Vector Equilibrium Correction Research Articles

Remittances and Economic Growth in Niger: An Error Correction Mechanism Approach

Abstract Migration has for a long time been a significant source of revenue for a huge number of persons in the Republic of Niger. In order to improve their families living condition, a great number of young people in Niger follow the migration path. In 2019, a total of 293 million U.S. dollars has been sent by migrants to their family members in Niger (World Bank, 2019), that is 3% of Niger GDP. The study used various time series econometric techniques including unit root test, Engle-Granger cointegration test, vector equilibrium correction method and some diagnostic tests on the residuals to inspect the connection between remittances and economic growth in Niger. The empirical results showed that there is the existence of a long run relationship between remittances and economic growth in Niger. The error correction term’s coefficient shows that about 51.62% of the discrepancy between long run and short run is corrected with a yearly data suggesting an acceptable rate of adjustment to equilibrium. Also, in the short run ceteris paribus a 10% increase in the remittances would lead to 2.03% increase in Niger Gross Domestic Product.

Dutch disease in the Norwegian agricultural sector

Applying and augmenting the theoretical framework of the Dutch disease, this paper investigates potential negative effects from the petroleum industry in Norway on agricultural profitability, and implicitly on food security due to the farmland abandonment effect. Two fundamental transmission channels of the oil price with an impact on agricultural profitability are analysed by vector equilibrium correction models: (1) The impact on producer prices, which affect input prices and then the costs of production; (2) The impact on food imports via the import-weighted exchange rate. A third channel is the wage differential in the respective sectors. Arguably, further consequences of low profitability and less farmland area are an increased pressure to become more efficient, which may result in increased use of antibiotics and increased depletion of soil. Therefore, due to the natural limits of boosting efficiency in biological systems and the farmland abandonment effect, Dutch disease in the agricultural sector is generally more serious than in the classical deindustrialisation case.

The Relationship between Remittances and Economic Growth in Togo: A Vector Equilibrium Correction Mechanism

The Relationship between Remittances and Economic Growth in Togo: A Vector Equilibrium Correction Mechanism

Geographical disaggregation of sectoral inflation. Econometric modelling of the Euro area and Spanish economies

ABSTRACTThis article studies the performance of different modelling strategies for 969 and 600 monthly price indexes disaggregated by sectors and geographical areas in Spain, regions and in the Euro Area 12 (EA12) countries. We also provide, by means of spatial bi-dimensional vector equilibrium correction models for all pairs of prices between neighbours, a description of spatial cointegration restrictions that could be useful for understanding price setting within an economy. We study the relevance of the regional disaggregation by using the proposed models to forecast the corresponding headline inflation and testing whether it is more accurate than alternative forecasts based on aggregated models. The results for Spain show that this is the case. Country disaggregation forecasts are also reliable for the EA12, but only because derived headline inflation forecasting is not significantly worse than alternative forecasts. The models in this article can be used for competitive analysis and other macro and regional analysis.

Identifying the sector bias of technical change

The empirical literature studying the sector bias of technical change has only focused on skill-biased technical change. In this paper, I analyse the sector bias of both factor-neutral and factor-biased technical change. In Norwegian data from 1972 to 2007, the empirical evidence is not clear on the impact of a sector bias of skill-biased technical change, but it points to a sector bias of factor-neutral technical change from the 1970s to the 1990s. That said, the impact of the sector bias seems to have reduced towards the latter part of the sample period. I also evaluate the cross-sectional model used in the literature and show the strong restrictions that must be placed on a vector equilibrium correction model to end up with the standard model. If these restrictions do not hold, the results reported in the literature may be biased. I show that the restrictions are strongly rejected, and that erroneously imposing them significantly changes the estimates of skill-biased technical change in many sectors. These results can, to some extent, be traced back to how the cross-sectional model ignores initial disequilibrium and imposes factors of production to be either complements or substitutes.

Self-reinforcing effects between housing prices and credit

The financial crisis has brought the interaction between housing prices and household borrowing into the limelight of the economic policy debate. This paper examines the nexus of housing prices and credit in Norway within a structural vector equilibrium correction model (SVECM) over the period 1986q2–2008q4. The results establish a two way interaction in the long-run, so that higher housing prices lead to a credit expansion, which in turn puts an upward pressure on prices. Interest rates influence housing prices indirectly through the credit channel. Furthermore, households’ expectations about the future development of their own income as well as in the Norwegian economy have a significant impact on housing price growth. Dynamic simulations show how shocks are propagated and amplified. When we augment the model to include the supply side of the housing market, these effects are dampened.

Effects of Monetary Policy on the US Dollar/UK Pound Exchange Rate. Is There a “Delayed Overshooting Puzzle”?

