G01 - Financial CrisesReturn

The core of this paper is an econometric estimation of the relation between financial stress and a number of macroeconomic variables (consumption, real GDP, investment, unemployment). This estimation is done on Turkish quarterly data for the period 2002-2021 using threshold vector autoregression (i.e., TVAR). The paper observes the non-linear trade-off between financial stress and macroeconomic indicators. The effect of financial stress appears to be adverse when the stress level is already at a higher level. During high stress episodes, any further increase in financial stress drags economic growth down and the effect appears to be prolonged in nature. Consumption and investment growth also moderate due to a higher stress level. Furthermore, the forecast error decomposition indicates sustained contribution of financial stress impeding growth prospects over the forecast horizon. The findings corroborate with the financial friction mechanism. As borrowing constraint tightens during a high stress regime, the effect of financial stress moderates economic activities. Lastly, the paper extends a local projection approach for estimating a threshold VAR model as a robustness check.

This paper provides a framework for conducting simulations and stress testing in the non-financial corporate sector. It relies on national accounting and uses a set of input-output tables to track the propagation of shocks between parts of the sector while staying entirely consistent with the big picture framed by the core forecasting model and the underlying scenario. The simulation framework allows standard macroeconomic developments to be captured, but one-off measures such as government wage and salary compensation and loan moratoria can also be easily implemented. The main output of the simulation is a set of industry-level performance and profitability variables. These variables can be used for various types of analysis, such as credit risk modelling and profitability and liquidity analysis. Some of them - such as forecasting portfolio default rates - are shown in the paper. The historical default rate estimates obtained are accurate and economically sensible for most industries and exhibit high reliability even under severe economic conditions. Given its national accounting framework and its level of detail, the model can be used to support decision-making processes and to evaluate the effects of existing or planned economic policies. Two different scenarios are considered to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed approach.

This study identifies systemic break points in a factor pricing model for firms traded on European stock markets around the financial crisis. The aim is to shed light on the systemic risk transfer in explaining average stock returns in the fragmented European exchanges. Our analysis takes advantage of recent development in econometrics and employs models which enable "automatic" detection of factor model break points. We find that Western European exchanges are more closely integrated with American financial markets than Northern European stock exchanges and those in the United Kingdom. However, all exchanges were eventually affected by the systemic shock. The results of this study provide insight into immunisation strategies for portfolios created from European stocks.

We have tested the stability of parameters loading the asymmetric behaviour of the correlation and the importance of this behavior on the portfolio selection. In this paper, we have analyzed the following time series S&P index, gold and CME 5-Year Treasury Note Futures during the most important crisis from 1992 to 2009. The methodology is based on the dynamic conditional correlation model and its asymmetric volatility and asymmetric correlation extensions. The stability of parameters was tested by t-test applied on the rol ling windows data. The information importance of asymmetric volatility and correlation was tested by global minimum variance portfolio. The results suggest that the parameters loading the asymmetric behavior of the correlation are not stable for the analyzed time series during the financial crisis. With one exception we have found out that global minimum variance portfolio based on the dynamic conditional correlation model with asymmetric volatility is significantly less volatile than the global minimum variance portfolio based on the asymmetric dynamic conditional correlation model.

Crisis development in some banking systems has been associated with large-scale aid programs, which has been heavily involved with the central bank's impact on the very rapid growth of their balance sheets. The banking system in the Czech Republic in the period 2005-2015 has not undergone any crisis. Significant changes in the balance of the Czech National Bank were associated with foreign exchange interventions against the Czech crown. High liquidity determines almost zero demand of banks for loans from the central bank. The Czech National Bank is in the "debtor" position in relation to banks. Central banks in the European Monetary Union and the United States are in the opposite position of the creditors. The dramatic growth in bank reserves had no significant inflationary pressures. The main reason is careful supply of bank loans. All this confirms that issuing money into the economy is associated especially with commercial banks' lending to non-bank subjects. Central bank issues money only to the banking system.

