impact on trade in services in Central and South America, but does not have a significant impact in Asia and Africa. All three proxies used for assessing financial development are found to be insignificant in Asia and Africa.

Liquidity Creation, Investment, and Growth

Liquidity creation (the transformation of liquid liabilities into illiquid assets) is a key function of banks. We show that liquidity creation is positively associated with economic growth at both country and industry levels. In particular, liquidity creation helps growth by boosting tangible, but not intangible investment. Our results suggest an important non-linearity; liquidity creation does not contribute to growth in countries with a higher share of industries relying on intangible assets. We rationalize these results using a model in which banks increase aggregate investment by reducing liquidity risk, but low asset tangibility hampers liquidity creation by exacerbating moral hazard problems. Together, these findings provide new insights into the functions of banks, but also highlight their more limited role in supporting innovative industries.

The Effects of Bank Regulation on Financial Development in the MENA Countries: The Supporting Role of Supervision

T his study investigates the impact of bank regulation on financial development in the MENA countries for the period 1995-2014. Restrictions on activity, foreign banks, and capital were used as proxies for bank regulation. Also, bank supervisory power, independence, private monitoring, and moral hazard were used as proxies for bank supervision. Liquid liabilities, private credit, and z-score were chosen as proxies for financial development. They represent, consecutively, size, activity, and stability of the financial sector. A positive and significant impact of bank regulation was observed on all measures of financial development. The most important contribution of the present study is that, it gives evidence of an important supporting role of supervision on bank regulation, to realize its desired impact on financial development. This final result is important for the MENA countries, since data analysis shows that financial sector reform is more concentrated on regulation than supervision. Policy makers in the MENA countries need to focus more, in their financial sector reform, on bank supervision to realize the expected impact of bank regulation on financial development.

The way to sustainable development through income equality: The impact of trade liberalisation and financial development

AbstractThe main aim of this paper is to examine the threshold impact of financial development and trade liberalization on income inequality as a measure of sustainable development in a sample of developed and developing countries using panel threshold analysis. Two major dimensions of financial development are considered: liquid liabilities and stock market capitalization. The empirical results revealed that financial development reduces income inequality only in countries where their GDP per capita is above ~US$11,000. It has no significant impact in reducing inequality in developing countries. This implies that institutional reforms in less developed and developing countries are necessary in order to reap the gains from financial development. Trade liberalization is found to have a positive impact on income inequality for both country groups—that is, trade benefits have worsened the income distribution.

Impacts of remittances on financial development

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of international remittances on financial development in developing countries.Design/methodology/approachThe focus is on a panel of 124 developing countries for the period 1990–2015. The empirical evidence is based on the instrumental variable-fixed effect model.FindingsResults obtained in this study indicate that a 10 percent increase in the remittance to GDP ratio leads to 1.7 percent increase in domestic credit to private sector, 1.9 percent increase in bank credit, 1.2 percent increase in bank deposit, and 0.8 percent increase in liquid liabilities. The positive impact of remittances on financial development in developing countries is particularly important because financial development fosters long-run growth and reduces poverty.Originality/valueTo address the endogeneity of remittances, the study estimates bilateral remittances and use them to create weighted gross national income per capita and real interest rates of remittance-sending countries. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to assess the endogeneity of remittances in this way.

Reinsurance Demand and Liquidity Creation: A Search for Bi-Causality

We analyze the relationship between insurers’ liquidity creation and reinsurance demand. Early theoretical contributions on liquidity creation propose that financial institutions enhance economic growth by creating liquidity in the economy. Liquidity creation means financing relatively illiquid assets with relatively liquid liabilities. However, liquidity creation exposes insurers to financial risks. There is a trade-off between getting higher returns on risky investments and being able to compensate clients at a low cost when unexpected claims happen. Unexpected claims can be protected by reinsurance, which introduces a second trade-off between reinsurance demand and liquidity creation. This trade-off can be more important for insurers that have fewer diversification opportunities. Our main empirical results, from regularized GMM and ML-SME methods of estimation, show similar positive bi-causal effects between liquidity creation and reinsurance demand for small insurers (22% of insurance activity). The link between the two activities is not significant for large insurers (60% of insurance activity). We obtain mixed results for medium insurers. In all estimations, the standard GMM model is rejected.

