Carlos Caceres

Sovereign Spreads; Global Risk Aversion, Contagion or Fundamentals?

Over the past year, euro area sovereign spreads have exhibited an unprecedented degree of volatility. This paper explores how much of these large movements reflected shifts in (i) global risk aversion (ii) country-specific risks, directly from worsening fundamentals, or indirectly from spillovers originating in other sovereigns. The analysis shows that earlier in the crisis, the surge in global risk aversion was a significant factor influencing sovereign spreads, while recently country-specific factors have started playing a more important role. The perceived source of contagion itself has changed: previously, it could be found among those sovereigns hit hard by the financial crisis, such as Austria, the Netherlands, and Ireland, whereas lately the countries putting pressure on euro area government bonds have been primarily Greece, Portugal, and Spain, as the emphasis has shifted towards short-term refinancing risk and long-term fiscal sustainability. The paper concludes that debt sustainability and appropriate management of sovereign balance sheets are necessary conditions for preventing sovereign risk from feeding back into broader financial stability concerns.

Sovereign Spreads and Contagion Risks in Asia

This paper explores how much of the movements in the sovereign spreads of Asian economies over the course of the global financial crisis has reflected shifts in (i) global risk aversion; (ii) country-specific risks, directly from worsening fundamentals, and indirectly from spillovers originating in other sovereigns and the uncertainty surrounding exchange rates. Earlier in the crisis, the increase in market-implied contagion led to higher Asian sovereign bond yield spreads over swaps. But, after the crisis, Asia’s sovereign spreads normalized, despite the debt crisis in the euro area, reflecting a fall in both exchange rate and spillover risks.

Structural Breaks in Fiscal Performance: Did Fiscal Responsibility Laws Have Anything to do with Them?

In recent years, many countries have adopted Fiscal Responsibility Laws to strengthen fiscal institutions and promote fiscal discipline in a credible, predictable and transparent manner. Still, results on the effectiveness of these laws remain tentative. In this paper, we test empirically whether fiscal performance, measured as the level of primary fiscal balances and their volatility, indeed improved after the implementation of Fiscal Responsibility Laws in a sample of Latin American and advanced economies. We show that traditional econometric approaches, which rely on the use of dummies in time series or panel regressions, yield biased estimates. In contrast, our empirical strategy recognizes that, a priori, the timing of the effect of these laws on fiscal performance is unknown, while controlling for the impact of the business and commodity cycles on fiscal outcomes. Overall, we find limited empirical evidence in support of the view that Fiscal Responsibility Laws have had a distinguishable effect on fiscal performance. However, Fiscal Responsibility Laws could still have other positive effects on the conduct of fiscal policy not analyzed here, for instance, through enhanced transparency and guidance in the budget process and lower risk premia.

Bank Solvency and Funding Cost

Understanding the interaction between bank solvency and funding cost is a crucial pre-requisite for stress-testing. In this paper we study the sensitivity of bank funding cost to solvency measures while controlling for various other measures of bank fundamentals. The analysis includes two measures of bank funding cost: (a) average funding cost and (b) interbank funding cost as a proxy of wholesale funding cost. The main findings are: (1) Solvency is negatively and significantly related to measures of funding cost, but the effect is small in magnitude. (2) On average, the relationship is stronger for interbank funding cost than for average funding cost. (3) During periods of stress interbank funding cost is more sensitive to solvency than in normal times. Finally, (4) the relationship between funding cost and solvency appears to be non-linear, with higher sensitivity of funding cost at lower levels of solvency.

Analytical Framework for Assessing a Country’s Macroeconomic and Financial Vulnerabilities

This paper presents a simple framework to classify different countries according to their macroeconomic environment and their financial environment. By macroeconomic environment we mean the economic, political, institutional and regulatory situation of a country. For this purpose, the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) methodology was used. This enabled us to summarize most of the developments that would otherwise been characterized by a large number of variables within two single indicators. Indeed, our analysis shows how the actual situation of these countries can be fairly accurately described using their scores along these two measures. Hence, this enables us to rank countries according to their relative strengths, and to identify any specific weaknesses within their macroeconomic or financial environment that would need to be addressed. This is not only true for different countries at a given point in time, but especially when considering a particular country and its evolution across time. Although - a priori - this analysis is not meant as a forecasting tool of future developments of the country scores along the above two measures, it can provide useful insights when analyzing important trends, which are obtained by conducting this analysis over a certain number of time periods.

