Viktoria Hnatkovska

Volatility and Growth

The authors study the empirical, cross-country relationship between macroeconomic volatility and long-run economic growth. They address four central questions: 1) Does the volatility-growth link depend on country and policy characteristics, such as the level of development or trade openness? 2) Does this link reflect a statistically and economically significant causal effect from volatility to growth? 3) Has this relationship been stable over time and has it become stronger in recent decades? 4) Does the volatility-growth connection actually reveal the impact of crises rather than the overall effect of cyclical fluctuations? The authors find that macroeconomic volatility, and long-run economic growth are indeed negatively related. This negative link is exacerbated in countries that are poor, institutionally underdeveloped, undergoing intermediate stages of financial development, or unable to conduct counter-cyclical fiscal policies. They find evidence that this negative relationship actually reflects the harmful effect from volatility to growth. Furthermore, the authors find that the negative effect of volatility on growth has become considerably larger in the past two decades, and that it is mostly due to large recessions rather than normal cyclical fluctuations.

International Capital Flows, Returns and World Financial Integration

International capital flows have increased dramatically since the 1980s, with much of the increase being due to trade in equity and debt markets. Such developments are often attributed to the increased integration of world financial markets. We present a model that allows us to examine how greater integration in world financial markets affects the behavior of international capital flows and financial returns. Our model predicts that international capital flows are large (in absolute value) and very volatile during the early stages of financial integration when international asset trading is concentrated in bonds. As integration progresses and households gain access to world equity markets, the size and volatility of international bond flows fall dramatically but continue to exceed the size and volatility of international equity flows. This is the natural outcome of greater risk sharing facilitated by increased integration. We find that the equilibrium flows in bonds and stocks are larger than their empirical counterparts, and are largely driven by variations in equity risk premia. The paper also makes a methodological contribution to the literature on dynamic general equilibrium asset-pricing. We implement a new technique for solving a dynamic general equilibrium model with production, portfolio choice and incomplete markets.

Home Bias and High Turnover: Dynamic Portfolio Choice with Incomplete Markets

Why do investors trade a lot in foreign assets and hold so little of them in their portfolios? This paper shows that both observations can arise naturally in the presence of nondiversifiable nontraded consumption risk when each country specializes in production, preferences exhibit consumption home bias, and asset markets are incomplete. Using a general equilibrium two-country, two-sector (tradable and nontradable) model of the world economy with production I show that low diversification occurs because variations in relative prices (i) increase the riskiness of foreign assets and (ii) facilitate risk-sharing across countries. Large and volatile capital flows are necessary to take advantage of international risk premia differentials that occur in response to productivity changes in the nontradable sector. I characterize the optimal portfolio holdings, the evolution of the investment opportunity set, the risk premium, and the dynamics of capital flows using a new methodology for solving dynamic general equilibrium models with incomplete markets and portfolio choice.

Castes and Labor Mobility

How have the poorest sections of society in India responded to the rapid changes in the Indian economy over the past 30 years? We examine this issue by focusing on the fortunes of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) - the historically disadvantaged and underprivileged castes in India. We find that since 1983, wages of SC/STs have been converging towards non-SC/ST levels with rising education attainment accounting for over 50 percent of this wage convergence. The occupation distribution of SC/STs has also been converging toward that of non-SC/STs. This period has also been marked by a sharp convergence in intergenerational education and income mobility rates of these two groups. Moreover, SC/STs have been switching occupations and industry of employment across generations at increasing rates. We conclude that the massive structural changes in India since the 1980s have proved hugely beneficial for SC/STs who have significantly narrowed their historical economic disparities with non-SC/STs during this period. In fact, relative incomes of SC/STs have become higher than the relative incomes of Blacks and Hispanics in the USA.

Breaking the Caste Barrier: Intergenerational Mobility in India.