The latest financial crisis has led to significant changes in the central bank's monetary policies. They have tried to respond by expansionary monetary policy in the different forms. We analyze if commercial and other banks use a higher quantity of reserves in order to increase granting of loans into the economy. Analysis is focused on the tendencies in money and credit multipliers. There are four analysed economics during the period 2008-2014: Czech Republic, European Monetary Union, Great Britain and the USA. No surprise that multipliers had tendencies to decline, especially from high values in the Great Britain and the USA. Development was quite surprising in the EMU, where all multipliers were very stable. We have observed the biggest exceptions in the USA, and the Czech Republic, respectively. Money multiplier of M1 is still less than 1 in the USA. Czech Republic is specific according to the values of credit multiplier. They are lower than values of money multiplier of M2, and even lower than multiplier of M1 since 2012. The most likely reasons for all trends are presented in the article.

Stock market integration of CEE-4 (the so-called Visegrad group or V4) and G7 countries is examined during the period from January 4, 1998 to August 5, 2012. As a proxy of integration we use dynamic conditional correlations estimated in the standard DCC and asymmetric DCC model framework. It is showed that during the recent financial crisis, conditional correlations between the CEE-4 and developed markets have increased more significantly than after the entry of the CEE-4 countries into the European Union. Finally, the estimated correlations exhibit significant relationship with conditional volatility with a positive feedback. This provides an evidence of strengthening relationships between markets under the study during the more volatile periods.

The recent financial crisis has significantly modified the approach to helping troubled banks. The traditional role of the central bank has shifted toward non-credit forms of assistance, provided mainly by the state, and even toward assisting insolvent banks. State assistance - directly or through specialized institutions - mainly concerned banks too big to fail, i.e. systemically important banks. State aid should be forthcoming only once funds available from shareholders, owners of subordinated debt and uninsured depositors have been exhausted. Credit by a central bank should be granted only to temporarily illiquid banks. Primarily as this credit assistance can have significant monetary implications, in as much as it leads to the growth of reserves in the banking system. The impact on the economy then depends primarily on the credit activity of commercial banks. The author compares theory against practice and, using the U.S. and the EMU as an example, analyses the monetary impact using the development of money multipliers.

Market value of derivatives after crisis requires discounting with interest rates that take into account the credit risk of the involved counterparties of the trade. The increase of credit risk is evidenced by the presence of basis swap spreads. Using one curve to both estimating the forward rates and discounting future cash flows is not plausible given the prerequisite of arbitrage free market. The aim of this paper is to derive discount curves which are consistent with market quotes. In the concluding part, we estimate CZK OIS rates, which can be then used to discount derivatives denominated in CZK and collateralized with CZK cash.

In this paper, we employ the high-frequency data from Prague Stock Exchange (PSE) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) to analyse the variation in extreme price movements and market volatility around the period of fall of Lehman Brothers. The sample ranges from January 2008 to July 2009. We employ the price jump indicators optimal with respect to Type-I and Type-II errors. The former one shows an increase in market volatility and extreme price movements during financial distress, while the later one distinguishes extreme price movements and shows that they do not react in the long-run to fi nancial distress at PSE, while for the matured US market suggests a company/sector-specific reaction. We analyse behaviour of extreme price movements with respect to CDS. Our results suggest that both markets are different - extreme price movements at PSE are independent of CDS movements, while those at NYSE show a sector/company specific reactions to CDS.

Central banks of major advanced economies have already started their sixth year of the greatest ever experiment in monetary policy at place. First, special measures were taken to prevent collapse of financial intermediation. At the same time main policy rates were cut down to historical lows hitting the zero lower bound quite soon after the onset of the financial crisis. After that central banks realised various unconventional measures in order to support their weak economies. While exceptional instruments aimed at restoring financial markets seem to have been inevitable to avert a collapse of a much greater magnitude in the short run, some other measures have remained disputable. Not only had these measures limited effectiveness in restoring stronger and sustainable economic growth, but concerns have also been raised recently about their unintended consequences. These side-effects concern not only domestic economies but international spillovers on many vulnerable less advanced and/or developing economies have been evident. Moreover, potential risks of the unprecedented measures may start to act fully in a longer horizon. Quantitative easing has led to enormous increases in balance sheets of the Fed, the BoE and ECB; however structural differences on the asset side have been evident. Main challenge for major central banks thus seems to be the right timing and structure of inevitable exit strategies in the near future so that a smooth exit with minimal side effects could be guaranteed.

