Dobromił Serwa

Intra- and inter-regional spillovers between emerging capital markets around the world

In this paper, returns and volatility spillovers between emerging capital markets of Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, and South-East Asia are investigated. We extend the existing empirical evidence on financial spillovers by distinguishing between linkages among countries located in one region (intra-regional spillovers) and among countries located in different regions (inter-regional spillovers) after controlling for shocks originating at home and on the world market. Both intra- and inter-regional spillovers are found to be significant, with the former being more pronounced than the latter for all three regions considered. Our findings indicate that linkages between emerging markets are not solely due to their common dependence on the global capital market and highlight the importance of common factors in intra-regional stock return behavior.

Financial contagion, spillovers and causality in the Markov switching framework

In this paper, we introduce the concept of causality in the Markov switching framework into the analysis of financial inter-market dependencies. We extend the methodology of testing for financial spillovers between capital markets by explicitly defining contagion, spillovers and independence, and providing statistics to test for the existence of causality. We apply the methodology to stock index returns on the Japanese (Nikkei 225) and the Hong Kong (HSI) markets during the Asian crisis and find no evidence of contagion between the markets, but strong evidence of feedback spillovers between them.

Do emerging financial markets react to monetary policy announcements? Evidence from Poland

This paper provides evidence on the short-run reactions of an emerging financial market to monetary policy announcements. An instrumental variable estimation approach is employed, based on the ‘identification through heteroscedasticity’ technique, to estimate the impact of a change in the official interest rate and its surprise component on asset prices in Poland. The recently introduced methodology controls for possible feedback relationships between financial variables and official interest rate changes. In this analysis, the short-term interest rates respond significantly to official interest rate changes, but neither the long-term interest rates, stock indices, nor foreign exchange rates react to monetary announcements in the expected direction.

Banking crises and nonlinear linkages between credit and output

In this article, we analyse the asymmetric causality linkages between credit growth and output growth during banking crises. We employ a recently developed procedure, based on a bivariate Markov switching model, to test the hypotheses of independence, causality and asymmetric causality between credit and output. Using a sample of 103 banking crises around the world, we find that neither credit nor output takes precedence as a variable in calm and crisis periods, although there is evidence of instantaneous interdependence between the banking and real sector during crises. The results suggest that shocks propagate mostly within a year between the banking sector and the real economy. The linear link between credit growth and output growth is also regime dependent.

Determinants of Credit to Households in a Life-Cycle Model

This paper applies a life-cycle model with individual income uncertainty to investigate the determinants of credit to households. We show that the value of household credit to GDP ratio depends on (i) the lending-deposit interest rate spread, (ii) individual income uncertainty, (iii) individual productivity persistence, and (iv) the generosity of the pension system. Subsequently, we provide empirical evidence for the predictions of the theoretical model on the basis of data for OECD and EU countries.

Market Perception of Sovereign Credit Risk in the Euro Area During the Financial Crisis

We study market perception of sovereign credit risk in the euro area during the financial crisis. In our analysis we use a parsimonious CDS pricing model to estimate the probability of default (PD) and the loss given default (LGD) as perceived by financial markets. In our empirical results the estimated LGDs perceived by financial markets stay comfortably below 40% in most of the samples. Global financial indicators are positively and strongly correlated with the market perception of sovereign credit risk; whilst macroeconomic and institutional developments were at best only weakly correlated with the market perception of sovereign credit risk.

Identifying Multiple Regimes in the Model of Credit to Households

This research proposes a new method to identify the differing states of the market with respect to lending to households. We use an econometric multi-regime regression model where each regime is associated with a different economic state of the credit market (i.e. a normal regime or a boom regime). The credit market alternates between regimes when some specific variable increases above or falls below the estimated threshold level. A new method for estimating multi-regime threshold regression models for dynamic panel data is also demonstrated.

International Transmission of Liquidity Shocks Between Parent Banks and Their Affiliates: The Host Country Perspective

In this study we analyze how funding liquidity shocks affecting large international banks were transmitted to Polish subsidiaries and branches of these banks in recent years. We investigate differences in the effects of liquidity shocks on banks owned by both Polish and foreign institutions. All Polish banks reacted to liquidity shocks after Lehman Brothers failure; however, only Polish subsidiaries and branches of foreign parent banks adjusted their funding after liquidity shocks had taken place during the sovereign debt crisis of the Eurozone. Mortgage lending in foreign currencies was also affected by liquidity shocks during the crisis. Our results suggest that the intragroup links between banking institutions can serve both as an important channel for international transmission of liquidity shocks and as a stabilizing mechanism during liquidity crises.

Macro-Financial Linkages in the Polish Economy: Combined Impulse-Response Functions in SVAR Models

We estimated a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model describing the links between a banking sector and a real economy. We proposed a new method to verify robustness of impulse-response functions in a SVAR model. This method applies permutations of the variable ordering in a structural model and uses the Cholesky decomposition of the error covariance matrix to identify parameters. Impulse response functions are computed for all permutations and are then combined. We explored the method in practice by analyzing the macro-financial linkages in the Polish economy. Our results indicate that the combined impulse response functions are more uncertain than those from a single specification ordering but some findings remain robust. It is evident that macroeconomic aggregate shocks and interest rate shocks have a significant impact on banking variables.

Pricing Sovereign Credit Risk of Poland: Evidence from the CDS Market

ABSTRACT We analyze the market assessment of sovereign credit risk using a reduced-form model to price the credit default swap (CDS) spreads, thus enabling us to derive values for the probability of default (PD) and loss given default (LGD) from the quotes of sovereign CDS contracts. We compare different specifications of the models allowing for both fixed and time-varying LGD, and we use these values to analyze the sovereign credit risk of Polish debt throughout the period of a global financial crisis. Our results suggest the presence of a low LGD and a relatively high PD during a recent financial crisis.