Interest Rate Shocks Research Articles

Overlooked Market Risk Shocks: Prepayment Uncertainty and Option-Adjusted Spreads

Assessments of market risk for economic or regulatory capital typically involve calculating a portfolio’s sensitivity to key risk factor movements. In this article, we describe how to generate shocks to prepayment rates and mortgage security option-adjusted spreads (OAS) conditional on a corresponding set of interest rate shocks. By using historical performance data from multiple model vendors, we show that prepayment rate shocks capture model misspecification but potentially fail to account for other important sources of model error. Mortgage security OAS serves as a broader measure of model error, encompassing both model misspecification and forecasting errors, as well as credit and liquidity risk. While sometimes overlooked, alternative risk factors, such as prepayment and OAS shocks, can have a pronounced effect on the valuation of institutional portfolios with mortgage securities.

What explains the speed of recovery from banking crises?

While a large body of research has explored the causes and effects of banking crises, less is known about what determines recovery from banking crises, despite large variations in post-crisis performances across countries. In order to identify local and global factors that determine the length of recovery (i.e. the time it takes until countries reach their pre-crisis level of per capita GDP), this exploratory paper employs event–history analysis on 138 incidents of banking crises between 1970 and 2012. Regarding domestic factors, the simultaneous occurrence of currency crises, large financial sectors, overvalued currencies and large primary deficits are associated with later recovery, whereas higher debt-to-GDP ratios or inflation levels do not exhibit a negative effect on post-crisis performances. Regarding external factors, a low growth of world trade as well as indicators of uncertainty in financial markets are correlated with later recovery. Global interest rate shocks are particularly harmful for the speed of recovery among middle-income countries with a strong reliance on external capital. The results are similar when using the length of recessions as an alternative indicator of post-crisis performances.

Sector heterogeneity and credit market imperfections in emerging markets

This paper shows that the impact of country interest rate shocks on emerging markets' economic activities can be associated with credit market imperfections affecting principally non-tradable activities. I present novel evidence documenting that tradable and non-tradable activities respond asymmetrically to changes in credit conditions in emerging markets. I show that country interest rate shocks are amplified through non-tradable activities, and that local credit substantially explains their output growth. Unlike the non-tradable sector, tradable activities are not significantly affected by changes in local credit conditions. To rationalize these findings, I introduce a small open economy model with heterogeneous access to international borrowing that accounts for the asymmetric response of tradable and non-tradable activities.

Fiscal costs of monetary policy: indirect effects of an interest rate shock on Brazilian public net debt

ABSTRACT: The paper estimates the fiscal cost of an increase in the Brazilian policy interest rate - the SELIC - by considering not only the direct effect on the yield of public bonds that are indexed to the SELIC, but also indirect effects on: (i) the yield of public bonds that are indexed to the exchange rate and inflation, and (ii) the stock of public net debt through adjustments in the value of international reserves measured in domestic currency. Projections are based on the estimation of the relationship between interest rates, exchange rates and inflation by means of a vector auto-regression. We conclude that the inclusion of such indirect effects has an ambiguous effect on the response of the implicit interest rate on public net debt to shocks in the SELIC, when adjustments in the value of international reserves are not considered. However, the inclusion of the latter amplifies the fiscal cost of a more restrictive monetary policy. These results call for a better coordination between monetary, fiscal and exchange rate policies in Brazil.

Regional asymmetries in monetary policy transmission: The case of the Greek regions

Monetary policy is unlikely to have a uniform impact on the real economic activity across regions with different industrial structures. This study measures the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy on regional and sectoral output of the 13 regions in Greece over the period 1980 to 2009. By using an unrestricted vector autoregressive model and the impulse response analysis, our results show that an interest rate shock affects the economic activity across regions differently. Furthermore in our investigation, we use a panel vector autoregressive model so as to investigate the dynamic variation of the impact of interest rates controlling also for time and cross regions fixed effects associated with specific time invariant regions' characteristics as well as with time variant characteristics attributed to the integration process of these regions. Finally, in identifying the channel of monetary policy transmission in the Greek regions, we investigate the role of Greek regional industrial structures in explaining these variations.

