John C. Bluedorn

Capital Flows are Fickle: Anytime, Anywhere

Has the unprecedented financial globalization of recent years changed the behavior of capital flows across countries? Using a newly constructed database of gross and net capital flows since 1980 for a sample of nearly 150 countries, this paper finds that private capital flows are typically volatile for all countries, advanced or emerging, across all points in time. This holds true across most types of flows, including bank, portfolio debt, and equity flows. Advanced economies enjoy a greater substitutability between types of inflows, and complementarity between gross inflows and outflows, than do emerging markets, which reduces the volatility of their total net inflows despite higher volatility of the components. Capital flows also exhibit low persistence, across all economies and across most types of flows. Inflows tend to rise temporarily when global financing conditions are relatively easy. These findings suggest that fickle capital flows are an unavoidable fact of life to which policymakers across all countries need to continue to manage and adapt.

The open economy consequences of U.S. monetary policy

We characterize the channels by which a failure to distinguish intended/unintended and anticipated/unanticipated monetary policy may lead to attenuation bias in monetary policys open economy effects. Using a U.S. monetary policy measure which isolates the intended and unanticipated component of federal funds rate changes, we quantify the magnitude of the attenuation bias for the exchange rate and foreign variables, finding it to be substantial. The exchange rate appreciation following a monetary contraction is up to 4 times larger than a recursively-identified VAR estimate. There is stronger evidence of foreign interest rate pass-through. The expenditure-reducing effects of a U.S. monetary policy contraction dominate any expenditure-switching effects, leading to a positive conditional correlation of international outputs and prices.

Hurricanes: Intertemporal Trade and Capital Shocks

Hurricanes in the Caribbean and Central America represent a natural experiment to test the intertemporal approach to current account determination. The intertemporal approach allows for the possibility of intertemporal trade, via international borrowing. Previous tests of intertemporal current account (ICA) models have typically relied upon the identification of shocks in a VAR framework with which to trace the current account response. Hurricane shocks represent exactly the kind of temporary, country-specific shock required by the theory, allowing for the intertemporal current account response to be estimated without recourse to a VAR shock decomposition. Using data on the economic damages attributable to a hurricane, I estimate the economy`s response to a hurricane-induced capital shock within a fixed effects panel model. The current account response qualitatively conforms to the S-shaped response predicted by the theory, indicating that countries are engaging in intertemporal trade. However, the exact timing and magnitude of the response differs from a standard ICA model`s smooth behavior. A hurricane which destroys capital valued at one year`s GDP pushes the current account over GDP into deficit by 5 percentage points initially. 3-8 years after such a hurricane, the current account over GDP moves into surplus at 2.7 percentage points.

Heterogeneous Bank Lending Responses to Monetary Policy: New Evidence from a Real-Time Identification

We present new evidence on how heterogeneity in banks interacts with monetary policy changes to impact bank lending. Using an exogenous policy measure identified from narratives on FOMC intentions and real-time economic forecasts, we find much greater heterogeneity in U.S. bank lending responses than that found in previous research based on realized federal funds rate changes. Our findings suggest that studies using realized monetary policy changes confound the monetary policy’s effects with those of changes in expected macrofundamentals. We also extend Romer and Romer (2004)’s identification scheme, and expand the time and balance sheet coverage of the U.S. banking sample.

The Growth Comeback in Developing Economies; A New Hope or Back to the Future?

Growth takeoffs in developing economies have rebounded in the past two decades. Although recent takeoffs have lasted longer than takeoffs before the 1990s, a key question is whether they could unravel like some did in the past. This paper finds that recent takeoffs are associated with stronger economic conditions, such as lower post-takeoff debt and inflation levels; more competitive real exchange rates; and better structural reforms and institutions. The chances of starting a takeoff in the 2000s was triple that before the 1990s, with domestic conditions accounting for most of the increase. The findings suggest that if today’s dynamic developing economies sustain their improved policies; they are more likely to stay on course compared to many of their predecessors.

Is the Cycle the Trend? Evidence From the Views of International Forecasters

We revisit the conventional view that output fluctuates around a stable trend by analyzing professional long-term forecasts for 38 advanced and emerging market economies. If transitory deviations around a trend dominate output fluctuations, then forecasters should not change their long-term output level forecasts following an unexpected change in current period output. By contrast, an analysis of Consensus Economics forecasts since 1989 suggest that output forecasts are super-persistent—an unexpected 1 percent upward revision in current period output typically translates into a revision of ten year-ahead forecasted output by about 2 percent in both advanced and emerging markets. Drawing upon evidence from the behavior of forecast errors, the persistence of actual output is typically weaker than forecasters expect, but still consistent with output shocks normally having large and permanent level effects.