AbstractThe determination of the US dollar/UK pound sterling exchange rate is studied in a small symmetric macroeconometric model including UK–US differentials in inflation, output gap, and short‐ and long‐term interest rates for the four decades since the breakdown of Bretton Woods. The key question addressed is the possible presence of a “delayed overshooting puzzle” in the dynamic reaction of the exchange rate to monetary policy shocks. In contrast to the existing literature, we follow a data‐driven modeling approach combining (i) a vector autoregression (VAR)‐based cointegration analysis with (ii) a graph‐theoretic search for instantaneous causal relations and (iii) an automatic general‐to‐specific approach for the selection of a congruent parsimonious structural vector equilibrium correction model. We find that the long‐run properties of the system are characterized by four cointegration relations and one stochastic trend, which is identified as the long‐term interest rate differential and that appears to be driven by long‐term inflation expectations as in the Fisher hypothesis. It cointegrates with the inflation differential to a stationary “real” long‐term rate differential and also drives the exchange rate. The short‐run dynamics are characterized by a direct link from the short‐term to the long‐term interest rate differential. Jumps in the exchange rate after short‐term interest rate variations are only significant at 10%. Overall, we find strong evidence for delayed overshooting and violations of uncovered interest rate parity (UIP) in response to monetary policy shocks.

Price-wage nexus and the role of a tax system

The presented study was aimed to test empirically major economic hypotheses dealing with long-term relationships between wages, producer prices, prices of consumer goods and services, the consumer price index, productivity of labour, unemployment and payroll expenses other than wages themselves. It is particularly important for this approach to distinguish between net wages shaping employees’ decisions and gross wages driving employers’ decisions. Because the variables are generated by non-stationary stochastic processes integrated of order 1 and 2, the analytical tool applied was a vector equilibrium correction model, VEqCM. The findings demonstrate that prices and payroll expenses are the major sources of shocks in the system in question. Wages and prices (particularly producer prices) are the most sensitive to this type of stochastic trends. In the Polish economy prices are integrated of order two, so they can be effectively influenced by anti-inflationary policy.

Modeling Money (M2) Demand in Egypt - A Vector Equilibrium Correction Model

This paper empirically investigates the relationship between real money demand, real income, interest rates and real consumption. The paper provide a mixed strategy for estimating the money demand function that incorporates shifting from a system of equations vector auto regression (VAR) approach that maintains the information relating to the feedback between variables, followed by vector equilibrium correction model (VECM) in order to investigate the nature of short term and long term interaction and finaly an error correction model (ECM) and autoregressive distributed lag model (ADL). The paper concludes that real money demand in Egypt is stable and can be confidently considered by monetary authorities to adjust for long run growth in the real economy.

An empirical investigation of monetary interaction in the Korean economy

This paper conducts an econometric investigation of monetary interaction in the Korean economy over the past two decades. The study pays close attention to a critical role played by broad money and an interest rate term spread in the economy. A vector autoregression reveals two cointegrating relationships, both of which are consistent with macroeconomic theory: the first relationship corresponds to a broad money demand function, while the second represents a monetary policy rule function. The cointegrated system is then reduced to a vector equilibrium correction system, which characterizes the interaction between money demand and monetary policy rule. It is also demonstrated that the preferred model is a reliable forecasting device, suggesting that the broad money contains information about the real economy in the future.

Forecasting Spanish Inflation Using the Maximum Disaggregation Level by Sectors and Geographical Areas

This article evaluates different strategies for forecasting Spanish inflation using information from price series for fifty-seven products and eighteen regions in Spain. We consider vector equilibrium correction (VeqCM) models that include cointegration relationships between Spanish prices and prices in the regions of Valencia, Andalusia, Madrid, Catalonia, and the Basque Country. This approach is consistent with economic intuition and is shown to be of tangible importance after suitable econometric evaluation. It is found that sectoral disaggregate models are useful for forecasting inflation in the five largest Spanish regions. Moreover, aggregate inflation forecasts in Spain can be significantly improved by aggregating projections from different sectors and geographical areas and by considering cointegration relationships between regional and national prices. However, in spite of the existence of long-run relationships between sectoral and national prices, they include deterministic components that are not consistent with the law of one price.

Where Has All the Money Gone? Wealth and the Demand for Money in South Africa

After trending upward for about 25 years, the income velocity of money in South Africa reversed course in 1994 and began a steep decline that continues to the present day. Some writers have argued that the change in income velocity is symptomatic of an unstable demand for money, the implication of this argument being that movements in the money supply provide little useful information about medium-to-long-term inflationary developments. We argue otherwise. Our basic premise is that there is a stable demand-for-money function but that the models that have been used to estimate South African money demand are not well specified because they do not include a measure of wealth. Using two empirical methodologies – a co-integrated vector equilibrium correction (VEC) approach and a timevarying coefficient (TVC) approach – we find that a demand-for-money function that includes wealth is stable. Consequently, our results suggest that the present practice of the South African Reserve Bank whereby M3 is used as an information variable in the Bank’s inflationtargeting framework is well-placed.

