Abstract
This paper examines the role of external debt financing (EDF) in shaping the credit cycles and the joint implications of EDF flows and credit growth for the output volatility in ten major emerging economies. We find that extreme phases—known as surge and stop episodes—in EDF flows are significantly associated with credit surges and stop episodes as shown by a panel multinominal logit estimation. However, the association is asymmetric—EDF stop episodes are more likely to bring about a credit stop episode compared to the occurrence of credit surges due to EDF surges. The results suggest vulnerabilities of credit cycles of EMEs to the sharp movement in EDF flows which in turn is typically synchronized with global liquidity conditions. In the second part of our analysis, using the bias-corrected LSDV estimation for the dynamic panels, we find that EDF flows and credit jointly have a strong amplifying impact on the output volatility. Moreover, EMEs also face large output volatility when EDF stop and credit stop episodes occur together. The results implicate a broader welfare loss in the form of output fluctuations due to a strong synchronization between external debt financing and domestic credit conditions. Significant output fluctuations are also a cause of concern for policymakers in EMEs who seek to insulate their economies from external and domestic financial shocks.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Credit cycle consists of two phases; credit boom and bust. The credit boom is typically defined by a phase in which the cyclical component of private sector credit to GDP is more than 1.65 times its standard deviation in at least one year or that in which an annual rate of credit to GDP ratio is above 20 percent (Ohnsorge and Yu, 2016; Bakker et al., 2012). An average credit boom lasts for 1.7 years and a maximum of up to 5 years.
The paper also documents several external and domestic factors responsible for this dynamic such as low world commodity prices, weak global trade, a slowdown in domestic productivity growth and policy uncertainty in EMEs.
Average growth in EMEs declined post-GFC period as shown in summary statistic Table 1
Surge and stop episodes are defined as the economic phases that exceed the levels of key macroeconomic variables justified by economic fundamentals or the potential level (Forbes and Warnock, 2012; Sula, 2010). In the context of this paper, it indicates a large increase or sudden reduction in cross-border flows and credit growth.
Extreme capital inflows episodes are known as surge, stop, flight, and retrenchment episodes. For more details, please see Forbes and Warnock (2012).
At the compositional level of debt flows, foreign currency credit to non-financial corporates has increased in EMEs which exposes them to different types of risks—exchange rate risk, rollover risks, and other market risks (Chui et al., 2016).
Sudden stop episode refers to a negative phase in which growth in capital inflows drops at least a standard deviation below average in the last five years and at least two standard deviations below the prior average in one quarter.
Countries with financial frictions are more likely to be susceptible to a sudden stop in the form of capital flow reversal and a larger decline occurs in those industries that are more sensitive to financial frictions and those that benefit less from price changes to tradable sectors. Several features of financial frictions are commonly found in EMEs such as capital controls, micro, and macro-prudential regulations, and incomplete financial markets.
The definition of credit to non-financial sector is provided on the BIS data portal of credit statistics—https://www.bis.org/statistics/totcredit/changes.htm. Credit to the non-financial sector only excludes credit given to financial sector to avoid double counting since the credit to financial sector would be eventually lent to the non-financial sector. The credit to non-financial sector covers core debt which includes loans, debt securities, currency, and deposits.
Moving correlation presents correlation coefficient calculated between the two data sets for all points within a particular time window which is 12 quarters in our case. For the correlation plot, the time window shifts along with the data, and the correlations are calculated at every fixed time interval. Moving correlation mainly describes how the relationship between two variables changes over time
For further details on the periods of the surge and stop episodes for EDF and credit, please see the Appendix Tables 10, 11, 12 and 13.
These papers mainly focus on estimating early warning systems for predicting banking crises for EMEs and OECD countries. Their findings suggest that the multinomial logit model improves the predictive power of early warning systems for the systemic banking crisis.
Monte Carlo simulation also show that difference GMM estimators have a severe finite sample bias and weak instrument bias in a highly persistent panel with small cross-section (Bruno et al., 2017).
We use STATA procedure ‘xtlsdvc’ to estimate the model as given by (Bruno, 2005b). We choose the Anderson-Hsia estimator as the initial estimator to avoid using invalid and too many instruments (Roodman, 2009, 2015). Further, we use bootstrapped standard errors with 100 replications following Bruno (2005a).
