Kuan Min Wang

Asymmetric pass-through and risk of interest rate: an empirical exploration of Taiwan and Hong Kong

This study employs the asymmetric threshold cointegration test suggested by Enders and Siklos (2001) and creates asymmetric EC-EGARCH(1, 1)- M model to investigate the pass-through of money-market rate to banking retail rates in Taiwan and Hong Kong. It further explores the impact of interest volatility on interest rates. Over the period of February 1988 to December 2004, we find that the interest pass-through mechanism of these two markets is noncomplete. In addition, based on the asymmetric threshold cointegration test, we discover the existence of asymmetric cointegration relationship between retail rates and market rate in both markets. In particular, while employing asymmetric EC-EGARCH (1, 1)-M model to test for the influence of money-market rate adjustment and volatility on retail rates in short-run, we find robust evidence that there exist the upward rigidity in deposit rate and the downward rigidity in lending rate in both Taiwan and Hong Kong. This finding supports the hypothesis of the collusive pricing arrangements. Furthermore, interest volatility should cause a smaller margin of variation for Taiwans deposit/lending rates and wider margin for Hong Kongs lending rate.

Did China avoid the ‘Asian flu’? The contagion effect test with dynamic correlation coefficients

Many economists believe that China avoided the so-called Asian flu due to its strong balance of payments position and substantial foreign reserves. This study introduces an improved method for testing financial-crisis contagion and shows that crisis-contagion effects were significant among Thailand and the Chinese economic area (i.e. China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan) stock markets during the Asian financial crisis. The main contribution of this study is its use of a two-step procedure to identify the crisis dates for testing for contagion and data pertaining to a growing triangular economic area during the Asian financial crisis. This result suggests that if investors ignore the economic and financial information within regional markets, they will face an increase in uncertainty vis-à-vis investment returns.

Causality between housing returns, inflation and economic growth with endogenous breaks

This paper investigates the housing-macroeconomic nexus in Taiwan with endogenous structural breaks during 1991–2006. GDP and CPI are taken into consideration for examining the inflation hedging ability of Taiwans housing returns and the contribution of the housing market to economic growth. The empirical results show that the growth of GDP actually affects inflation, but it does not cause the growth in housing returns. In particular, when taking the time trend into account, it is found that the effect of inflation on housing returns is negative and the effect of housing returns on inflation is positive. This evidence demonstrates the ineffectiveness of inflation hedging of Taiwans housing during the period of study and the opportunistic characteristic of investors. In addition, the growth of the housing market is not beneficial for economic growth in the long-run, yet it leads to higher inflation in the short-run.

Predicting the bankruptcy risk of Taiwanese OTC corporations

Using non-probability purposive sampling, this study matched 23 Taiwanese OTC (Over-the-Counter) bankrupt corporations with 23 non-bankrupt corporations during the period 1999–2005. On the basis of the sample, a predictive and secondary research design was conducted to construct a rolling-prediction model and validate its prediction in Taiwan on OTC corporation bankruptcy risks. The empirical results indicated that the rolling-logit model, compared with the benchmark model, exhibited higher overall accuracy. The successful predictive performances were attributed to a recall mechanism in the rolling-logit model, measuring a corporations risks on the basis of consistent information across time. However, this study had limitations due to the selection of the sample and variables. These limitations suggest that future research could validate its applicability in other markets or select other explanatory variables in order to improve the predictive ability.

Searching for a better proxy for business cycles: with supports using US data

This study revises the original Current Depth of Recession (CDR) to prove that the Modified CDR (MCDR) is more suitable as a threshold variable than the CDR. We rebuild the CDR indicator and adjust its positive and negative ranges with the estimation results of the Threshold Autoregressive (TAR) model. We construct two TAR models utilizing CDR and MCDR as threshold variables, respectively. Estimation and test results of the root mean square error, Theils inequality coefficient and the Diebold-Mariano (DM, 1995) test suggest that MCDR performs better as a threshold variable than CDR.

