Exploring The Dynamics Of Global Liquidity

This paper explores the concept of global liquidity, its measurement and macro-financial importance. We construct two sets of indicators for global liquidity: a quantity series distinguishing between core and noncore liabilities of financial intermediatires and a corresponding price series. Using price and quantity indicators simultaneously, it is possible to distinguish between shocks to the supply and demand for global liquidity, and isolate their impact on the economy. Our results confirm that global liquidity conditions matter for economic and financial stability, and points to indicators whose regular monitoring could be valuable to policymakers.

This note reviews some concepts of global liquidity and discusses measurement approaches that have been used by various interlocutors, including at the BIS, by Fund staff, and in academia. Some measures that could be regularly monitored by policy makers are presented

The paper starts by presenting evidence of commonality in global financial conditions. This commonality is then related to specific drivers of global financial conditions through a range of transmission channels, including cross-border banking and portfolio flows. Empirical analysis shows a range of price and quantity factors, including measures of risk, bank leverage, and interest rates in financial centers, to drive in part these flows. Country specific policies, including exchange rate and prudential frameworks, are shown to affect the transmission of global conditions. Much remains unknown though, including how evolving structures of global funding, changing institutions, and ongoing financial innovations affect the mechanics of liquidity creation, the channels of liquidity transmission, and potential risks going forward.

This paper distills and identifies global liquidity (GL) momenta from the macro-financial data of advanced economies through a factor model with sign restrictions as policy-driven, market-driven, and risk averseness factors. Using a panel factor-augmented VAR, we investigate responses of emerging market economies (EMEs) to GL shocks. A policy-driven liquidity increase boosts growth in EMEs, elevating stock prices and currency values, while a risk averseness rise has an opposite effect. A market-driven GL expansion boosts stock markets and lowers funding costs, promoting competitiveness and current account. Inflation targeting EMEs fare better than EMEs under alternative regimes with respect to macrofinancial volatility.

This book discusses the risks and opportunities that arise in Emerging Asia given the context of a new environment in global liquidity and capital flows. It elaborates on the need to ensure financial and overall economic stability in the region through improved financial regulation and other policy measures to minimize the emergent risks. "Managing Elevated Risk: Global Liquidity, Capital Flows, and Macroprudential Policy—An Asian Perspective" also explores the range of policy options that may be deployed to address the impact of global liquidity on domestic financial and socio-economic conditions including income inequality. The book is primarily aimed at policy makers, financial market regulators and supervisory agencies to help them improve national regulatory systems and to promote harmonization of national regulations and practices in line with global standards. Scholars and researchers will also gain important information and knowledge about the overall impacts of changing global liquidity from the book.

This Selected Issues paper examines medium-term fiscal prospects and policy recommendations for Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR). Hong Kong SAR’s fiscal framework has worked well over the last 20 years but challenges have emerged that will strain the fiscal position in the medium to long term. Consequently, while fiscal space is ample currently, it could become gradually constrained over time. The fiscal rule should be implemented flexibly and revenue mobilization needs to be considered down the road. On the expenditure side, containment will be hard, given rapid aging and still high inequality. The challenge will be to maintain investment and boost land supply while increasing social spending to guarantee that those who need support are effectively protected.

This book analyses the logic of applying the American Post-Keynesian economist Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis (FIH) to the financial crisis of 2007–08. Arguing that most theories of financial crisis, including Minsky’s own, only describe events, but do not actually explain them, the book surveys theories of financial crisis that have been developed to describe instability in the post-WW2 US financial system and analyses them in their historical context. The book argues that explanation of the financial crisis of 2007–08 should involve interpretation of the concept of 'risk', which guides the construction and pricing of contemporary financial products such as derivatives and asset backed securities, as a form of 'liquidity', the concept that Minsky sought to explain the financial crises of the 1970s and 1980s with. The book highlights the continuing relevance of Minsky’s theory of liquidity crisis as "immanent", in a historical sense, to the products and trading practices of modern finance, because these products were developed to obviate the crisis dynamics that Minsky described. Minsky's FIH can therefore inform historical understanding of the crisis of 2007–08 but is not directly explanatory itself. The book explores explanation of the financial crisis of 2007–08 interpreting 'liquidity', in practical historical terms, as involving a process of development out of prior crisis dynamics. Seeking to contribute to debates over the causes of the financial crisis of 2007–08 by blending a discussion of historicizing philosophy, economic theory and contemporary financial banking and trading practices this work will be of great interest to scholars of international political economy, heterodox economics and critical theory.