For our model setup, the inclusion of the interaction term of moderately correlated variables remains valid for two reasons. First, the correlation between the key explanatory variables—EDF and credit growth—is quite low (− 0.25) for our sample EMEs as shown in Appendix Table 7. Second, Balli and Sørensen (2013) theoretically demonstrate that collinearity is not a particular problem for regression with interaction effects; they further confirmed its validity through replicating several key macroeconomic studies and related robustness checks. In addition, several related studies support the use of interaction among similar types of macroeconomic variables within dynamic panel setup (Ductor and Grechyna, 2015; Aizenman et al., 2013).
For a preliminary analysis to understand the role of EDF surge/stop in affecting output volatility, we tested for the difference in output volatility between EDF surge and EDF stop episodes and find significant results; results are shown by the Appendix Table 8.
RRR values > 1 mean that the risk of outcome falling in the reference category increases as the variable increases whereas RRR < 1 means the opposite.
This paper finds strong empirical evidence that countries with excess capital inflows are more sensitive to global liquidity conditions regardless of domestic monetary policy and exchange rate regime. Our results are on similar lines with more focus on the impact of EDF flows on credit cycles in the context of EMEs.
Roodman (2015) suggest that standard panel fixed effects model could also be used for the dynamic panel with small cross-section and large periods. When T is relatively large, dynamic panel bias is not a concern.
References
Aghion, P., Bacchetta, P., & Banerjee, A. (2004). Financial development and the instability of open economies. Journal of Monetary Economics, 51(6), 1077–1106.
Agosin, M. R., & Huaita, F. (2012). Overreaction in capital flows to emerging markets: Booms and sudden stops. Journal of International Money and Finance, 31(5), 1140–1155.
Aguiar, M., & Gopinath, G. (2007). Emerging market business cycles: The cycle is the trend. Journal of Political Economy, 115(1), 69–102.
Aizenman, J., Chinn, M. D., & Ito, H. (2010). The emerging global financial architecture: Tracing and evaluating new patterns of the trilemma configuration. Journal of International Money and Finance, 29(4), 615–641.
Aizenman, J., Chinn, M. D., & Ito, H. (2011). Surfing the waves of globalization: Asia and financial globalization in the context of the trilemma. Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 25(3), 290–320.
Aizenman, J., Pinto, B., & Sushko, V. (2013). Financial sector ups and downs and the real sector in the open economy: Up by the stairs, down by the parachute. Emerging Markets Review, 16, 1–30.
Antonakakis, N., & Badinger, H. (2016). Economic growth, volatility, and cross-country spillovers: New evidence for the G7 countries. Economic Modelling, 52, 352–365.
Arcand, J. L., Berkes, E., & Panizza, U. (2015). Too much finance? Journal of Economic Growth, 20(2), 105–148.
Arellano, M., & Bond, S. (1991). Some tests of specification for panel data: Monte carlo evidence and an application to employment equations. The Review of Economic Studies, 58(2), 277–297.
Arena, M., Bouza, S., Dabla-Norris, E., Gerling, K., & Njie, L. (2015). Credit booms and macroeconomic dynamics; Stylized facts and lessons for low-income countries. IMF Working Papers No. 15/11. International Monetary Fund.
Avdjiev, S., Binder, S., & Sousa, R. (2017). External debt composition and domestic credit cycles. BIS Working Papers No. 627. Bank of International Settlements.
Avdjiev, S., Gambacorta, L., Goldberg, L. S., & Schiaffi, S. (2020). The shifting drivers of global liquidity. Journal of International Economics, 125, 103324.
Bakker, B. B., Dell’Ariccia, G., Laeven, L.,, Vandenbussche, J., Igan, D. O., & Tong, H. (2012). Policies for macrofinancial stability; How to deal with credit booms. IMF Staff Discussion Notes No. 12/06. International Monetary Fund.
Balli, H. O., & Sørensen, B. E. (2013). Interaction effects in econometrics. Empirical Economics, 45(1), 583–603.
Barrell, R., Davis, E. P., Karim, D., & Liadze, I. (2010). Bank regulation, property prices and early warning systems for banking crises in oecd countries. Journal of Banking & Finance, 34(9), 2255–2264.
