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Abstract

Evidence from the global financial crisis (2007–2008) and the Asian financial crisis (1997) have taught policymakers valuable lessons. The contagious effects of these crises have proven unavoidable and have led to negative economic development. However, South Korea, unlike other countries, has recovered remarkably from both episodes of financial turmoil and proved their ability to maintain positive growth throughout the two periods. This study investigates the correlation between the evolution of South Korean banking and corporate sector before, during and after these crises. A VAR model was employed to test the effectiveness of the South Korean government's policies, in response to the financial crisis from 1997 to 2017, using macroeconomic variables as proxies for newly introduced policies, and non-performing loans for controlled risks. The empirical results indicate impulse response functions which suggest that changes in macroeconomic variables as a representation for the policies resulted in a reduction of non-performing loans. This implies successful risk reduction and an overall economic recovery.

Open access

Are there any long standing benefits in international equity investing? Did the acceleration of global financial integration bring clearly measurable benefits to international equity investors? Is there a convergence of equity market profitability around the world? These are the main questions of this paper. All of these questions got an affirmative answer, but, as it may be immediately suspected, many durable qualifiers and caveats apply. Section 1 reviews some key propositions of modern investment theory and some recent evidence on the benefits of international asset allocation on equity markets. It is argued that the desired benefits — as predicted by theory — can be and have been captured in terms of better risk/return trade-offs due to international diversification of equity portfolios. Manifest benefits aside, however, many dampening factors come into play when considering long term capacities of realising these benefits. Mainly the changing correlation structure of global markets and the increased currency risk, which still remained very difficult to hedge, were identified as permanent factors to limit the power of international diversification in pushing out the efficient frontier of the equity set. Section 2 presents comparative evidence on global equity markets’ performance and gives an account of the wide variations in the US dollar denominated returns of major markets, developed and emerging. There is some support to the view that a certain convergence can be depicted in the profitability levels of different markets. Exchange rate movements, however, accounted for almost one third of variations in profitability on average. As of April 2007, stock market valuations did favour emerging markets (and to some extent EU-27) when compared to Japan or the US.

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In our paper we focus on situations when central banks have to conduct monetary policy in a world in which they cannot rely fully on what is regarded the best practice and they have to cope with financial system inherent tendency to be unstable. Both phenomena are rooted in János Kornai’s intellectual heritage highlighting that economy tends to divert from equilibrium and that soft budget constraint erodes economic actors’ behavior.

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This paper provides an empirical analysis of the relationship between the labour income share and financialisation, as well as other related variables in Portugal from 1978 to 2012. We estimate an equation for the labour share that includes standard variables (technological progress, globalisation, education and business cycle) and variables to capture the effect of financialisation. We formulate the hypothesis that the financialisation process may lead to a rise in the inequality of functional income distribution through three channels: the change in the sectoral composition of the economy (due to both the increase in the weight of financial activity and the decrease in government activity), the diffusion of shareholder value governance practices and the weakening of trade unions. Our results show that the financialisation process has an indirect long-term effect on the labour share through its impact on government activity and trade union density. The paper also finds evidence supporting the traditional explanations for functional income distribution, namely globalisation, education and business cycle.

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The paper provides a general evaluation of inflation targeting in Poland with some reference to challenges faced by major central banks. First, it argues that inflation targeting has proved to be relatively successful in Poland and attributes this success to a bias towards the aggressive mitigation of inflationary risks, whenever they have arisen. Second, it briefly explains why the National Bank of Poland does not need to search for an alternative to inflation targeting. Then, it presents the negative aspects of the price level targeting and nominal GDP targeting. Third, it refers to the post- EU accession experience of Poland as being supportive for the “leaning against the wind” approach to monetary policy conducting. Fourth, it argues that such an approach is supported by evidence on the effects of the crisis’ outburst and aggressive interest rate cuts on trust in central banks. Fifth, it indicates the determinants of slow post-crisis restructuring and persistently high uncertainty as desired priorities in the research agenda in central banks.

