Marco Lo Duca

CISS - A Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress in the Financial System

This paper introduces a new indicator of contemporaneous stress in the financial system named Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS). Its specific statistical design is shaped according to standard definitions of systemic risk. The main methodological innovation of the CISS is the application of basic portfolio theory to the aggregation of five market-specific subindices created from a total of 15 individual financial stress measures. The aggregation accordingly takes into account the time-varying cross-correlations between the subindices. As a result, the CISS puts relatively more weight on situations in which stress prevails in several market segments at the same time, capturing the idea that financial stress is more systemic and thus more dangerous for the economy as a whole if financial instability spreads more widely across the whole financial system. Applied to euro area data, we determine within a threshold VAR model a systemic crisis-level of the CISS at which financial stress tends to depress real economic activity. Weekly updates of the CISS dataset at: sdw.ecb.europa.eu/browseSelection.do?node=9551138 JEL Classification: G01, G10, G20, E44

On the International Spillovers of US Quantitative Easing

The paper analyses the global spillovers of the Federal Reserves unconventional monetary policy measures. First, we find that Fed measures in the early phase of the crisis (QE1), but not since 2010 (QE2), were highly effective in lowering sovereign yields and raising equity markets in the US and globally across 65 countries. Yet Fed policies functioned in a procyclical manner for capital flows to emerging markets (EMEs) and a counter-cyclical way for the US, triggering a portfolio rebalancing across countries out of EMEs into US equity and bond funds under QE1, and in the opposite direction under QE2. Second, the impact of Fed operations, such as Treasury and MBS purchases, on portfolio allocations and asset prices dwarfed those of Fed announcements, underlining the importance of the market repair and liquidity functions of Fed policies. Third, we find no evidence that FX or capital account policies helped countries shield themselves from these US policy spillovers, but rather that responses to Fed policies are related to country risk. The results thus illustrate how US unconventional measures have contributed to portfolio reallocation as well as a re-pricing of risk in global financial markets.

Monetary Policy and Risk Taking

We assess the effects of monetary policy on bank risk to verify the existence of a risk-taking channel – monetary expansions inducing banks to assume more risk. We first present VAR evidence confirming that this channel exists and is particularly significant on the bank funding side. Then, to rationalize this evidence we build a macroeconomic model where banks subject to runs endogenously choose their funding structure (deposits vs. capital) and risk level. A monetary expansion increases bank leverage and risk. In turn, higher bank risk in steady state increases asset price volatility and reduces equilibrium output.

Macro-Financial Vulnerabilities and Future Financial Stress - Assessing Systemic Risks and Predicting Systemic Events

This paper develops a framework for assessing systemic risks and for predicting (out-of-sample) systemic events, i.e. periods of extreme financial instability with potential real costs. We test the ability of a wide range of “stand alone” and composite indicators in predicting systemic events and evaluate them by taking into account policy makers’ preferences between false alarms and missing signals. Our results highlight the importance of considering jointly various indicators in a multivariate framework. We find that taking into account jointly domestic and global macro-financial vulnerabilities greatly improves the performance of discrete choice models in forecasting systemic events. Our framework shows a good out-of-sample performance in predicting the last financial crisis. Finally, our model would have issued an early warning signal for the United States in 2006Q2, 5 quarters before the emergence of money markets tensions in August 2007.

A Global Monetary Tsunami? On the Spillovers of US Quantitative Easing

The paper analyses the global spillovers of the Federal Reserve’s unconventional monetary policy measures since 2007. First, we find that Fed measures in the early phase of the crisis (QE1), but not since 2010 (QE2), were highly effective in lowering sovereign yields and raising equity markets in the US and globally across 65 countries. Yet Fed policies functioned in a pro-cyclical manner for capital flows to EMEs and a counter-cyclical way for the US, triggering a portfolio rebalancing across countries out of emerging markets (EMEs) into US equity and bond funds under QE1, and in the opposite direction under QE2. Second, the impact of Fed operations, such as Treasury and MBS purchases, on portfolio allocations and asset prices dwarfed those of Fed announcements, underlining the importance of the market repair and liquidity functions of Fed policies. Third, we find no evidence that FX or capital account policies helped countries shield themselves from these US policy spillovers, but rather that responses to Fed policies are related to country risk. The results thus illustrate how US monetary policy since 2007 has contributed to portfolio reallocation as well as a re-pricing of risk in global financial markets.

Global Corporate Bond Issuance: What Role for US Quantitative Easing?

The paper analyses the link between global corporate bond issuance and US quantitative easing (QE). It finds that purchases and holdings of MBS and Treasuries by the Fed have a strong impact on gross corporate bond issuance across advanced and emerging economies. The results are robust to a large number of checks, including controlling for the reduced supply of domestic and international bank loans in the aftermath of the global crisis which might have induced the corporate sector to issue more bonds. Our results support the “gap-filling” theory (Greenwood et al., 2010) where corporate bonds replace the assets removed from the market by large scale asset purchases. Specifically, asset holdings and purchases crowded out investors from the markets where the Fed intervened and accelerated portfolio rebalancing across assets and countries leading to stronger corporate bond issuance across the globe. A counterfactual analysis shows that bond issuance in emerging markets since 2009 would have been halved without QE.

CISS — A Portfolio-Theoretic Framework for the Construction of Composite Financial Stress Indices

This paper introduces a new indicator of current stress in the financial system as a whole named Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS). Its specific statistical design is shaped in accordance with standard definitions of systemic risk. The main innovative feature of the CISS is the application of portfolio theory to the aggregation of individual stress indicators into the composite index. Along the lines of how portfolio risk is computed from the risks of individual assets, we propose to compute the level of stress in the system as a whole by aggregating five market-specific subindices of stress - comprising a total of 15 individual stress indicators - on the basis of a time-varying measure of the cross-correlations between them. The CISS thus puts relatively more weight on situations in which stress prevails in several market segments at the same time, capturing the idea that financial stress is more systemic and hence more hazardous for the real economy if instability spreads more widely across the whole financial system. Applied to data for the euro area as a whole, we determine within a threshold VAR model an endogenous systemic crisis-level of the CISS at which financial stress tends to depress real economic activity materially.