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Credit prices vs. credit quantities as predictors of economic activity in Europe: Which tell a better story?

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  • Guender, Alfred V

Abstract

This paper examines the role of external credit providers in the EMU and assesses the effects of credit spreads and credit quantities on economic activity. Movements in credit spreads are far more successful than movements in the external finance mix in predicting near-term changes in real economic activity in ten EMU countries. However, the forecasting performance of the three credit spreads evaluated in this paper is uneven. A risk premium extracted from individual corporate bond yields predicts economic activity fairly well in Germany and Southern Europe. Two other credit spreads, the ‘spread’ and the ‘ECB-spread’, have predictive power for some measures of economic activity but they fail to predict consistently across either a range of economic indicators or countries.

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  • Guender, Alfred V, 2018. "Credit prices vs. credit quantities as predictors of economic activity in Europe: Which tell a better story?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 380-399.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jmacro:v:57:y:2018:i:c:p:380-399
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jmacro.2018.07.003
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    3. Ihejirika, Peters. O, 2020. "Does the Credit-to-GDP Gap Predict Financial Crisis in Nigeria?," International Journal of Social and Administrative Sciences, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 5(2), pages 109-126, June.
    4. Huan Zhou & Shaojian Qu & Qinglu Yuan & Shilei Wang, 2020. "Spatial Effects and Nonlinear Analysis of Energy Consumption, Financial Development, and Economic Growth in China," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-18, September.
    5. Das, Kuntal K. & Donald, Logan J. & Guender, Alfred V., 2023. "Debt finance and economic activity in the euro-area: evidence on asymmetric and maturity effects," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 448-472.
    6. Borio, Claudio & Drehmann, Mathias & Xia, Fan Dora, 2020. "Forecasting recessions: the importance of the financial cycle," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    7. Claudio Borio & Mathias Drehmann & Dora Xia Author-X-Name_First: Dora, 2019. "Predicting recessions: financial cycle versus term spread," BIS Working Papers 818, Bank for International Settlements.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bank vs. bond finance; Finance mix; Credit spreads; Predictive ability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E3 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles
    • E4 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates
    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets

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