Country Transparency And The Global Transmission Of Financial Shocks

This paper considers the role of country-level opacity (the lack of availability of information) in amplifying shocks emanating from financial centers. We provide a simple model where, in the presence of ambiguity (uncertainty about the probability distribution of returns), prices in emerging markets react more strongly to signals from the developed market, the more opaque the emerging market is. The second contribution is empirical evidence for bond and equity markets in line with this prediction. Increasing the availability of information about public policies, improving accounting standards, and enhancing legal frameworks can help reduce the unpleasant side effects of financial globalization.

This paper considers the role of country-level opacity (the lack of availability of information) in amplifying shocks emanating from financial centers. We provide a simple model where, in the presence of ambiguity (uncertainty about the probability distribution of returns), prices in emerging markets react more strongly to signals from the developed market, the more opaque the emerging market is. The second contribution is empirical evidence for bond and equity markets in line with this prediction. Increasing the availability of information about public policies, improving accounting standards, and enhancing legal frameworks can help reduce the unpleasant side effects of financial globalization.

This paper considers the role of country-level opacity (the lack of availability of information) in amplifying shocks emanating from financial centers. We provide a simple model where, in the presence of ambiguity (uncertainty about the probability distribution of returns), prices in emerging markets react more strongly to signals from the developed market, the more opaque the emerging market is. The second contribution is empirical evidence for bond and equity markets in line with this prediction. Increasing the availability of information about public policies, improving accounting standards, and enhancing legal frameworks can help reduce the unpleasant side effects of financial globalization.

The current Global Financial Stability Report (April 2016) finds that global financial stability risks have risen since the last report in October 2015. The new report finds that the outlook has deteriorated in advanced economies because of heightened uncertainty and setbacks to growth and confidence, while declines in oil and commodity prices and slower growth have kept risks elevated in emerging markets. These developments have tightened financial conditions, reduced risk appetite, raised credit risks, and stymied balance sheet repair. A broad-based policy response is needed to secure financial stability. Advanced economies must deal with crisis legacy issues, emerging markets need to bolster their resilience to global headwinds, and the resilience of market liquidity should be enhanced. The report also examines financial spillovers from emerging market economies and finds that they have risen substantially. This implies that when assessing macro-financial conditions, policymakers may need to increasingly take into account economic developments in emerging market economies. Finally, the report assesses changes in the systemic importance of insurers, finding that across advanced economies the contribution of life insurers to systemic risk has increased in recent years. The results suggest that supervisors and regulators should take a more macroprudential approach to the sector.

Financial stability has continued to improve since the October 2016 Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR). Economic activity has gained momentum, as outlined in the April 2017 World Economic Outlook (WEO), amid broadly accommodative monetary and financial conditions, spurring hopes for reflation. Chapter 2 analyzes the potential long-term impact of a scenario of sustained low growth and low real and nominal rates for the business models of financial institutions and the products offered by the financial sector. Chapter 3 examines whether countries still retain influence over their domestic financial conditions in a globally integrated financial system. The chapter develops financial conditions indices that make it possible to compare a large set of advanced and emerging market economies.

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This volume addresses the major questions surrounding a concept that has become ubiquitous in the media and in civil society as well as in political and economic discourses in recent years, and which is demanded with increasing frequency: transparency. How can society deal with increasing and often diverging demands and expectations of transparency? What role can different political and civil society actors play in processes of producing, or preventing, transparency? Where are the limits of transparency and how are these boundaries negotiated? What is the relationship of transparency to processes of social change, as well as systems of social surveillance and control? Engaging with transparency as an interrelated product of law, politics, economics and culture, this interdisciplinary volume explores the ambiguities and contradictions, as well as the social and political dilemmas, that the age of transparency has unleashed. As such it will appeal to researchers across the social sciences and humanities with interests in politics, history, sociology, civil society, citizenship, public policy, criminology and law.

We find that data transparency policy reforms, reflected in subscriptions to the IMF’s Data Standards Initiatives (SDDS and GDDS), reduce the spreads of emerging market sovereign bonds. To overcome endogeneity issues regarding a country’s decision to adopt such reforms, we first show that the reform decision is largely independent of its macroeconomic development. By using an event study, we find that subscriptions to the SDDS or GDDS leads to a 15 percent reduction in the spreads one year following such reforms. This finding is robust to various sensitivity tests, including careful consideration of the interdependence among the structural reforms.