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This study investigates the bank selection criteria of undergraduate students who are future potential customers of banks from different regions of the world in a small island economy by comparing the selection factors of international students for the first time. Survey results of 258 respondents show that there are not huge differences in the bank selection factors between Turkish and non-Turkish international students in the case of a state university in North Cyprus. “Availability and convenient location of ATM services” and “speed and quality of service” are the most important factors for considering banks and their services for both Turkish and non-Turkish undergraduate students.

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The aspiration of this research paper is to investigate the impact of international gold prices on the equity returns of Karachi Stock Index (KSE100 index) of Pakistan Stock Exchange. The daily observations from January 1, 2000 – June 30, 2016 have been divided into three sub-periods along with the full sample period on the basis of structural breaks. Descriptive analysis used to calculate the average returns, which showed significant returns of KSE100 for the full sample, the first and the third sample periods as compared to gold returns. Standard deviation depicted the higher volatility in all the sample periods. Correlation analysis has shown an inverse relationship amid equity returns and gold returns, whereas, Philips-Perron and Augmented Dickey-Fuller tests have been employed, and time series data became stationary after taking the first difference. Johansen cointegration results have shown that the series are cointegrated in the full-sample and the first sample periods. Thus, this has demonstrated the long run association amid equity returns and gold returns in the first sub-sample and the full-sample periods. However, the second and the third sub-sample periods do not exhibit long-term association amid equity returns of KSE100 and gold returns. The outcomes of Granger causality approach identified bidirectional causation amid equity returns and gold returns in the full sample period in lag 2, and unidirectional causality has been observed from gold prices to stock prices in the full sample and the first sub-sample periods in lag 1 and lag 2 respectively.

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Data from 135 countries covering five decades suggest that creditless recoveries, in which the stock of real credit does not return to the pre-crisis level for three years after the GDP trough, are not rare and are characterised by remarkable real GDP growth rates: 4.7 percent per year in middle-income countries and 3.2 percent per year in high-income countries. However, the implications of these historical episodes for the current European situation are limited, for two main reasons. First, creditless recoveries are much less common in high-income countries than in low-income countries which are financially undeveloped. European economies heavily depend on bank loans and research suggests that loan supply played a major role in the recent weak credit performance of Europe. There are reasons to believe that, despite various efforts, normal lending has not yet been restored. Limited loan supply could be disruptive for the European economic recovery and there has been only a minor substitution of bank loans with debt securities. Second, creditless recoveries were associated with significant real exchange rate depreciation, which has hardly occurred so far in most of Europe. This stylised fact suggests that it might be difficult to re-establish economic growth in the absence of sizeable real exchange rate depreciation, if credit growth does not return.

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This study investigates the impact of the selected financial development proxies and foreign direct investment (FDI) on the growth in the case of Turkey, using annual data for the 1960–2011 period. The second-generation econometric procedure has been applied for the first time to the Turkish data with this respect. Unit root tests by Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. (2009) assume that real income, financial development proxies, and FDI are non-stationary at levels, but become stationary at first differences through multiple structural breaks. Cointegration results by Maki (2012) confirm the existence of a long-term equilibrium relationship between real income growth, financial development, and FDI, again through multiple structural breaks. Finally, this paper confirms that financial development and FDI are long-term drivers of real income, which enable it to react to its long-term path significantly.

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Society and Economy
Authors:
Harun Ercan
,
Ilhami Karahanoglu
, and
György Walter

Abstract

Islamic Finance receives more attention due to the growing need for financial services in countries with a Muslim population. However, the rules of Islam and its applications in daily life cause conflicts in today's conventional financial system. Since interest gains are prohibited in Islam according to the Quran, Islamic banks develop and use interest-free methods, unlike the conventional banking system. Islamic Finance introduced profit-sharing ratios to replace interest rates and to increase the participation of religious investors in the financial system. In this research, we compare interest rates with profit-sharing ratios in the Turkish banking market. We use wavelet and historical correlation analysis as a new methodology in evaluating the association between these two factors. Although it is presumed that Islamic banks operate as interest-free banks, our analysis confirms former studies and finds that profit-sharing ratios are highly correlated and coherent with interest rates in Turkey. We also find small differences among Islamic banks on how quickly profit-sharing ratios follow the market interest rate changes.

Open access