The Importance of Real and Nominal Shocks on the UK Housing Market

The goal of this paper is to examine the responsiveness of the UK housing market to real and nominal shocks. To achieve this goal, we use a structural VAR model based on quarterly data for the period 1957:1-2009:4. We find that, in response to an interest rate shock, aggregate and modern house prices fall sharply over the first 4 years and do not recover to their pre-shock level. In response to a real GDP shock, both house prices react in a positive inverted U-shaped manner. Finally, we find that an inflation shock has a U- shaped negative impact on aggregate and modern house prices in the UK.

Inflationary shocks and real output growth in nine Muslim-majority countries: Implications for Islamic banking and finance

Low and stable inflation is important for maintaining the viability of Islamic banking and finance within a dual banking system. Inflationary shocks when transmitted to real output growth cause a shift of investment to fixed return products as a hedge against the uncertainty of returns on equity investment under Islamic profit-loss sharing contracts. This study examines the transmission of inflationary shocks to the real economy for nine Muslim-majority countries (Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey) that have introduced Islamic banking, all except Iran within dual-banking systems. A structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) framework is deployed to understand macroeconomic relationships using annual data from the late 1970s to 2014. The key finding is that inflationary shocks affect real interest and exchange rates which in turn impact real output growth. The paper argues that the absorption of inflationary shocks in real interest and exchange rates is the outcome of rigidities in nominal interest and exchange rates within repressed financial systems. Policy regimes that allow for greater adjustment in nominal interest and exchange rates under a deregulated financial system would offer better shock absorption capacity which would lead to less volatility in inflation, real interest and exchange rates, and real output growth. The resulting more stable macroeconomic environment would be more conducive to the development of an Islamic financial sector that would promote economic growth.

Monetary Policy Shocks and Industrial Sector Performance in South Africa

This paper employs an eight variable Structural Vector Auto regression (SVAR) model to examine how monetary policy shocks affect industrial sector performance in South Africa using monthly data from 1994:1 to 2012:12.The study finds no direct link between exchange rate and interest rate shocks and industrial output growth. A money supply shock, however, is observed to exert a significant positive impact on industrial output growth from about the eighth month. The study also reveals that the interest rate response to an unanticipated increase in the rate of inflation is insignificant, reflecting the infrequent changes of the repo rate in the country. We also find evidence of a symbiotic relationship between industrial output growth and other sectors of the economy that form components of aggregate output. The study further demonstrates that monetary authorities have very limited control over industrial output growth using instruments of monetary policy. In addition, it is found that relatively large proportions of the variations in the rate of inflation are explained by changes in money supply, exchange rates and industrial output. We also observe that variations in exchange rates are largely explained by unexpected changes in the exchange rates themselves, which supports the Martingale Hypothesis of exchange rates.

Which Interest Rate Scenario is the Worst One for a Bank? Evidence from a Tracking Bank Approach for German Savings and Cooperative Banks

Interest income is the most important source of revenue for most of the banks. The aim of this paper is to assess the impact of different interest rate scenarios on the banks' interest income. As we do not know the interest rate sensitivity of real banks, we construct for each bank a portfolio with a similar composition of its assets and liabilities, called 'tracking bank'. We evaluate the effect of 260 historical interest rate shocks on the tracking banks of German savings banks and cooperative banks. It turns out that a sharp decrease in the steepness of the yield curve has the most negative impact on the banks' interest income.

The effect of yield curve shape and level on bond immunisation effectiveness

ABSTRACTThe effect of different-shaped yield curves on the effectiveness of bond immunisation was investigated. Bonds were priced using historical yield curves of various shapes and simulated interest rate shocks applied. The resulting end-values of these bonds were calculated and compared at relevant duration dates using symmetrical (positive and negative) shocks. Yield curve shape and position were found to be important factors for immunisation effectiveness and results also demonstrated that – all else held constant – immunisation effects are asymmetrical for shocks of different sign. Changes in bond value are consistently less pronounced for positive shocks, regardless of yield curve shape or level.