Can gold effectively hedge risks of exchange rate

This study tests whether gold can effectively hedge exchange rate risks. We take into account the asymmetric characteristic of exchange rate fluctuations and use the dynamic panel threshold model in order to select gold prices in major gold-related currencies in the world: the Australian dollar, the Canadian dollar, the euro, the Indian rupee, the Japanese yen, the South African rand, and the British pound. Using monthly data from January 1999 to January 2010, with lagged one-period exchange rate returns (US dollar depreciation rate) as the threshold variable, the estimation results suggest that there are two thresholds at -7.5% and -3.7%. These can be divided into regime 1 (exchange rate returns ≤ -7.5%), regime 2 (-7.5% > exchange rate returns ≤ -3.7%), and regime 3 (exchange rate returns > -3.7%). Regarding the effectiveness of gold hedging, regime 2 is higher than is regime 3. The risk hedging effect of regime 1 is not significant because it might be caused by the excessive devaluation of the US dollar in the short-term and the overshooting of the exchange rate adjustment, making gold unable to hedge the devaluation risks of the US dollar.

Interest rate pass-through and illiquidity shocks in the US

This study examines the US interest rate pass-through mechanism and considers the illiquidity shocks upon retail interest rate correlations caused by financial crises between 1986 and 2011. We estimate a bi-variable EGARCH model using a dynamic conditional correlation model developed by Engle (2002) in order to analyze how asymmetric monetary policy influences interest rate pass-through. We test the risks to the dynamic condition and changes in the correlation coefficient. The main empirical results are as follows. First, the long-run interest rate pass-through mechanism is unstable in the US. Second, expected monetary policy impulses are greater than the unexpected ones in the short-run. Finally, according to the one-step and N-step forecast tests, the illiquidity shocks caused by financial crises demonstrate a significant change in retail interest rate risks, but not in correlations between retail interest rates. We conclude that when the interest rate pass-through mechanism is unstable, banks may stop helping each other and will not provide loans to firms and consumers, thereby exhausting the capital of all economic systems. The characteristics of illiquidity enter into the interest rate pass-through mechanism; therefore, the relationship between illiquidity and the interest rate pass-through needs to be investigated.

A quantile framework for analysing the links between inflation uncertainty and inflation dynamics across countries

In contrast to the conventional conditional mean approaches, this study uses quantile regression techniques to present some new statistical evidence on the links between inflation uncertainty and the level of inflation with cross-sectional data from 90 countries during the period 1961 to 2006. The results suggest that positive inflation shocks have stronger impact on inflation uncertainty which varies across the quantiles. Furthermore, popular time-series models are evaluated for their ability to reproduce measures of uncertainty and indicate similar results regarding the relationships between inflation and inflation uncertainty.

The impacts of life insurance asymmetrically on health expenditure and economic growth: dynamic panel threshold approach

Abstract This study examines the impacts of life insurance asymmetrically on health expenditure and economic growth. Using the dynamic panel threshold model, we find that life insurance growth has a regime switch factor that may change the relationship between health expenditure growth and economic growth. Our results show that the asymmetrical information of life insurance growth affects the causal relationship between health expenditure growth and economic growth. In a low life insurance growth regime, the negative growth of life insurance can stimulate health expenditure and economic growth, which can have a positive feedback effect. However, in the interval of high life insurance growth, the growth does not affect health expenditure or economic growth; there is an adverse feedback effect between economic growth and health expenditure growth, whereby economic growth stimulates health expenditure growth, but health expenditure growth reduces economic growth.

How do Economic Growth Asymmetry and Inflation Expectations Affect Fisher Hypothesis and Fama’s Proxy Hypothesis?

Based on the threshold panel data model, this study employs the quarterly panel data of 38 countries between 1981 and 2014 to test whether economic growth asymmetry, expected inflation, and unexpected inflation affect the Fisher hypothesis and Fama’s proxy hypothesis. The empirical results show the following: (1) When real economic growth rate is greater than the threshold (-0.009), Fisher hypothesis is supported. (2) When real economic growth rate is less than the threshold (-0.009), two scenarios hold true: before real variables are included, Fisher hypothesis is rejected; and when real variables are included, real economic growth is negative, inflation is expected, and thus, Fama’s hypothesis is supported.