Wealth, Portfolios, and Unemployment Duration

We use administrative data on individual balance sheets in Denmark to document how an individual's financial position affects job search behavior. We look at the effect of wealth at the entry into unemployment on the exit rate from unemployment as well as the effect on the subsequent match quality. The detailed data allows us not only to distinguish between liquid and illiquid parts, but also to decompose each of them into assets and liabilities. The decomposition of wealth into these four components is key to understanding how wealth affects job finding rates. In particular, we show that liquid assets reduce the probability of becoming re-employed, but we do not see an effect of liquid liabilities or the illiquid wealth components, while interest payments speed up re-employment. The results on subsequent match quality in form of job duration and wages are mixed.

Financial Development and the Effectiveness of Monetary Policy: New Evidence from Malaysia

This paper examines the relationship between financial development (FD) and the monetary policy effectiveness (MPE) in Malaysia. Two indicators designate the level of FD, namely liquid liabilities and stock market capitalisation, and gross fixed capital formation are used in estimating the determinants of MPE which is generated using structural vector auto regressive (SVAR) in an open economy approach. Accordingly, an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is used in examining the effects of FD and gross fixed capital formation on MPE. Using a yearly time series data spanning from 1991 to 2016, the results revealed that there is a cointegration between FD and gross fixed capital formation on MPE. Interestingly, FD has a negatively significant effect on MPE on output and inflation, which indicates that a more developed financial system has hindered the effectiveness of the monetary policy.

The Financial Development And Economic Growth Nexus: The Role Of Saudi Arabian Financial Institutions

The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of the financial development and the financial institutions quality on the economic growth for the Saudi Arabia. Using generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with a dynamic panel framework, this paper employs different measures of financial development namely the Liquid liabilities (LIQ), Private credit by deposit money banks and other financial institutions (CRE) and Central bank assets (ASS), and for financial institutions quality including socioeconomic conditions, investment profile, law and order, corruption, external conflicts and democratic accountability. For the period (1990-2017), our findings strongly support the hypothesis that financial development leads to growth in the Saudi Arabia. Moreover, empirical results support a positive and significant relationship observed between financial institutions quality and growth. The findings of this paper suggest the need to give more support to the financial development for Saudi Arabia banking that have been launched in the country since the last three decades and to improve the role played by the financial institutions to stimulate saving/investment and, consequently, long-term economic growth.

Financial Stability Index for the Financial Sector of Pakistan

This study aims to develop a financial stability index for the Pakistani financial sector by using the financial reports for the period of 2001–2011. Specifically, we constructed three different classes of indices in this study based on a variance-equal weighted approach, a linear probability approach, and a logistic approach. We also assessed the prediction accuracy of the financial stability index. All indices indicated that profitability, liquid liability to the liquid asset, non-performing loan, uncovered liabilities, interest spread and inter-fund to liquid liabilities variables contribute significantly to the determination of financial stress of commercial banks. We also compared the results of indices computed with different methodologies—among them was the index constructed by employing coefficients of the logistic model and which performed outstandingly in predicting distressed and non-distressed banks. Moreover, the findings of this study suggest that in regard to return on assets and return on equity, when employed in a stepwise manner for developing the financial stability index, the results are similar in the sense that both profitability indicators have the same behavior. Finally, we conclude that the financial stability indices developed in this study could help decision makers to detect and avoid instability in the future.

Modelling for insight: Does financial development improve environmental quality?

The need to formulate policies to mitigate global warming has necessitated the need to understand the drivers of carbon emissions. The current study utilises the system-generalised method of moments to investigate the direct and indirect effect of financial development on carbon emissions for 46 sub-Saharan Africa countries over the period 2000–2015. Using several indicators of financial development, the empirical results reveal that financial development measured using broad money, domestic credit to the private sector and domestic credit to private sector by banks increase carbon emissions while FDI, liquid liabilities and domestic credit to private sector by financial sector do not affect carbon emissions. The results show that none of the financial development indicators exerts a significant nonlinear effect on carbon emissions. The results further indicate that FDI moderates economic growth to reduce carbon emissions but does not moderate energy consumption to affect carbon emissions. Contrarily, financial development measured using broad money, domestic credit to private sector by banks, domestic credit to private sector by financial sector and domestic credit to private sector moderate energy consumption to increase carbon emissions while the first three indicators of financial development moderate economic growth to increase carbon emissions. The results do not confirm the existence of the EKC hypothesis but confirm that population size, energy consumption, trade openness, urbanisation and economic growth increase carbon emissions. There are some variations in these results across regional and income groupings. These findings do advance not only knowledge but also have several implications for sustainable development policy.