Global Financial Conditions and Monetary Policy Autonomy

Is the Mundell-Fleming trilemma alive and well? International co-movement of asset prices takes place alongside synchronized business cycles, complicating the identification of financial spillovers and assessments of monetary policy autonomy. A benchmark for interest rate comovement is to impose the null hypothesis that central banks respond only to the outlook for domestic inflation and output. We show that common approaches used to estimate interest rate spillovers tend to understate the degree of monetary autonomy enjoyed by small open economies with flexible exchange rates. We propose an empirical strategy that partials out those spillovers that are associated with impaired monetary autonomy. Using this approach, we revisit the predictions of the trilemma and find more compelling evidence that flexible exchange rates deliver monetary autonomy than prior work has suggested.

Country Stress Events: Does Governance Matter?

This paper analyzes the linkages between governance quality and country stress events. It focuses on two types of events: fiscal and political stress events, for which two innovative stress indicators are introduced. The results suggest that weaker governance quality is associated with a higher incidence of both fiscal and political stress events. In particular, internal accountability, which measures the responsiveness of governments to improving the quality of the bureaucracy, public service provision, and respect for the institutional framework in place, is positively associated with fiscal stress events. However, external accountability, which captures government accountability before the public in general, through elections and the democratic process, seems to be more important for political stress events. These results hold when using balanced country samples where region, oil-exporter status, income level, and time are taken into account.

U.S. Monetary Policy Normalization and Global Interest Rates

As the Federal Reserve continues to normalize its monetary policy, this paper studies the impact of U.S. interest rates on rates in other countries. We find a modest but nontrivial pass-through from U.S. to domestic short-term interest rates on average. We show that, to a large extent, this comovement reflects synchronized business cycles. However, there is important heterogeneity across countries, and we find evidence of limited monetary autonomy in some cases. The co-movement of longer term interest rates is larger and more pervasive. We distinguish between U.S. interest rate movements that surprise markets versus those that are anticipated, and find that most countries receive greater spillovers from the former. We also distinguish between movements in the U.S. term premium and the expected path of risk-free rates, concluding that countries respond differently to these shocks. Finally, we explore the determinants of monetary autonomy and find strong evidence for the role of exchange rate flexibility, capital account openness, but also for other factors, such as dollarization of financial system liabilities, and the credibility of fiscal and monetary policy.

Understanding Corporate Vulnerabilities in Latin America

This paper analyzes the potential risks and vulnerabilities of non-financial corporates in Latin America and Canada. We quantify the impact of company-specific, countryspecific, and global factors in driving corporate spreads. Overall, we found that all these factors play a role in explaining corporate risk. In particular, country specific factors such as exchange rate and sovereign CDS spreads are significantly associated with changes in corporate spreads, underscoring the importance of solid policy frameworks. We also find that global conditions, such as the VIX, are dominant drivers of corporate spreads. In recent years, the adverse effects from deteriorating domestic conditions have been broadly offset by relatively bening global financial conditions. However, a sustained reversal in these conditions would put significant pressure on corporate risk.

Measures of fiscal risk in oil-exporting countries

The recent relatively high levels of global oil prices have led to a significant improvement in the public finances of several oil-exporting countries. However, despite the increase in fiscal buffers, medium-term risks remain high. Fiscal vulnerabilities have increased as a consequence of the substantial spending packages that have been implemented in recent years. This has raised break-even prices – that is, the price levels that ensure that fiscal accounts are in balance at a given level of spending – in these countries. This study analyses such risks and develops measures of fiscal risk stemming from oil price fluctuations. An empirical application to oil-exporting countries from the Middle East and North Africa region is included. Additionally, it is worth noting that countries with large net assets and proven oil reserves are much less vulnerable to fiscal risk than is indicated by standard measures based on break-even prices.