Baskaya, Y. S., Di Giovanni, J., Kalemli-Özcan, Ş, Peydró, J.-L., & Ulu, M. F. (2017). Capital flows and the international credit channel. Journal of International Economics, 108, S15–S22.
Baxter, M., & Crucini, M. J. (1995). Business cycles and the asset structure of foreign trade. International Economic Review, 36(4), 821–854.
Bencivenga, V. R., & Smith, B. D. (1991). Financial intermediation and endogenous growth. The Review of Economic Studies, 58(2), 195–209.
Bernanke, B. S., & Gertler, M. (1995). Inside the black box: The credit channel of monetary policy transmission. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(4), 27–48.
BIS (2014). Debt and Financial Cycle: Domestic and global. BIS annual economic report, 65–83.
Blanchard, O., & Simon, J. (2001). The long and large decline in us output volatility. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2001(1), 135–174.
Blundell, R., & Bond, S. (1998). Initial conditions and moment restrictions in dynamic panel data models. Journal of Econometrics, 87(1), 115–143.
Borio, C., McCauley, R., & McGuire, P. (2011). Global credit and domestic credit booms. BIS Quarterly Review, 43–57.
Broner, F., & Ventura, J. (2016). Rethinking the effects of financial globalization. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(3), 1497–1542.
Broner, F. A., & Rigobon, R. (2006). Why are capital flows so much more volatile in emerging than in developed countries?. In External vulnerability and preventive policies. CREI, U Pompeu Fabra: Series on central banking, analysis, and economic policies, 10, 15–39. Central Bank of Chile.
Bruno, G. S. (2005). Approximating the bias of the LSDV estimator for dynamic unbalanced panel data models. Economics Letters, 87(3), 361–366.
Bruno, G. S. (2005). Estimation and inference in dynamic unbalanced panel-data models with a small number of individuals. The Stata Journal, 5(4), 473–500.
Bruno, G. S., Choudhry Tanveer, M., Marelli, E., & Signorelli, M. (2017). The short-and long-run impacts of financial crises on youth unemployment in OECD countries. Applied Economics, 49(34), 3372–3394.
Caggiano, G., Calice, P., & Leonida, L. (2014). Early warning systems and systemic banking crises in low income countries: A multinomial logit approach. Journal of Banking & Finance, 47, 258–269.
Calderon, C., & Kubota, M. (2012). Gross inflows gone wild : Gross capital inflows, credit booms and crises. Policy Research Working Paper Series No. 6270. The World Bank.
Calvo, G. A., Leiderman, L., & Reinhart, C. M. (1996). Inflows of capital to developing countries in the 1990s. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10(2), 123–139.
Cavoli, T., Gopalan, S., & Rajan, R. S. (2019). Does financial inclusion amplify output volatility in emerging and developing economies? Open Economies Review, 1–30.
Cecchetti, S. G., Mohanty, M. S., & Zampolli, F. (2011). The real effects of debt. BIS Working Papers No. 352. Bank of International Settlements.
Cetorelli, N., & Goldberg, L. S. (2011). Global banks and international shock transmission: Evidence from the crisis. IMF Economic Review, 59(1), 41–76.
Chari, V. V., Kehoe, P. J., & McGrattan, E. R. (2005). Sudden stops and output drops. American Economic Review, 95(2), 381–387.
Chui, M., Kuruc, E., & Turner, P. (2016). A new dimension to currency mismatches in the emerging markets-non-financial companies. BIS Working Papers No. 550. Bank of International Settlements.
Dabla-Norris, M. E., & Srivisal, M. N. (2013). Revisiting the link between finance and macroeconomic volatility. IMF Working Papers No. 29. International Monetary Fund.
Davis, J. S. (2015). The macroeconomic effects of debt-and equity-based capital inflows. Journal of Macroeconomics, 46, 81–95.
Demirgüç-Kunt, A., & Detragiache, E. (1998). The determinants of banking crises in developing and developed countries. IMF Staff Papers, 45(1), 81–109.
Demirgüç-Kunt, A., Horváth, B. L., & Huizinga, H. (2017). How does long-term finance affect economic volatility? Journal of Financial Stability, 33, 41–59.
