Roberta Colavecchio

Drifting Together or Falling Apart? The Empirics of Regional Economic Growth in Post-Unification Germany

The objective of this article is to address the question of convergence across German districts in the first decade after German unification by drawing out and emphasizing some stylized facts of regional per capita income dynamics. We achieve this by employing nonparametric techniques which focus on the evolution of the entire cross-sectional income distribution. In particular, we follow a distributional approach to convergence based on kernel density estimation and implement a number of tests to establish the statistical significance of our findings. This article finds that the relative income distribution appears to be stratifying into a trimodal/bimodal distribution.

Volatility transmissions between renminbi and Asia-Pacific on-shore and off-shore U.S. dollar futures

Abstract This paper uses multivariate GARCH techniques to study volatility spillovers between the Chinese non-deliverable forward market and seven of its Asia-Pacific counterparts over the period January 1998 to March 2005. To account for the time-variability of conditional correlation, a dynamic correlation structure is included in the volatility model specification. The empirical results demonstrate that the renminbi non-deliverable forward (NDF) has been a driver of various Asian currency markets but that such co-movements exhibit a substantial degree of heterogeneity. As to the determinants of the magnitude of these co-movements, we test the relevance of potential factors and find that it is the degree of real and financial integration, in particular, that exerts the largest influence on volatility transmission.

The macroeconomic determinants of private equity investment: a European comparison

A strong private equity (PE) market is a cornerstone for commercialization and innovation in modern economies. However, substantial differences exist in the relative amounts raised and invested in PE across European countries. We investigate the macroeconomic determinants of PE investment in Europe, focusing on the comparison between Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Western European countries. Our estimations are based on a data set running from 2001 to 2011 that covers 16 countries. Applying robust estimation techniques, we identify a ‘robust’ set of determinants of PE activity in both regions. We find similarities as well as differences in the driving forces of PE investments in Western European and CEE countries. Our results suggest that economic activity, the inflation rate, equity market capitalization, unit labour costs, the unemployment rate as well the the institutional and legal environment are significant determinants of PE activity.

Inflation Inequality in Europe

We analyze cross-household inflation dispersion in Europe using “fictitious” monthly inflation rates for several household categories (grouped according to income levels, household size, socio-economic status, age) for the period from 1997 to 2008. Our analysis is carried out on a panel of 23 up to 27 household-specific inflation rates per country for 15 countries. In the first part of the paper, we employ time series and related non-stationary panel approaches to shed light on cross-country differences in inflation inequality with respect to the number of driving forces in the panel. In particular, we focus on the degree of persistence of the household-specific inflation rates and their the adjustment behaviour towards the inflation rate of a “representative household”. In the second part of the paper, we pool over the full sample of all countries and test if and by how much certain household categories across Europe are more prone to significant inflation differentials and significant differences in the volatility of inflation. Furthermore we search for the presence of clusters with respect to inflation susceptibility. On the national level, we find evidence for the existence of one main driving factor driving the non-stationarity of the panel and evidence for a single co-integration vector. Persistence of deviations, however, is high, and the adjustment speed towards the “representative household” is low. Even if there is no concern about a long-run stable distribution, at least in the short- to medium run deviations tend to last. On the European level, we find small but significant differences (mainly along income levels), we can separate 5 clusters and two main driving forces for the differences in the overall panel. All in all, even if differences are relatively small, they are not negligible and persistent enough to represent a serious matter of debate for economic and social policy.

Volatility Dependence Across Asia-Pacific On-Shore and Off-Shore U.S. Dollar Futures Markets

This paper estimates switching autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (SWARCH) time series models for weekly returns of nine Asian forward exchange rates. We find two regimes with different volatility levels, whereby each regime displays considerable persistence. Our analysis provides evidence that the knock-on effects from China´s U.S. dollar future rates upon other Asian countries have been modest, in that little evidence exists for co-dependence of volatility regimes.

Money Growth and Inflation: Evidence from a Markov Switching Bayesian VAR

We contribute to the empirical debate on the role of money in monetary policy by analysing the features of the relationship between money growth and inflation in a Bayesian Markov Switching framework for a set of four countries, the US, the UK, the Euro area and Japan, over an estimation period spanning from 1960 to 2012. We find that the relationship between money growth and inflation appears to be nonlinear, as our estimation results identify multiple inflation regimes displaying clear and diversified features; moreover, as part of the models information set, money growth plays a determinant role in the allocation of regimes. We show that observing monetary developments does (slightly) improve the signal of entering a high inflation regime but the influence of money on such signal seems to be relevant mainly in the 70s and the early 80s, i.e. in periods featuring exceptionally high rates of inflation. Our evidence confi?rms that the relationship between money and inflation appears to be relatively weak during periods featuring low and stable inflation.

The Carry Trade and The Adjustment of the Japanese Yen: Evidence from a Markov-Switching Vector Autoregression Model

Carry trades are speculative activities which involve simultaneously going short a low-rate currency and long a high-rate currency. They are profitable as long as the gains from interest rate differentials are not offset by exchange rate movements. In this paper I investigate the dynamic relationships amongst exchange rate changes, interest rate spreads and carry trades by means of a Markov-switching vector autoregression model. I use regime-dependent impulse response functions to assess (1) how and to what extent shocks to the interest rate differential and the bilateral exchange rate affect the yen carry trade; (2) the consequences of the unwinding of the yen carry trade on the dollar-yen exchange rate. Empirical evidence indicates the presence of a so-called “carry trade” regime, whose timing is consistent with the yen carry trade episodes identified in the literature. Moreover, only when the system is in the “carry trade” regime a shock in the carry-to-risk ratio has a positive and significant effect on the net short positions in Japanese yen and the depreciation of the yen against the dollar is strong and persistent. Finally, a rising carry-to-risk ratio, which in turn reveals an increase in the attractiveness of carry trades, leads to a significant depreciation of the yen only when the system is in the “carry-trade” regime.