We contrast the intergenerational mobility rates of the historically disadvantaged scheduled castes and tribes (SC/ST) in India with the rest of the workforce in terms of their education attainment, occupation choices and wages. Using survey data from successive rounds of the National Sample Survey between 1983 and 2005, we find that intergenerational education and income mobility rates of SC/STs have converged to non-SC/ST levels during this period. Moreover, SC/STs have matched non-SC/STs in occupation mobility rates. We conclude that the last 20 years of structural changes in India have coincided with a breaking down of caste-based barriers to socioeconomic mobility.

A Method for Solving General Equilibrium Models with Incomplete Markets and Many Financial Assets

This paper presents a numerical method for solving stochastic general equilibrium models with dynamic portfolio choice. The method can be applied to models with heterogeneous agents, time-varying investment opportunity sets, and incomplete asset markets. We illustrate the method using a two-country model with production. We check the accuracy of our method by comparing the numerical solution to a complete markets version of the model against its known analytic properties. We then apply the method to an incomplete markets version where no analytic solution is available. In all versions the standard accuracy tests confirm the effectiveness of our method.

International capital flows, returns and world financial integration

International capital flows have increased dramatically since the 1980s, with much of the increase being due to trade in equity and bond markets. Such developments are often attributed to the increased integration of world financial markets. We present a model that allows us to examine how greater integration in world financial markets affects the behavior of international capital flows and financial returns. Our model predicts that international capital flows are large (in absolute value) and very volatile during the early stages of financial integration when international asset trading is concentrated in bonds. As integration progresses and households gain access to world equity markets, the size and volatility of international bond flows decline. This is the natural outcome of greater risk sharing facilitated by increased integration. This pattern is consistent with declining volatility observed during 1975–2007 period in the G-7 countries. We also find that the equilibrium flows in bonds and stocks predicted by the model are larger than their empirical counterparts, and are largely driven by variations in equity risk premia. The model also predicts that volatility of equity and bond returns decline with integration, again consistent with the data for G-7 economies.

Solving General Equilibrium Models with Incomplete Markets and Many Financial Assets

This paper presents a new numerical method for solving stochastic general equilibrium models with dynamic portfolio choice over many financial assets. The method can be applied to models where there are heterogeneous agents, time-varying investment opportunity sets, and incomplete asset markets. We illustrate how the method is used by solving two versions of a two-country general equilibrium model with production and dynamic portfolio choice. We check the accuracy of our method by comparing the numerical solution to a complete markets version of the model against its known analytic properties. We then apply the method to an incomplete markets version where no analytic solution is available. In both models the standard accuracy tests confirm the effectiveness of our method.

Limited participation in international business cycle models: A formal evaluation

In this paper, we argue that limited asset market participation (LAMP) plays an important role in explaining international business cycles. We show that when LAMP is introduced into an otherwise standard model of international business cycles, the performance of the model improves significantly, especially in matching cross-country correlations. To perform formal evaluation of the models we develop a novel statistical procedure that adapts the statistical framework of Vuong (1989) to DSGE models. Using this methodology, we show that the improvements brought out by LAMP are statistically significant, leading a model with LAMP to outperform a representative agent model. Furthermore, when LAMP is introduced, a model with complete markets is found to do as well as a model with no trade in financial assets -- a well-known favorite in the literature. Our results remain robust to the inclusion of investment specific technology shocks.

The Post-Reform Narrowing of Inequality Across Castes: Evidence from the States

The past three decades have seen a sharp macroeconomic takeoff in India. How have these aggregate changes affected the economic disparity between the different social groups? We examine this issue by studying the time series evolution of the economic disparities between scheduled castes and tribes (SC/STs) and non-SC/STs during the period 1983-2005. The distinctive feature of our study is that we exploit the variation in the evolution of these indicators of disparity to determine the role played by alternative factors in accounting for the overall patterns. Broadly, we find that both aggregate growth and political empowerment of SC/STs may have played a significant role in accounting for the declining gaps between these groups during this period.