Didier, T., Kose, M. A., Ohnsorge, F., & Ye, L. S. (2015). Slowdown in Emerging Markets: Rough Patch or Prolonged Weakness? Policy research note No. 1529. World Bank.
Dinger, V., & te Kaat, D. M. (2020). Cross-border capital flows and bank risk-taking. Journal of Banking & Finance, 117, 105842.
Ductor, L., & Grechyna, D. (2015). Financial development, real sector, and economic growth. International Review of Economics & Finance, 37, 393–405.
Easterly, W., Islam, R., & Stiglitz, J. E. (2001). Shaken and stirred: Explaining growth volatility. Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics, 191, 211.
Eichengreen, B., & Arteta, C. (2002). Banking crises in emerging markets: Presumptions and evidence. In Financial policies in emerging markets, 47–94.
Elekdag, S., & Wu, Y. (2013). Rapid credit growth in emerging markets: Boon or boom-bust? Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 49(5), 45–62.
Evans, M. D., & Hnatkovska, V. V. (2007). Financial integration, macroeconomic volatility, and welfare. Journal of the European Economic Association, 5(2–3), 500–508.
Feyen, E., Kibuuka, K., & Otker-Robe, I. (2012). Bank deleveraging: Causes, channels, and consequences for emerging market and developing countries. Policy Research Working Paper Series No. 6086. The World Bank.
Forbes, K. J., & Warnock, F. E. (2012). Capital flow waves: Surges, stops, flight, and retrenchment. Journal of International Economics, 88(2), 235–251.
Forbes, K. J., & Warnock, F. E. (2014). Debt-and equity-led capital flow episodes. In M. Fuentes . D., C. E. Raddatz, and C. M. Reinhart (Eds.), Capital mobility and monetary policy, Volume 18 of central banking, analysis, and economic policies book series. Ch. 9, 291–322. Central Bank of Chile.
Furceri, D., Guichard, S., & Rusticelli, E. (2012). Episodes of large capital inflows, banking and currency crises, and sudden stops. International Finance, 15(1), 1–35.
Gertler, M., & Kiyotaki, N. (2010). Financial intermediation and credit policy in business cycle analysis. In Handbook of monetary economics, 3, 547–599, Elsevier.
Ghosh, A. R., Ostry, J. D., & Qureshi, M. S. (2018). Taming the tide of capital flows: A policy guide. MIT Press.
Hutchison, M. M., & Noy, I. (2006). Sudden stops and the Mexican wave: Currency crises, capital flow reversals and output loss in emerging markets. Journal of Development Economics, 79(1), 225–248.
Kaminsky, G. L., & Reinhart, C. M. (1999). The twin crises: The causes of banking and balance-of-payments problems. American Economic Review, 89(3), 473–500.
Kaminsky, G. L., Reinhart, C. M., & Vegh, C. A. (2003). The unholy trinity of financial contagion. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 17(4), 51–74.
Kaminsky, G. L., Reinhart, C. M., & Vegh, C. A. (2005). When it rains, it pours: Procyclical capital flows and macroeconomic policies. In NBER macroeconomics annual 2004, 19, 11–53. George Washington U.
Khan, A., & Thomas, J. K. (2013). Credit shocks and aggregate fluctuations in an economy with production heterogeneity. Journal of Political Economy, 121(6), 1055–1107.
Kiviet, J. F. (1995). On bias, inconsistency, and efficiency of various estimators in dynamic panel data models. Journal of Econometrics, 68(1), 53–78.
Kiyotaki, N., & Moore, J. (1997). Credit cycles. Journal of Political Economy, 105(2), 211–248.
Kose, M. A., Prasad, E. S., & Terrones, M. E. (2006). How do trade and financial integration affect the relationship between growth and volatility? Journal of International Economics, 69(1), 176–202.
Lane, P. R., & McQuade, P. (2014). Domestic credit growth and international capital flows. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 116(1), 218–252.
Levine, R., Loayza, N., & Beck, T. (2000). Financial intermediation and growth: Causality and causes. Journal of Monetary Economics, 46(1), 31–77.