The Role of Information Sharing in Modulating the Effect of Financial Access on Inequality

ABSTRACTThis study examines the role of information sharing in modulating the effect of financial access on income inequality in 48 African countries for the period 2004–2014. Information sharing is proxied with private credit bureaus and public credit registries. All dynamics of financial development are taken into account, namely: depth (money supply and liquid liabilities), efficiency (at banking and financial system levels), activity (from banking and financial system perspective) and size. The empirical exercise is based on interactive Generalised Method of Moments. It can be established from the findings that: first, a threshold of 18.072 percentage coverage of public credit registries is needed to counteract the unconditional positive effect of banking system efficiency. Secondly, on the role of private credit bureaus in financial depth, both the unconditional and the conditional effects are negative, implying a negative synergy. Overall, the findings show that, contingent on the type of financial development dynamic, credit registries broadly play their theoretical role of decreasing financing constraints in order to ultimately reduce inequality.

Can financial development influence economic growth: The sub-Saharan analysis?

Orientation: Financial sector development in a vast majority of sub-Saharan African countries has the potential to reduce the volatility of growth.Research purpose: This article is aimed at determining the influence of financial development on economic growth in selected sub-Saharan African countries.Motivation for the study: In most of the sub-Saharan countries, financial sectors are among the world’s least developed, and the absence of deep, efficient financial markets puts major constraints on economic growth.Research approach/design and method: This article employed panel autoregressive and distributive lag model to determine the relationship between financial development and economic growth.Main findings: The results indicated that there exists a short- and a long-run relationship between financial development and economic growth in the selected countries. In the long run, bank credit to the private sector and liquid liabilities have a positive influence on economic growth, with gross domestic savings exhibiting a negative influence.Practical/managerial implications: This article makes recommendations that as financial stability, both globally and within countries, generates jobs and improves productivity, more effort should be made in ensuring an effective and sound developed financial sector system.Contribution/value-add: The financial-economic growth nexus indicate that a well-functioning financial market development can promote economic growth. However, some controversies exist as some evidence indicated that a negative or positive financial development–growth nexus exists, so there was a need to find out what is the sub-Saharan case. Furthermore, there was a need to find development regulatory and macroeconomic policies that enhance growth.

EVALUATING THE EFFECT OF ISLAMIC FINANCING TO FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT: EVIDENCE FROM OIC COUNTRIES

The development of Islamic finance is governed by Islamic laws (Shariah). The main principles that regulate all forms of transactions in Islamic banking activities include the prohibition of interest or usury (riba),the use of excessive risk (gharar), and gambling (maysir). The Islamic finance industry has become a prominent sector and is one of the fastest growing components of financial developments over the last decade in the global financial system. The availability of large numbers of Islamic finance products will increase significantlyas there have been a growing demand throughout the world, especially in OIC participating countries. Hence, the objective of this study is to identify the important factors that enhances financial development in the selected OIC countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen). Three indicators of financial development were used; Islamic finance, broad money and liquid liabilities. The data used in this study is the panel data from the year 1990 to 2012 which were obtained from the International Monetary Fund, Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions Information (IBIS), and World Bank databases. This study employed pooled OLS, fixed and random effect model. The results indicate that there are significant relationships between Islamic finance and financial development. Specifically, this study found that liquid liabilities and Islamic finance are two factors that have significantly influenced financial development in the OIC countries. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the OIC governments are required to develop policies that would integrate Islamic finance into their financial system. These policies should be centred around regulatory framework and supervisory role to utilize Islamic finance for greater economic growth. Keywords: Islamic finance; financial development; OIC countries; pooled OLS, fixed effect; random effect

Evaluating the Effects of Economic and Financial Development on the Renewable Energy Consumption

Nowadays renewable energy has become one of the key trends in the energy markets development strategy. The aim of this article is to analyze the impact of economic and financial development on the consumption of renewable electricity. We find that there is a certain set of economic and financial indicators that affects the amount of renewable electricity consumption, but final results depend on the surveyed group of countries. While estimating BRICS we find that there is a positive correlation between economic and financial development and the consumption of renewable electricity. The financial indicator of the share of liquid liabilities in GDP has the greatest impact on the renewable energy consumed.