A portfolio balance approach to Euro-area money demand in a time-varying environment

As part of its monetary policy strategy, the European Central Bank has formulated a reference value for M3 growth. A pre-requisite for the use of a reference value for M3 growth is the existence of a stable demand function for that aggregate. However, a large empirical literature has emerged showing that, beginning in 2001, essentially all euro area M3 demand functions have exhibited instability. This paper argues that a proper understanding of the determination of money requires a portfolio analysis where the demand for broad money is seen as just one element in the wealth portfolio. Under this framework, wealth is the variable that constitutes the total budget constraint on the holdings of assets, including money, and changes in equity prices are a key transmission channel of monetary policy. Understanding money behaviour thus requires good data on euro area wealth which at present do not exist. Our basic premise is that there is a stable demand-for-money function but that the models that have been used until now to estimate euro area money-demand are not well-specified because they do not include a measure of wealth. Using two empirical methodologies - - a co-integrated vector equilibrium correction (VEC) approach and a time-varying coefficient (TVC) approach - - we find that a demand-for-money function that includes wealth is stable. The upshot of our findings is that M3 behaviour continues to provide useful information about medium-term developments on inflation.

Forecasting spot and forward prices in the international freight market

This paper tests the performance of popular time series models in predicting spot and forward rates on major seaborne freight routes. Shipping is a nonstorable service, so the forward price is not tied to the spot by any arbitrage relationship. The developing forward market is dominated by hedgers, and it is an empirical question whether forward rates contain information about future spot rates. We find that vector equilibrium correction (VECM) models give the best in-sample fit, but implausibly suggest that forward rates converge strongly on spot rates. In out-of-sample forecasting all models easily outperform a random walk benchmark. Forward rates do help to forecast spot rates, suggesting some degree of speculative efficiency. However, in predicting forward rates, the VECM is unhelpful, and ARIMA or VAR models forecast better. The exercise illustrates the dangers of forecasting with equilibrium correction models when the underlying market structure is evolving, and coefficient estimates conflict with sensible priors.

Dynamic adjustment cost models with forward‐looking behaviour

Summary In this paper we propose a new approach for dynamic decision problems where forward-looking agents choose a set of non-stationary variables subject to quadratic adjustment costs. It is assumed that expectations are computed by a cointegrated Vector Equilibrium Correction Model (VEqCM). The role of feedbacks from the decision to the explanatory variables on solution properties and modelling approach is discussed. We show that once the system of interrelated Euler equations stemming from the agent's optimization problem is embedded within the VEqCM, a switching algorithm based on Generalized Least Squares can be used to estimate and test the model. A labour demand model for two Danish manufacturing industries is investigated empirically.

Cointegration analysis of the Fed model

The Fed model postulates that the equity earnings yield follows the bond yield in the long run. Our tests based on a cointegration analysis of the United States, United Kingdom and German data indicate that the Fed model has predictive power in forecasting changes in the equity prices, earnings and bond yields. The predictions are better in the US than in other countries. Our approach consists of building a Vector Equilibrium Correction model which provides a quantitative dynamic version of the Fed model.

Multi-equational linear quadratic adjustment cost models with rational expectations and cointegration

In this paper the econometric analysis of linear quadratic adjustment cost models with rational expectations and cointegrated variables is extended to the multi-equational SET-UP and the case of second-order adjustment costs. The proposed method is based on the idea of nesting the system of interrelated Euler equations stemming from the intertemporal optimization problem within a cointegrated Vector Equilibrium Correction Model representing the agent forecast tool. Contrary to previous practise a likelihood-based procedure can be set out without appealing to numerical optimization algorithms. Cointegration and generalized least squares techniques can be used to estimate and test the model.

The Role of Asymmetries and Regime Shifts in the Term Structure of Interest Rates*

We examine the relationship between interest rates of different maturities for the US, Germany and Japan over the period 1982-2000, using a general, multivariate vector equilibrium correction modelling framework capable of simultaneously allowing for asymmetric adjustment and regime shifts. This approach has a very general underlying theoretical rationale that allows for time-varying term premia and other short-run deviations from the expectations model of the term structure. The resulting nonlinear models provide good in-sample fits, display regime switches closely related to key state variables driving monetary policy decisions and have satisfactory out-of-sample forecasting properties.

Modelling and forecasting stock returns: exploiting the futures market, regime shifts and international spillovers

AbstractThis paper proposes a vector equilibrium correction model of stock returns that exploits the information in the futures market, while allowing for both regime‐switching behaviour and international spillovers across stock market indices. Using data for three major stock market indices since 1989, we find that: (i) in sample, our model outperforms several alternative models on the basis of standard statistical criteria; (ii) in out‐of‐sample forecasting, our model does not produce significant gains in terms of point forecasts relative to more parsimonious alternative specifications, but it does so both in terms of market timing ability and in density forecasting performance. The economic value of the density forecasts is illustrated with an application to a simple risk management exercise. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Modeling assets and liabilities of a finnish pension insurance company: a VEqC approach

This paper develops a stochastic model for assets and liabilities of a Finnish pension insurance company. The assets and liabilities are expressed in terms of seven economic factors from Finland and the EU-area. The development of these factors is modeled with a Vector Equilibrium Correction model, that incorporates statistical information with expert views in the form of user specified growth rates and long term equilibria. The forecast performance of the resulting model is tested and the model is used in long-term solvency and asset liability simulations.