Loayza, N., Ouazad, A., & Ranciere, R. (2018). Financial development, growth, and crisis: Is there a trade-off? In Handbook of finance and development. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Loayza, N. V., & Ranciere, R. (2006). Financial development, financial fragility, and growth. Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 38(4), 1051–1076.
Loayza, N. V., Ranciere, R., Servén, L., & Ventura, J. (2007). Macroeconomic volatility and welfare in developing countries: An introduction. The World Bank Economic Review, 21(3), 343–357.
Meeks, R. (2012). Do credit market shocks drive output fluctuations? Evidence from corporate spreads and defaults. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 36(4), 568–584.
Mendoza, E. G., & Terrones, M. E. (2008). An anatomy of credit booms: evidence from macro aggregates and micro data. NBER Working Paper No. 14049. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Meng, C., & Gonzalez, R. L. (2017). Credit booms in developing countries: Are they different from those in advanced and emerging market countries? Open Economies Review, 28(3), 547–579.
Mitra, S. (2013). Informality, financial development and macroeconomic volatility. Economics Letters, 120(3), 454–457.
Mohanty, M. S., & Rishabh, K. (2016). Financial intermediation and monetary policy transmission in EMEs: What has changed post-2008 crisis? BIS Working Papers No. 546. Bank of International Settlements.
Obstfeld, M. (1994). Risk-taking, global diversification, and growth. American Economic Review, 84(5), 1310–1329.
Ohnsorge, F. L., & Yu, S. (2016). Recent credit surge in historical context. Policy Research Working Paper Series No. 7704. The World Bank.
Pena, D. B. A., Nedeljkovic, M., & Saborowski, C. (2015). What Slice of the Pie? The Corporate Bond Market Boom in Emerging Economies. IMF Working Papers No. 15/148. International Monetary Fund.
Perri, F., & Quadrini, V. (2018). International recessions. American Economic Review, 108(4–5), 935–84.
Reinhart, C. M., & Rogoff, K. S. (2009). This time is different: Eight centuries of financial folly. Princeton University Press.
Reinhart, C. M., & Rogoff, K. S. (2010). Growth in a time of debt. American Economic Review, 100(2), 573–78.
Reinhart, C. M., & Rogoff, K. S. (2011). From financial crash to debt crisis. American Economic Review, 101(5), 1676–1706.
Rey, H. (2015). Dilemma not trilemma: The global financial cycle and monetary policy independence. NBER Working Paper No. 21162. National Bureau of Economic Research.
Roodman, D. (2009). A note on the theme of too many instruments. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 71(1), 135–158.
Roodman, D. (2015). xtabond2: Stata module to extend xtabond dynamic panel data estimator. Boston College Department of Economics: Statistical Software Components.
Rothenberg, A., & Warnock, F. (2006). Sudden flight and true sudden stops. NBER Working Papers No. 12726. International Monetary Fund.
Schularick, M., & Taylor, A. M. (2012). Credit booms gone bust: Monetary policy, leverage cycles, and financial crises, 1870–2008. American Economic Review, 102(2), 1029–1061.
Shin, H. S. (2014). The second phase of global liquidity and its impact on emerging economies. In Volatile capital flows in Korea, 247–257. Springer.
Sula, O. (2010). Surges and sudden stops of capital flows to emerging markets. Open Economies Review, 21(4), 589–605.
Tillmann, P. (2016). Unconventional monetary policy and the spillovers to emerging markets. Journal of International Money and Finance, 66, 136–156.
Tornell, A., & Westermann, F. (2002). Boom-bust cycles in middle income countries: Facts and explanation. IMF Staff Papers, 49(1), 111–155.
Tornell, A., Westermann, F., & Martinez, L. (2003). Liberalization, growth, and financial crises: Lessons from Mexico and the developing world. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2003(2), 1–112.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Prof. Ashima Goyal and Prof. Subrata Sarkar for their helpful comments and feedback. All remaining errors are our own.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflicts of interest
Mr. Akhilesh K. Verma declares that he has no conflict of interest. Dr. Rajeswari Sengupta declares that she has no conflict of interest.
Ethical approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
About this article
Cite this article
Verma, A.K., Sengupta, R. Interlinkages between external debt financing, credit cycles and output fluctuations in emerging market economies. Rev World Econ 157, 965–1001 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-021-00424-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10290-021-00424-3