0000000000309919
AUTHOR
Juha-pekka Junttila
Economic policy uncertainty effects for forecasting future real economic activity
Recently introduced measures for Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) included in the data from 1997 - 2016 have a role in forecasting out-of-sample values for the future real economic activity for both the euro area and the UK economies. The inclusion of EPU measures, either for the US, the UK or for overall European economies, improves the forecasting ability of models based on standard financial market information, especially for the period before the 2008 global crisis. However, during and after the crisis period, the slope of the yield curve and excess stock market returns improves the out-of-sample forecast performance the most compared to an AR-benchmark model. Hence, the EPU informatio…
Stock market and exchange rate information in the Taylor rule : Evidence from OECD countries
We analyze the effects of stock market and exchange rate information in a forward-looking Taylor rule for monthly data from 14 OECD countries during the years 1999–2016. Especially the stock market information in the form of dividend but also the currency market information in the form of real exchange rate are revealed to be relevant in Taylor rule for many of the countries examined by helping to strengthen the role of inflation and real economic activity deviations in the policy rule. In many cases the rule also seems to be opportunistic, i.e., the inflation target has been time-varying. peerReviewed
Commodity market based hedging against stock market risk in times of financial crisis: The case of crude oil and gold
Based on daily data from 1989-2016 we find that the correlations between some relevant commodity market futures and equity returns in the aggregate U.S. market, and specifically in the energy sector stocks have changed strongly during the stock market crisis periods. The correlation between crude oil futures and aggregate U.S. equities increases in crisis periods, whereas in case of gold futures the correlation becomes negative, which supports the safe haven hypothesis of gold. For energy sector equities, the dynamics of hedge ratios does not support using either crude oil or gold futures for cross-hedging during stock market crises.
The Euro's Effect on Trade Balance Dynamics
During the pre-EMU period changes in real effective exchange rate or faster-than-trading-partners growth rates Granger caused changes in trade balance in most of the EMU-12 countries. However, our data driven article provides evidence that after the adoption of euro, these Granger causalities disappeared. We decompose trade balances into intra balances (trade balance vis-a-vis the euro area) and extra balances (trade balance vis-a-vis the rest of the world), and find that the disappearance of dynamic feedback effect typically occurred in the intra balances rather than in the extra balances. Our results imply that debtor countries cannot reduce their trade deficits in the short-run by enhanc…
Stock market information and the relationship between real exchange rate and real interest rates
In this paper we propose to augment the traditional relationship between real exchange rates and real interest rates (RERI) by adding the stock market equilibrium condition to it. We introduce the relative dividend yield as the new information variable. In the empirical analysis we use recent monthly observations from the U.K., Japan, Canada and Eurozone, all relative to the U.S. We show that the introduction of stock market information is highly relevant for the functioning of the RERI hypothesis. Based on the results from the cointegration analysis the role of relative stock market performance is especially important in the short- term (3 month) horizon, where the augmented RERI represent…
Long-Run Determinants and Short-Run Dynamics of the Trade Balance in the Eu-15 Countries
Several studies have analyzed the long-run determinants of current account balances using panel cointegration techniques. In this paper we will study both the long-run determinants and the short-run dynamics of the trade balances in the EU-15 countries. We will analyze each country separately and decompose the aggregate trade balance into the intra balance (trade balance vis-a-vis euro area) and the extra balance (trade balance vis-a-vis the rest of the world). Overall, our results suggest that there are significant differences in the long-run relations across the EU-15 countries which might be overlooked in the panel cointegration studies. In most of the countries there is a long-run coint…
Pricing of electricity futures based on locational price differences : The case of Finland
We find that the pricing of Finnish electricity market futures has been inefficient during the latest 10 years, when the trading volumes of Electricity Price Area Differentials (EPADs) have more than doubled. Even though the calculated futures premium on EPADs is related to some risk measures and the variables capturing the demand and supply conditions in the spot electricity markets, there has been a significant positive excess futures premium in the Finnish market, and financial market participants should have been able to utilize this also in economic terms. This finding is new and relevant for the participants of the Nordic electricity markets also in the future, because both the specul…
Haven on Earth? Dynamic Connections between Gold and Stock Markets in Turbulent Times