The inequality channel of monetary transmission

We examine optimal monetary policy in the presence of inequality by introducing unskilled agents with no access to the financial system into a DSGE model with sticky prices. Our main results are: (i) a contractionary interest rate shock increases inequality, while inflation and the output gap fall; (ii) the welfare-based objective of monetary policy includes inequality stabilization; (iii) as the proportion of unskilled agents increases, welfare decreases; and (iv) under scarcity of skilled agents, monetary policy is weakened, while fiscal policy produces a more relevant impact on the economy.

Modelling the Impact of External Shocks on the Economy of Ukraine: DSGE Approach

The paper explores the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to study the impact of external shocks on the economy of Ukraine. The dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model is constructed for a small open economy that includes households, firms (domestic manufacturers and importers), government, the National Bank and external sector. The model assumes the new-Keynesian approach that includes the so-called “rigidities” of prices and wages, the existence of the households’ consumption habits and investments with adjustment costs. Also, it takes into account the country’s significant dependence on mineral products imports. All goods in the economy are divided into the domestic ones (that are exported and consumed in the country), imports and mineral products. So the purpose of the model is to study the impact of external shocks on the economy of Ukraine, such as a positive shock in world output, a positive shock in the world aggregate demand, a positive shock in the world interest rate, and a positive shock in world prices.

The Bank Lending Channel in a Dual Banking System: Evidence from Malaysia

This paper examines the bank lending channel of monetary transmission in Malaysia, a country with a dual banking system including both Islamic and conventional banks, over the period 1994:01-2015:06. A two-regime threshold vector autoregression (TVAR) model is estimated to take into account possible nonlinearities in the relationship between bank lending and monetary policy under different economic conditions. The results indicate that Islamic credit is less responsive than conventional credit to interest rate shocks in both the high and low growth regimes. By contrast, the relative importance of Islamic credit shocks in driving output growth is much greater in the low growth regime, their effects being positive. These findings can be interpreted in terms of the distinctive features of Islamic banks.

Financial fragility of euro area households

Until recently, the lack of appropriate harmonized micro data covering both income and wealth has been the major obstacle in analyzing financial vulnerability of the household sector in the euro area. This data problem has been partially circumvented by the dissemination of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). Based on this unique data set, we put forward a stress testing method of household balance sheets in a consistent manner across euro area countries. To this end, we put forward a metric of distress which takes into account both the solvency and liquidity position of the household and demonstrate that this metric outperforms the most common metrics used in the literature, which do not take into account the households’ asset holdings. We calibrate this metric using the country level data on non-performing loan ratios and estimate stress-test elasticities in response to an interest rate shock, an income shock and a house price shock. We find that, albeit euro-area households are relatively resilient as a whole, there are large discrepancies in the impact of macroeconomic shocks across countries. Finally, we demonstrate that our framework could be used to assess some measures mitigating losses to the banks, such as engaging in the restructurings of loans that are at risk of defaulting.

Long-Run Effects of Macro Shocks on the Korean Stock Market: A Structural VAR Approach

This paper examines the long-run effect of major macroeconomic shocks, using the structural vector autoregression (SVAR) approach, on stock prices for the Korean stock market, one of the leading emerging markets. Novel features of the modeling is to expand the dimension of the bivariate SVAR model of Blanchard and Quah (1989) and of Hess and Lee (1999) by including stock market shocks in addition to the pre-identified supply and demand shocks. Moreover, our three-variable SVAR model is further generalized to a five-variable SVAR, augmenting interest rate shocks and foreign exchange rate shocks. The model is estimated using monthly Korean market data from January 2003 to September 2015, and further estimated with two sub-samples using the recent global financial crisis period and non-crisis period. The estimation results using a three-variable model show that stock returns have a negative relation with demand shocks and a permanent positive relation with supply shocks. Risk premium shocks show a negative relation with inflation and a positive relation with real output growth. Interestingly, the subsample results indicate that the market fluctuations during the global financial crisis period have relatively little effect on the Korean stock market and its macro variables. With the five-variable model estimation, a ‘price puzzle’ is documented with evidence of a positive correlation between inflation and the interest rate shock. A positive correlation is also observed between inflation and the supply shocks in the long run. Lastly the forecast error variance decomposition indicates that the monetary policy change is the leading determinant of the long-run level of stock prices in the Korean stock market. These findings suggest that the recent expansionary monetary policy should be cautiously implemented in accordance with inflation movement.

