Finance Investment And Economic Fluctuations

Finally, the author compares Minsky's approach and new Keynesian theory of fluctuations and finds that they have a similar approach to uncertainty and macroeconomic instability."--Jacket.

Financial frictions have been identified as key factors affecting economic fluctuations and growth. But, can institutional reforms reduce financial frictions? Based on a canonical investment model, we consider two potential channels: (i) financial transaction costs at the firm level; and (ii) required return at the country level. We empirically investigate the effects of institutions on these financial frictions using a panel of 75,000 firm-years across 48 countries for the period 1990 - 2007. We find that improved corporate governance (e.g., less informational problems) and enhanced contractual enforcement reduce financial frictions, while stronger creditor rights (e.g., lower collateral constraints) are less important.

Countries with more developed financial sectors, experience fewer fluctuations in real per capita output, consumption, and investment growth. But the manner in which the financial sector develops matters. The relative importance of banks in the financial system is important in explaining consumption, and investment volatility. The proportion of credit provided to the private sector, best explains volatility of consumption, and output. The authors generate their main results using fixed-effects estimates with panel data from seventy countries for the years 1956-98. Their general findings suggest that the risk management, and information processing provided by banks, maybe especially important in reducing consumption, and investment volatility. The simple availability of credit to the private sector, probably helps smooth consumption, and GDP.

Professor Hamouda s book is very timely and thought provoking and should be an eye opener for students of economics who were brought up in the anti-Keynesian last decades of the twentieth century, or were taught the garbled rather than updated revived Keynesianism which has recently become popular. Y.S. Brenner, Retired Professor of Economics, Utrecht University, The Netherlands Contrary to the commonly perpetuated belief that Keynes s theory is appropriate only to economic depressions, the author of this provocative book maintains that Keynes provided a complete set of macroeconomic relations and the ingredients of a new theoretical model, much more reflective of and analytically appropriate to the 21st century than those on which current macroeconomics is based. With the perspective of Keynes as the backdrop, the author begins with a discussion of the characteristics of the financial crises of 2008 and the 1930s. He then goes on to show that Keynes provided a novel, general theory, constructed as the EC-SP model (different from that of the Classicals Labour Theory of Value model and the neoClassicals antithetical IS-LM model), a theory yet unrecognized as being behind both A Treatise on Money and The General Theory. He presents here the premises of Keynes s contributions which still await use by a generation of economists to reassess macroeconomics and orient it in a new direction. This unique and authoritative look at Keynes s body of work will be an essential read for scholars and students of economics. Anyone trying to understand the state of the entrepreneurial economy , of which the 2008 financial crisis is but one manifestation prone to recurrence, will find the work an important resource.

The ending of the decade of the seventies and the dawning of the eighties can be characterized as a period of great uncertainty with prospects for economic political instability. High inflation and fluctuating exchange rates in the de veloped Western world have served to strengthen the forces of disequilibrium in the fmancial markets, leading to an investment situation with several unusual but significant factors. Capital spending by business, leading to the creation of new jobs, has not been reduced substantially during this period of uncertainty, as happened in similar periods in the past. This is shown in part by the continuing low unemployment rates in evidence during the period, which are in contradic tion to the trend exhibited in similar past periods. The expanding financing re quirements resulting from high price inflation have led to an increase in the capital intensity of firms, and thus to enhanced sensitivity of their income streams to economic fluctuations. At the same time, the record high interest rates that companies have had to pay to acquire this inflated amount of capital have caused a deterioration in the safety or quality indica tors by which the creditworthiness of the firms is judged. These developments tend to increase vii viii INTRODUCTION the stakes involved in business decision making. One important repercussion of this is that greater attention is now being focused on improving the quality of investment decisions.

We suggest a new approach for analyzing the role of financial variables and shocks in computing the output gap. We estimate a two-region DSGE model for the euro area, with financial frictions at the household level, between 2000-2013. After joining the monetary union, a decline in some countries’ borrowing costs contributed to a credit, housing and real boom and bust cycle. We show that financial frictions amplified economic fluctuations and the measure of the output gap in those countries. On the contrary, in countries such as France and Germany, financial frictions played a minor role in output gap measures. We also present evidence of the trade-offs faced by the European Central Bank when trying to stabilize two regions in a currency union with unsynchronized economic cycles.

Financial Markets and the Real Economy reviews the current academic literature on the macroeconomics of finance.

This book is the first of two volumes that aim to provide an up-to-date overview of the key data and techniques necessary for analysing the historical behaviour of business and financial cycles in the United Kingdom. Drawing on an extensive secondary literature and the considerable body of historical macroeconomic and financial time series data that exist for the United Kingdom, the two volumes will review the key features of historical recessions and recoveries over the course of three and a half centuries. Volume 1 provides an overview of UK business cycles since 1660. The first part of the book considers old and new theories of the business cycle, looking at the impulses that generate business cycles and the propagation mechanisms that determine their duration and amplitude. The second part of the book uses the latest historical estimates of GDP to look at different ways of measuring and estimating business cycle fluctuations within a simple univariate framework. Finally, the book provides a narrative of UK economic fluctuations since 1660 using a whole range of economic data to shed light on the main drivers of cyclical behaviour. It concludes by highlighting areas for future research especially with regard to the link between business and financial cycles, some of which will be explored in Volume 2.