Teresa Sastre

Bio: Teresa Sastre is an academic researcher from Bank of Spain. The author has contributed to research in topics: Foreign direct investment & Non-performing asset. The author has an hindex of 7, co-authored 13 publications receiving 295 citations.

Wealth and asset price effects on economic activity

Abstract: Do asset prices affect real activity? This question has taken on a new importance in recent years, as asset values first surged at the end of 1990s and, thereafter, dramatically retreated. This report reviews the available theoretical and empirical evidence regarding asset price and wealth effects in Europe and some other major economies. The main focus of this report is on consumption effects via the wealth channel, reflecting the bulk of literature on the effects of asset prices. However, asset price effects on investment via the Tobin’s-Q channel, balance sheet and confidence channels are also reviewed. The available evidence supports the view that the wealth channel is the most important of various channels. There is little empirical evidence indicating that the Tobin’s-Q, balance-sheet and confidence channels play any major independent role in the transmission of asset price effects to economic activity.

Countries’ Safety and Competitiveness, and the Estimation of Current Account Misalignments

Abstract: Current account imbalances and their sustainability are among the most debated international policy issues. Through the recently designed External Balance Assessment methodology (EBA), the IMF estimates the impact of several countries’ fundamentals and policies on their current account balance, calculates misalignments in their current account position and indicates policy recommendations which, if implemented, should contribute to reducing these imbalances.In this paper, we explore some extensions to the EBA, following two courses. First, we distinguish in current account regressions between countries that are considered safe investment destinations and non-safe economies. Since this distinction is likely to acquire special relevance in periods of global turmoil, we also distinguish between periods of global stress and tranquil times. Second, we embed in EBA regressions variables that drive countries’ external competitiveness.Results show that current account dynamics may be affected by competitiveness factors and differ significantly between safe and non-safe economies, with such differences becoming particularly relevant in turbulent times. These findings suggest that EBA regressions may be overlooking the influence of countries’ safety and competitiveness on external balances. Our alternative misalignment estimations show larger imbalances than those calculated with the EBA for some Asian economies and smaller imbalances for some high-surplus EU countries.

Domestic and foreign investment in advanced economies. The role of industry integration

Abstract: Previous research using country or firm data has been inconclusive on the sign of the relation between domestic and foreign investment. Though several hypotheses have been formulated, the factors determining the sign of this relationship are not clearly identified yet. In this paper we explore the role of industry integration in determining the relation between outward foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic investment by using disaggregated data at the industry level and several indicators of industry integration. The proportion of intangible investment is used as a proxy of horizontal integration and several measures of participation in Global Value Chains (GVCs) as proxies of vertical integration. The empirical results confirm that the relationship between outward FDI and domestic investment is very varied and differs across industries and countries. That relation is positive (complementary) for those industries with low intensity in intangible investment and high forward integration in GVCs –two features of vertically integrated industries– and becomes negative for those industries with high intangible investment (usually more horizontally integrated).

Wealth and asset price effects on economic activity

Abstract: Do asset prices affect real activity? This question has taken on a new importance in recent years, as asset values first surged at the end of 1990s and, thereafter, dramatically retreated. This report reviews the available theoretical and empirical evidence regarding asset price and wealth effects in Europe and some other major economies. The main focus of this report is on consumption effects via the wealth channel, reflecting the bulk of literature on the effects of asset prices. However, asset price effects on investment via the Tobin's-Q channel, balance sheet and confidence channels are also reviewed. The available evidence supports the view that the wealth channel is the most important of various channels. There is little empirical evidence indicating that the Tobin's-Q, balance-sheet and confidence channels play any major independent role in the transmission of asset price effects to economic activity.

The effects of financial and real wealth on consumption: new evidence from OECD countries

Abstract: In this article we present new estimates of the effect of household financial and real wealth on consumption. The analysis refers to 11 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Developoment (OECD) countries and takes into account quarterly data from 1997 to 2008. Unlike most of the previous literature on European countries, we measure financial wealth using quarterly harmonized data on household financial assets and liabilities, which have been gathered from the flow of funds. For comparison, we also employ as a proxy for financial wealth national share price indices. We rely on standard static panel and single-country level autoregressive distributed lag estimations. Furthermore, we implement a recent econometric approach that allows for more flexible assumptions in the nonstationary panel framework under consideration. Our results show that both net financial wealth and real wealth have a positive effect on consumption. Overall, the influence of net financial assets is stronger than that of real assets.

What Drives Personal Consumption? The Role of Housing and Financial Wealth

Abstract: I investigate the effect of wealth on consumption in a new dataset with financial and housing wealth from 16 countries. The baseline estimation method based on the sluggishness of consumption growth implies that the eventual (long-run) marginal propensity to consume out of total wealth is 5 cents (averaged across countries). While the wealth effects are quite strong -between 4 and 6 cents - in countries with more developed mortgage markets and in market-based, Anglo-Saxon and non euro area economies, consumption only barely reacts to wealth elsewhere. The effect of housing wealth is somewhat smaller than that of financial wealth for most countries, but not for the US and the UK. The housing wealth effect has risen substantially after 1988 as it has become easier to borrow against housing wealth.

The political economy debate on 'financialization' - a macroeconomic perspective

Abstract: A number of important contributions to the political economy literature have argued that changes in the financial sector have been amongst the main reflections, or even the driving forces, of recent transformations of capitalism in the rich countries. This hypothesis has been referred to as ‘financialization’. This article argues that the interdisciplinary literature can be enriched if the macroeconomic dimension of financialization is more explicitly taken into account. In particular, important macroeconomic constraints regarding the determination of profits, in the face of a decreasing importance of physical investment and an increased importance of financial operations, are often not explicitly considered. The author compares his macroeconomic approach with contributions from different strands in the existing literature, including empirical analyses of new patterns of profit generation, the ‘varieties of capitalism’ approach, the British ‘social accounting’ literature, and the French ‘regulati...

Economic reactions to public finance consolidation - a survey of the literature

Abstract: The paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature that has investigated the conditions under which a contractionary fiscal policy is effective in reducing debt and deficit, but does not have a negative effect on growth. The issue is central to macroeconomics and policy making, given that many countries are currently facing increasing fiscal imbalances, with additional pressure coming in the medium term from population ageing. The paper concludes that the theoretical impact of fiscal policy on aggregate demand and economic activity depends largely on the conceptual framework considered and its assumptions about the world. Empirical studies based on macro-econometric model simulations find evidence that fiscal consolidations lead initially to production losses, while they can result in a higher output in the medium term. Empirical studies focusing on episodes of changes in fiscal policies provide in turn evidence that under certain circumstances austerity measures may have an expansionary impact on the economy.