The Allocation of Financial Risks During the Life Cycle in Individual and Collective DC Pension Contracts

This paper measures how financial shocks - equity market, interest rate or inflation shocks - affect different generations of participants in pension schemes. We show that an individual scheme, by using a life cycle investment strategy, can largely replicate the allocation of traded risks across generations of a collective pension scheme that gradually adjusts pensions after financial shocks. Collective schemes can shift financial risk to generations that will participate in the future, whereas individual accounts cannot. In the current institutional setting this shift of traded risk in collective contracts to future generations is limited. Collective pension schemes are able to reallocate nontraded risks among the participants to obtain a more efficient distribution of risk across generations. In schemes with individual accounts, risk sharing is limited to risks traded on financial markets.

THE EFFECT OF INDONESIAN MACROECONOMIC CONDITION AND INTERNATIONAL INTEREST RATE ON YIELD OF THE GOVERNMENT BOND IN US DOLLAR

This study analyzes the effect of Indonesian macroeconomic condition and international interest rate shocks on yield of the Government Bond in US Dollar. This study applies Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) using monthly data which consists of yield of the Government Bond in US Dollar, domestic interest rate, price level, real exchange rate, and international interest rate during the period of January 2006 to December 2013. The results show that domestic interest rate, price level, real exchange rate, and international interest rate have significant positive impacts on yield of the Government Bond in US Dollar and confirm the presence of the error correction mechanism in the yield of the Government Bond in US Dollar model that also indicates the existence of cointegration.

Impact of Payment Technology on Seasonality of Currency in Circulation: Evidence from the USA and India

This paper examines the impact of payment technology on seasonality in currency in circulation. We specify that total transaction in a period follows a Gompertz distribution over time and extend the standard Baumol–Tobin model to obtain a nonlinear expression of currency growth. In contrast to linear dummy variable models that reflect fixed seasonality, our theoretical results reflect gradually decaying seasonal coefficients over time and suggest that in the long-run, growth-in currency holdings would not be seasonal but would be affected by interest rate shocks only. Empirical applications of the model for the USA and India reveal its superior performance compared to linear dummy variable models with fixed seasonality.

Value of the Distant Future: Model-Independent Results

If stochastic perturbation of the long-term discount factor by random shocks in instantaneous interest or consumption growth rates is weak, the approximate model-independent description of an effective discount rate is possible in terms of first and second cumulants of these processes. The derived simple analytical formulas describe the declining discount curves at times comparable with the correlation time of the relevant stochastic process. With a growth of time the relevant effective “certainty equivalent” discount rates converge towards their long-term time-invariant asymptotic corresponding to the conventional Markovian exponential decay of a discount factor. Comparison of the obtained results (approximate model-independent and exact model-dependent) with the outcome of the benchmark investment- and consumption-based models shows that the transient decline of a discount curve with a growth of time is related to serial correlations of shocks in the relevant rates. Account of fluctuations of real interest rates substantially reduces the annualized long-term discount rate, e.g., 0.5% for USA and UK. The model-independent character and simplicity of the obtained analytical results may warrant incorporation into the rigorous cost-benefit and regulatory impact analysis of long-term environmental and infrastructure projects.

Household resilience to adverse macroeconomic shocks: evidence from Czech microdata

We develop a methodology for identifying financially distressed households and use it for testing the responses to shocks to the unemployment rate, the interest rate and prices of essential expenditure in the Czech Republic. We extend the approach of Johansson and Persson (2006) for Sweden and Albacete and Fessler (2010) for Austria in the literature to allow for full labour market transitions between employment and unemployment, and, due to data availability, to account for heads and spouses within households. This improvement may lead to a higher response of household distress incidence, due to the unemployment rate shock, than in both Sweden and Austria, while the effects due to the interest rate shock are of similar size as in Austria. We illustrate the use of our approach for stress testing households’ ability to pay their debts using macroeconomic scenarios from the CNB’s official forecast and from the CNB’s Financial Stability Report. The results highlight the importance of using micro-level datasets in the analysis of household distress incidence, as the impact of shocks is more pronounced among lower-income households.