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This paper aims to revisit the theme of fiscal-monetary coordination in a general equilibrium setup that allows for unconventional monetary policy, monetary policy transmission and developing country characteristics.

This paper uses a calibrated new Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to study fiscal-monetary interaction.

Debt sits at the center of monetary-fiscal interaction. Under high-debt conditions, the inflation-output trade-off rises with an increase in the strictness with which monetary policy targets inflation, undermining the standard prescription of strict inflation targeting. At the same time, the transmission of monetary policy is also impeded, due to which unconventional monetary policy becomes more appropriate. The need for coordination among the policies gets enhanced in the presence of borrowing cost channel. While the presence of borrowing cost channel increases the need for policy coordination regardless of the debt situation, features like higher share of non-Ricardian households and weaker monetary policy transmission affect monetary-fiscal interaction to a greater extent under high-debt environment.

First, this paper uses inflation-output trade-off as a metric, to analyze fiscal-monetary interaction. Second, this paper considers the impact of developing country characteristics (such as a higher share of non-Ricardian households, impeded monetary policy transmission and supply constraints/borrowing cost channel) on fiscal-monetary interaction. Third, the DSGE model developed in this paper incorporates open market operations that could shed light on the role of unconventional monetary policy in the presence of high fiscal deficit and debt, which is particularly relevant in the current context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fourth, the model also permits an investigation into monetary policy transmission under different debt regimes.

This paper investigates the asymmetric impact of the real effective exchange rate (REER) on Egypt's real domestic output from 1960 to 2020.

A Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model is utilized to isolate real currency depreciations from appreciations and account for the potential asymmetry in the impact of the REER. The analyses account for the various channels via which the REER could affect domestic output.

Results show evidence of a long-run asymmetry in the output effect of REER changes in which only real currency depreciations have a contractionary impact on output, while the REER has no impact on output in the short run.

The Egyptian monetary authority cannot rely on domestic currency depreciation as a policy instrument to boost domestic output.

Unlike most of the previous studies, which assume linearity in the impact of the REER on output, we relax this assumption and hypothesize that the REER changes have an asymmetric effect on the Egyptian domestic output in Egypt. We use a long time span from 1960 to 2020 and control for the potential structural breaks in the REER-output nexus and the various channels through which the REER can affect domestic output.

This study examined the macroeconomic effects of COVID-19-induced economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in Nigeria. The study considered the effects of three related shocks: EPU, COVID-19 and correlated economic policy uncertainty and COVID-19 shock.

First, the study presented VAR evidence that fiscal and monetary policy uncertainty depresses real output. Thereafter, a nonlinear DSGE model with second-moment fiscal and monetary policy shocks was solved using the third-order Taylor approximation method.

The authors found that EPU shock is negligible and expansionary. By contrast, COVID-19 shocks have strong contractionary effects on the economy. The combined shocks capturing the COVID-19-induced EPU shock were ultimately recessionary after an initial expansionary effect. The implication is that the COVID-19 pandemic-induced EPU adversely impacted macroeconomic outcomes in Nigeria in a non-trivial manner.

The result shows the importance of policies to cushion the effect of uncertain fiscal and monetary policy path in the aftermath of COVID-19.

The originality of the paper lies in examining the impact of COVID-19 induced EPU in the context of a developing economy using the DSGE methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the impact of COVID-19 pandemic news in USA and in China on the dynamic conditional correlation between Bitcoin and Gold.

This paper offers a crucial viewpoint to the predictive capacity of COVID-19 surprises and production pronouncements for the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) among Bitcoin and Gold returns and volatilities using generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity-DCC-(1,1) through the period of study since July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020. To assess the unexpected impact of COVID-19, this study pursues the Kuttner’s (2001) methodology.

The empirical findings indicate strong important correlation among Bitcoin and Gold if COVID-19 surprises are integrated in variance. This study validates the financialization hypothesis of Bitcoin and Gold. The correlation between Bitcoin and Gold begin to react significantly further in the case of COVID-19 surprises in USA than those in China.

This paper contributes to the literature on assessing the impact of COVID-19 confirmed cases surprises on the correlation between Bitcoin and Gold. This paper gives for the first time an approach to capture the COVID-19 surprise component. Also, this study helps to improve financial backers and policymakers' comprehension of the digital currencies' market elements, particularly in the hours of amazingly unpleasant and inconspicuous occasions.