The objective of the article is to identify impact of economic policy implications on current financial and economic crisis. The analysis examines a hypothesis that the main causes of financial and economic crisis include unbalanced developments of the macroeconomic sphere as well as existing weaknesses of banking systems, which often do not evolve in line with the development of economy fundamentals. The article is going to inspect three areas: (i) What development trends and economic policy were registered in the pre-crisis period in order to identify the main causes of economic fluctuations of economy; (ii) How economic policies responded to the course of the financial and economic crisis; (iii) What was the effect financial crisis had on the real economy development? The main task for after-crisis periods is to improve setting of monetary and fiscal policy, bank risk management system and also system for monitoring and analysing the business cycle.

This study examines the question whether uncoordinated steps of some EU states changing their deposit insurance schemes in the middle of 2008 could have led to shift of deposits among EU countries. The paper deals with changes of the rules which were introduced at the end of year 2008, and concerns with the amended Directive on Deposit Guarantee Schemes. Empirical analysis concentrates on the impact of state guarantees on the deposit grow rate in individual states. In the final part, we discuss the consequences of recent development.

This paper provides a theoretical framework for a thesis that the transition to the inflation targeting regime, either explicit or implicit, may be one of the causes of the long-term latent accumulations of the financial and structural imbalances, materializing much later and with more dire consequences. Due to the long-term systematic manipulation of interest rates, within the operational framework of the stabilization of consumer prices and the output gap, as well as of anti-deflationary fundamentalism, the economy can transform itself into a kind of "black box", gradually and over time causing an "escape" of credit and monetary aggregates. Money supply tends to be more endogenous and elastic, changing the causality within a link between the money supply and its effective economic materialization, both in production processes of the real economy as well as in banking and financial services. Thereby, the economy lacks a needful defensive mechanism that would pull the overheating economy back through more exogenous and inelastic money supply, automatically adjusting market interest rates. In the empirical part we employed VECM tests to show that the money supply was exogenous before the implicit adoption of inflation targeting in the USA (1985), but endogenous after it.

Building upon exhaustive research of extant and often fragmentary contemporary resources, this paper provides a thorough analysis of financial options trading and sales in interwar Czechoslovakia. Whilst focusing primarily on a remarkable bucketshop episode occuring in the late twenties and early thirties, it also comprises the so far most comprehensive study on the historical development and practices of derivatives trading on the Prague Exchange including the eminent role of private banking firms. A distinct intertemporal and international perspective facilitates the establishment of numerous parallels and patterns, strikingly instructive in times of crises.

The relatively long term period of stability before the present crises called even "Great Moderation" or "Golden Age of Central Banking" indicated that the infl ation targeting was a success story. As of 2008 a lot has changed and the debate over "Leaning against the wind or Clean afterwards?" is being revisited among central bankers and academicians. At the same time the question "Does money matter in monetary policy" is on the table again. This paper focuses on the discussion of these issues; moreover, some new challenges that emerged in previous three years are discussed. The crisis has highlighted an urgent need to incorporate banks and financial frictions into monetary policy modelling framework - therefore some new findings on this field of research are outlined. An important lesson from the crises is that price stability is not a sufficient precondition for financial stability, therefore an operational framework for financial stability is being searched - this is subject of the final part of this paper.

In this paper we analyze the dynamic conditional correlations between CEE stock markets (also known as countries from Vysehrad Group - V4) and developed European stock markets, with German DAX utilized as a benchmark. Our methodology is based on the DCC MV-GARCH approach. It is shown that the dynamic conditional correlations exhibit statistically significant growth after the integration of CEE countries to European Union, i.e. after the May 2004. The only index not exhibiting this trend is the Slovak SAX index.