Essays in International Finance and Macroeconomics

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

This dissertation consists of essays in the intersection of international finance, macroeconomics, and monetary economics. The first essay studies the role of the financial sector in affecting domestic resource allocation and cross-border capital flows. I develop a quantitative, two-country, macroeconomic model in which banks face endogenous and occasionally binding leverage constraints. Banks lend funds to be invested in tradable or non-tradable sector capital and there is international financial integration in the market for bank liabilities. I focus on news about economic fundamentals as the key source of fluctuations. Specifically, in the case of positive news on the valuation of non-traded sector capital that turn out to be incorrect at a later date, the model generates an asymmetric, belief-driven boom-bust cycle that reproduces key features of the recent Eurozone crisis. Bank balance sheets amplify and propagate fluctuations through three channels when leverage constraints bind: First, amplified wealth effects induce jumps in import-demand (demand channel). Second, changes in the value of non-tradable sector assets alter bank lending to tradable sector firms (intra-national spillover channel). Third, domestic and foreign households re-adjust their savings in domestic banks, and capital flows further amplify fluctuations (international spillover channel). A common central bank’s unconventional policies of private asset purchases and liquidity facilities in response to unfulfilled expectations are successful at ameliorating the economic downturn. In the second essay, co-authored with Professor Ghironi, we study the implications of using the volatility of domestic interest rate as a policy instrument in a small open economy. We develop an international macroeconomic model of the interaction between an emerging market economy (EME) and global investors. EME central banker uses time-varying domestic interest rate volatility as a policy tool, and global investors have the opportunity to sell productive capital to the EME producers (FDI), in addition to having the opportunity to invest in one-period international and EME securities. We assess the effectiveness of using domestic interest rate volatility as a policy tool in distinguishing short-term security flows from long-term FDI flows, and identify the trade-offs that are faced in navigating financial strength and price stability. We find that an increase in interest rate volatility can attract FDI inflows while discouraging short-term security inflows, if the economy is subject to low- degree of pricing frictions. However, if prices are highly sticky, there is a co-movement of long-run FDI and short-run security outflows. Moreover, an increase in policy uncertainty induces higher price volatility.