This paper provides an important perspective to the predictive capacity of Fed and European Central Bank (ECB) meeting dates and production announcements for the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) between Bitcoin and energy commodities returns and volatilities during the period from August 11, 2015 to March 31, 2018.

To assess empirically the unanticipated component of the US and ECB monetary policy, the authors pursue the Kuttner's approach and use the federal funds futures and the ECB funds futures to assess the surprise component. The authors use the approach of DCC as introduced by Engle (2002) during the period from August 11, 2015 to March 31, 2018.

The authors’ results suggest strong significant DCCs between Bitcoin and energy commodity markets if monetary policy surprises are incorporated in variance. These results confirmed the financialization of Bitcoin and commodity energy markets. Finally, the DCC between Bitcoin and energy commodity markets appears to respond considerably more in the case of Fed surprises than ECB surprises.

This study is a crucial topic for policymakers and portfolio risk managers.

This paper evaluates the economic, political and institutional determinants of variation in public investment in emerging Europe.

Panel econometrics (panel-corrected standard error, generalized least squares and the two-stage least squares) methods have been applied using annual data from 2000 to 2017 for 16 countries from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

Public investment was procyclical in relation to output and negatively associated with the level of public debt. Austerity episodes triggered a significant drop in public investment. Positive drifts in public investment during election periods and the negative impact of the number of cabinet seats held by left-wing parties have been captured. While no firm evidence on the impact of EU membership was found, the results show that arrangements with the IMF were strongly associated with lower public investment. Political factors were of greater importance in Central Europe and the Baltics, while institutional factors had a more significant impact in South Eastern Europe.

To foster public capital formation, it is necessary to: 1) strengthen the countercyclicality of public investment policy and to keep public debt at a low level; 2) adjust the fiscal criteria for EU membership in a manner that would enable countries to use the EU structural fund more effectively, while maintaining fiscal sustainability; 3) put a stronger emphasis on structural features of fiscal policy when designing country-level arrangements with the IMF.

The paper contributes to the literature on determinants of public investment policy by adding empirical evidence for emerging Europe countries.

Under the background of the overall increase of China's economic policy uncertainty and the urgent need for the transformation and upgrading of the substantial economy, this paper studies the time-varying causality between China's economic policy uncertainty and the growth of the substantial economy through bootstrap rolling window causality test, further refines economic policies and studies the causal differences between different types of economic policies and substantial economic growth, refining the conclusions of previous studies.

This paper first studies the causal relationship between China's economic policy uncertainty and substantial economic growth in the full sample period through bootstrap Granger causality test. Then, the paper tests the short-term and long-term stability of the parameters of the VAR model, and it is found that the model parameters are unstable in both the short and long term, so the results of the Granger causality test of the full sample are not credible. Finally, we conduct a dynamic test of the causal relationship between China's economic policy uncertainty and substantial economic growth by means of rolling window, so as to comprehensively analyze the dynamic characteristics and sudden changes of the relationship between them.

The research shows that economic policy uncertainty in China has a significant inhibiting effect on the growth of substantial economy. Growth in the substantial economy will drive up economic policy uncertainty before 2016 and restrain it after that. In addition, this paper further subdivides economic policy uncertainty to explore the causal differences between different types of economic policy uncertainty and substantial economic growth. The test results show that the relationship between them has obvious policy heterogeneity. The fiscal policy uncertainty and the monetary policy uncertainty, as the main policy means in China, has a significant impact on the growth rate of substantial economy in multiple ranges, but the effect time is short. Although trade policy uncertainty has a significant impact on the growth rate of substantial economy only during the financial crisis, the effect lasts for a long time. The impact of exchange rate and capital account policy uncertainty on the growth rate of substantial economy is mainly reflected after 2020.

The values of this paper are as follows: First, the economic policy uncertainty is combined with the growth of substantial economy, which makes up the gap of previous studies. Second, the economic policy uncertainty is further subdivided. The paper explores the causal differences between different types of economic policy uncertainties and the growth of substantial economy, so as to make the research more detailed. Finally, different from the previous static analysis, this paper uses dynamic model to examine the relationship between China's economic policy uncertainty and the growth of substantial economy from a dynamic perspective, with richer research conclusions.

