Christopher Otrok

International Business Cycles: World, Region, and Country-Specific Factors

The paper investigates the common dynamic properties of business-cycle fluctuations across countries, regions, and the world. We employ a Bayesian dynamic latent factor model to estimate common components in macroeconomic aggregates (output, consumption, and investment) in a 60-country sample covering seven regions of the world. The results indicate that a common world factor is an important source of volatility for aggregates in most countries, providing evidence for a world business cycle. We find that region-specific factors play only a minor role in explaining fluctuations in economic activity. We also document similarities and differences across regions, countries, and aggregates. (JEL F41, E32, C11, C32)

Bayesian Leading Indicators: Measuring and Predicting Economic Conditions in Iowa

This paper designs and implements a Bayesian dynamic latent factor model for a vector of data describing the Iowa economy. Posterior distributions of parameters and the latent factor are analyzed by Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, and coincident and leading indicators are computed by using posterior mean values of current and predictive distributions for the latent factor. Copyright 1998 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.

Dynamic Factor Models with Time-Varying Parameters: Measuring Changes in International Business Cycles

We develop a dynamic factor model with time-varying factor loadings and stochastic volatility in both the latent factors and idiosyncratic components. We employ this new measurement tool to study the evolution of international business cycles in the post-Bretton Woods period, using a panel of output growth rates for nineteen countries. We find 1) statistical evidence of a decline in volatility for most countries, with the timing, magnitude, and source (international or domestic) of the decline differing across countries; 2) some evidence of a decline in business cycle synchronization for Group of Seven (G-7) countries, but otherwise no evidence of changes in synchronization for the sample countries, including European and euro-area countries; and 3) convergence in the volatility of business cycles across countries.

Global House Price Fluctuations; Synchronization and Determinants

We examine the properties of house price fluctuations across 18 advanced economies over the past 40 years. We ask two specific questions: First, how synchronized are housing cycles across these countries? Second, what are the main shocks driving movements in global house prices? To address these questions, we first estimate the global components in house prices and various macroeconomic and financial variables. We then evaluate the roles played by a variety of global shocks, including shocks to interest rates, monetary policy, productivity, credit, and uncertainty, in explaining house price fluctuations using a wide range of FAVAR models. We find that house prices are synchronized across countries, and the degree of synchronization has increased over time. Global interest rate shocks tend to have a significant negative effect on global house prices whereas global monetary policy shocks per se do not appear to have a sizeable impact. Interestingly, uncertainty shocks seem to be important in explaining fluctuations in global house prices.

Capital Controls or Exchange Rate Policy? A Pecuniary Externality Perspective

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, a new policy paradigm has emerged in which old-fashioned policies such as capital controls and other government distortions have become part of the standard policy toolkit (the so-called macro-prudential policies). On the wave of this seemingly unanimous policy consensus, a new strand of theoretical literature contends that capital controls are welfare enhancing and can be justified rigorously because of second-best considerations. Within the same theoretical framework adopted in this fast-growing literature, we show that a credible commitment to support the exchange rate in crisis times always welfare-dominates prudential capital controls as it can achieve the first best unconstrained allocation. In this benchmark economy, prudential capital controls are optimal only when the set of policy tools is restricted so that they are the only policy instrument available.

Spectral Welfare Cost Functions

If preferences are not time-separable, economic agents care not only about the magnitude of fluctuations in consumption but also about the persistence and other temporal characteristics of those fluctuations. This paper extends and develops the theory of spectral utility functions, which measure utility frequency by frequency, to illustrate the interaction between consumption volatility and time-non-separable preferences. To highlight the economic implications of the interaction, spectral welfare cost functions are developed to provide a quantitative measure of the importance to economic agents of the temporal delivery of consumption volatility.

Optimal Policy for Macro-Financial Stability

In this paper we study whether policy makers should wait to intervene until a financial crisis strikes or rather act in a preemptive manner. We study this question in a relatively simple dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model in which crises are endogenous events induced by the presence of an occasionally binding borrowing constraint as in Mendoza (2010). First, we show that the same set of taxes that replicates the constrained social planner allocation could be used optimally by a Ramsey planner to achieve the first best unconstrained equilibrium: in both cases without any precautionary intervention. Second, we show that the extent to which policymakers should intervene in a preemptive manner depends critically on the set of policy tools available and what these instruments can achieve when a crisis strikes. For example, in the context of our model, we find that, if the policy tools is constrained so that the first best cannot be achieved and the policy maker has access to only one tax instrument, it is always desirable to intervene before the crisis regardless of the instrument used. If however the policy maker has access to two instruments, it is optimal to act only during crisis times. Third and finally, we propose a computational algorithm to solve Markov-Perfect optimal policy for problems in which the policy function is not differentiable.

Regionalization vs. Globalization

Both global and regional economic linkages have strengthened substantially over the past quarter century. We employ a dynamic factor model to analyze the implications of these linkages for the evolution of global and regional business cycles. Our model allows us to assess the roles played by the global, regional, and country-specific factors in explaining business cycles in a large sample of countries and regions over the period 1960–2010. We find that, since the mid-1980s, the importance of regional factors has increased markedly in explaining business cycles especially in regions that experienced a sharp growth in intra-regional trade and financial flows. By contrast, the relative importance of the global factor has declined over the same period. In short, the recent era of globalization has witnessed the emergence of regional business cycles.

Monetary policy and the house price boom across U.S. states

The authors use a dynamic factor model estimated via Bayesian methods to disentangle the relative importance of the common component in the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s house price movements from state- or region-specific shocks, estimated on quarterly state-level data from 1986 to 2004. The authors find that movements in house prices historically have mainly been driven by the local (state- or region-specific) component. The recent period (2001–04) has been different, however: “Local bubbles” have been important in some states, but overall the increase in house prices is a national phenomenon. The authors then use a VAR to investigate the extent to which expansionary monetary policy is responsible for the common component in house price movements. The authors find the impact of policy shocks on house prices to be very small.

Optimal capital controls and real exchange rate policies: A pecuniary externality perspective

A new literature studies the use of capital controls to prevent financial crises. Within this new framework, we show that when exchange rate policy is costless, there is no need for capital controls. However, if exchange rate policy entails efficiency costs, capital controls become part of the optimal policy mix. When exchange rate policy is costly, the optimal mix combines prudential capital controls in tranquil times with policies that limit exchange rate depreciation in crisis times. The optimal mix yields more borrowing, fewer and less severe financial crises, and much higher welfare than with capital controls alone.