We find that exogenous structural shocks caused by terrorist attacks, wars, political turmoil and gold market specific events have a strong role to play in the analysis of dynamic relationships between gold and stock market returns. Our main finding is that the interaction between the gold market and stock market is much tighter than previously observed. Especially some of the gold market specific shocks have long lasting impacts also on the financial markets. Also some events, which may have been miss-interpreted as minor shocks previously, have in fact had significant impacts on both stock and gold markets. Furthermore, the dynamic correlations between all the analyzed financial sectors i…
When Aiyagari meets Piketty: Growth, Inequality and Capital Shares
We incorporate the division of income between capital and labor into analysis on the relationship between inequality and growth. Using historical data, we document that changes in the top 1 % income shares are positively associated with subsequent growth of per capita GDP when the capital share of income is low, whereas under high capital share, the association is negative. We show that these findings are compatible with a theoretical analysis that emphasises how changes in the distribution of income translate into the accumulation of capital and overall economic activity through the interplay between precautionary saving motives and consumption smoothing. We also investigate how accounting…
Financial Stress and Basis in Energy Markets
We investigate the relationship between energy commodities bases, inventory and financial stress from 1994 to 2018. We find that, from the 1998 Asian crisis the effect of financial stress on energy commodities bases gradually increased and from the 2008 crisis became positive, while the effect of inventory showed a gradual decline over time. The reactions of bases to changes in financial stress is nonlinear, as they are higher in the high financial stress periods. This is more profound in crude oil market than heating oil and natural gas. Moreover, the reactions of bases to the changes in inventory is nonlinear, as the reactions are lower when the inventory level is high confirming the theo…
Forecasting the volatility of biofuel feedstock prices: the US evidence
Given that, nowadays, 40% of the US corn crop is used for biofuel production, there is a growing concern that the rise in biofuel production might lead to an increase in food prices. However, it is also obvious that significant growth in biofuel use has minimized the demand for fossil fuel and has hence reduced the volume of carbon emissions. It is therefore crucial to model corn market volatility precisely because such an estimate could play a vital role in stabilizing food and biofuel market prices. For this purpose, we consider using the information content of the corn implied volatility (CIV) index to predict the corn futures market return volatility. Using symmetric and asymmetric GARC…
Impacts of sovereign risk premium on bank profitability: Evidence from euro area
We analyse the effects of low and negative interest rates and sovereign risk premium on bank profitability among 154 Eurozone banks during the period 2005–2019. In contrast to some of the results in the previous literature, we find that the euro area banks have not suffered too much from the extremely low and negative interest rate era regarding their net interest margins. However, the overall profitability has lowered clearly during the sample period, and the sovereign risk premium has a robust negative effect on all the overall profitability measures, both with risk-adjustment and without it, but it seems to have an increasing effect on the degree of wholesale funding and loan loss provis…
Emerging Market Contagion Under Geopolitical Uncertainty
We find that 10 emerging stock markets have high risk of contagion on the regional level but lower spillover with respect to the global markets, implying a potential for diversification benefits between emerging and global markets. Regional market integration seems to have been caused by trade integration, which has a policy implication for trade agreements’ systemic risk effects. We find that the geopolitical risk has no impact on either the return, or volatility spillovers. However, the general stock market risk (VIX) is connected to individual market volatilities, while the oil market is largely receiving the spillovers from the other markets. peerReviewed
Talouspolitiikan epävarmuus ja talouskehitys : empiirisiä havaintoja Suomesta
Talouteen ja talouspolitiikkaan liittyvä epävarmuus on hankalasti mitattava ilmiö. Digitoidut sanomalehtiaineistot, jatkuvasti kehittyvät ohjelmistot sekä kasvanut tietokoneiden laskentateho ovat viime aikoina mahdollistaneet uusien tekstihakuihin perustuvien mittareiden kehittämisen. Tässä artikkelissa esittelemme Bakerin, Bloomin ja Davisin (2016) kehittämän talouspolitiikan epävarmuusindeksin sekä analysoimme Suomen tärkeimpien vientimaiden talouspolitiikan epävarmuuden yhteyttä Suomen reaalisiin bruttokansantuotteen komponentteihin. Havaitsemme, että talouspolitiikan epävarmuuden sokit varsinkin Ruotsissa ja Yhdysvalloissa ovat negatiivisesti yhteydessä Suomen bruttokansantuotteen kompo…
Does corn market uncertainty impact the US ethanol prices?
The growing interest in biofuel as a green energy source has intensified the linkages between corn and ethanol markets, especially in the United States that represents the largest producing and exporting country for ethanol in the world. In this study, we examine the effect of corn market uncertainty on the price changes of US ethanol applying a set of GARCH-jump models. We find that the US ethanol price changes react positively to the corn market volatility shocks after controlling for the effect of oil price uncertainty. In addition, we document that the impact of corn price volatility on the US ethanol prices appears to be asymmetric. Specifically, only the positive corn market volatilit…