Mora and Acevedo (2019) report that the government spending multipliers in Latin American countries are notably higher than what is typically reported for developed economies. Latin American countries have been inclined toward using procyclical fiscal policies. Those policies have been perceived as being effective at mitigating the effects of the 2008–2009 Great Recession. This study aims to estimate the government spending multiplier using Latin American panel data from 19 Latin American countries from 2000 to 2018. The estimates are conditional on the extent of openness, capital mobility and economic freedom. Based on the results, the latter is important: the less economically free a country, the larger its spending multiplier. Lower economic freedom in Latin American countries can help to account for their large spending multipliers. In particular, restrictions on international trade are positively associated with multipliers. This is the case even while controlling the trade share of GDP.

The authors provide regression results that are conditional on the extent of openness, capital mobility and economic freedom.

The less economically free a country, the larger its spending multiplier. Lower economic freedom in Latin American countries can help to account for their large spending multipliers. In particular, restrictions on international trade are positively associated with multipliers. This is the case even while controlling the trade share of GDP.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is first study to estimate the fiscal multiplier conditional on economic freedom levels. The authors provide correctly calculated multipliers conditional on different levels of economic freedom. The authors point the way to future studies considering the effectiveness of fiscal policy conditional on institutional/policy quality.

Public debt management is now an integral part of overall macroeconomic management in many developing and emerging market economies. Preventing unsustainable debt accumulation and maintaining healthy fiscal profile begins with understanding its key drivers both in the short and in the long run. The purpose of this paper is to analyze public debt and current account dynamics in Ethiopia.

This study applies structural vector auto-regressive (SVAR) model on annual time series data to study general government debt and current account dynamics in Ethiopia for the period 1980–2018.

Both the impulse response and forecast error variance decomposition results confirm that fiscal balance exerts the strongest influence on both government debt and current account balance in the short run. In addition, own shock as well as shocks stemming from gross fixed capital formation and growth have significant effects on general government debt. The findings were robust to alternative data transformation, differing Choleski ordering of the model variables, and inclusion of exogenous deterministic terms that capture changes in the political landscape.

The most important implication is that since fiscal balance is the strongest determinant of both public debt and current account balance, public investment efficiency is relevant here than anywhere else in the national economy. A recent study by Barhoumi et al. (2018) found that the sub-Saharan region lags behind its peers in terms of public sector investment efficiency with inefficiency gap of as large as 54% depending on the indicator variable for public investment output. Improving public investment spending efficiency would reduce government debt by enhancing productivity and growth – which has significant negative effect on public debt.

First, the few studies conducted on Ethiopia are dominated by single equation specifications and do not account for the possibility of endogenous feedback effects among the model variables. Second, still equally important is the role of rising gross fixed capital formation in Ethiopia, which increased from about 13% (relative to GDP) in the 1980s to about 35% in the 2010s. Ignoring this variable amounts to a major model misspecification when analyzing short-run macro dynamics in low-income economies. Finally, the paper complements existing limited studies on Ethiopia by comparing the strength of shock propagation mechanisms using alternative data transformation techniques.

This paper aims to analyze systemic risk in and the effect of capital regulation on the European insurance sector. In particular, the evolution of an exposure measure (SRISK) and a contribution measure (Delta CoVaR) are analyzed from 1985 to 2016.

With the help of multivariate regressions, the main drivers of systemic risk are identified.

The paper finds an increasing degree of interconnectedness between banks and insurance that correlates with systemic risk exposure. Interconnectedness peaks during periods of crisis but has a long-term influence also during normal times. Moreover, the paper finds that the insurance sector was greatly affected by spillovers from the process of capital regulation in banking. While European insurance companies initially at the start of the Basel process of capital regulation were well capitalized according to the SRISK measure, they started to become capital deficient after the implementation of the model-based approach in banking with increasing speed thereafter.

These findings are highly relevant for the ongoing global process of capital regulation in the insurance sector and potential reforms of Solvency II. Systemic risk is a leading threat to the stability of the global financial system and keeping it under control is a main challenge for policymakers and supervisors.

This paper provides novel tools for supervisors to monitor risk exposures in the insurance sector while taking into account systemic feedback from the financial system and the banking sector in particular. These tools also allow an evidence-based policy evaluation of regulatory measures such as Solvency II.