IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v78y2011i1p149-166.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Risk and Macroeconomic Activity

Author

Listed:
  • James Peery Cover

Abstract

This article explores the macroeconomic role that risk plays using the BAA‐AAA spread as the measure of risk. First, it shows that meaningful upward movements in this spread are associated with recessions and their severity. Second, it includes the BAA‐AAA spread in a structural vector‐autoregression (VAR) to identify a shock‐to‐risk and finds that it causes a statistically significant and economically important decrease in output as well as increased holdings of real‐money balances. Third, it uses historical decompositions to show that the shock‐to‐risk explains an important part of the declines in output during four post‐1970 recessions. Notably, the shock‐to‐risk explains almost none of the decline in output during 2001 prior to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but does clarify why the recovery was relatively weak afterwards, and it explains the bulk of the decline in output during 2008 and 2009.

Suggested Citation

  • James Peery Cover, 2011. "Risk and Macroeconomic Activity," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 78(1), pages 149-166, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:78:y:2011:i:1:p:149-166
    DOI: 10.4284/0038-4038-78.1.149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.4284/0038-4038-78.1.149
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.4284/0038-4038-78.1.149?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John C. Williams & John B. Taylor, 2009. "A Black Swan in the Money Market," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 58-83, January.
    2. Estrella, Arturo & Mishkin, Frederic S., 1997. "The predictive power of the term structure of interest rates in Europe and the United States: Implications for the European Central Bank," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(7), pages 1375-1401, July.
    3. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles L., 1999. "Monetary policy shocks: What have we learned and to what end?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 65-148, Elsevier.
    4. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    5. Michael Dotsey, 1998. "The predictive content of the interest rate term spread for future economic growth," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, issue Sum, pages 31-51.
    6. J. Tobin, 1958. "Liquidity Preference as Behavior Towards Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 25(2), pages 65-86.
    7. Ann M. Dombrosky & Joseph G. Haubrich, 1996. "Predicting real growth using the yield curve," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, issue Q I, pages 26-35.
    8. Ben S. Bernanke, 1990. "On the predictive power of interest rates and interest rate spreads," New England Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, issue Nov, pages 51-68.
    9. Kashyap, Anil K & Stein, Jeremy C & Wilcox, David W, 1993. "Monetary Policy and Credit Conditions: Evidence from the Composition of External Finance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 78-98, March.
    10. Gertler, Mark & Lown, Cara S, 1999. "The Information in the High-Yield Bond Spread for the Business Cycle: Evidence and Some Implications," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 15(3), pages 132-150, Autumn.
    11. John V. Duca, 1999. "What credit market indicators tell us," Economic and Financial Policy Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Q III, pages 2-13.
    12. Friedman, Benjamin M & Kuttner, Kenneth N, 1992. "Money, Income, Prices, and Interest Rates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 472-492, June.
    13. Bianchi, Francesco & Mumtaz, Haroon & Surico, Paolo, 2009. "The great moderation of the term structure of UK interest rates," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 856-871, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. James Peery Cover & Hye-Jin Lee, 2015. "Do market prices aggregate information about macroeconomic uncertainty (or risk)?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(42), pages 4511-4534, September.
    2. Vladimir Arčabić & James Peery Cover, 2016. "Uncertainty and the effectiveness of fiscal policy," EFZG Working Papers Series 1611, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. James H. Stock & Mark W.Watson, 2003. "Forecasting Output and Inflation: The Role of Asset Prices," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(3), pages 788-829, September.
    2. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2018. "Frontiers of macrofinancial linkages," BIS Papers, Bank for International Settlements, number 95.
    3. Andrea Nobili, 2005. "Forecasting Output Growth And Inflation In The Euro Area: Are Financial Spreads Useful?," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 544, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    4. Franck Sédillot, 2001. "La pente des taux contient-elle de l'information sur l'activité économique future ?," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 147(1), pages 141-157.
    5. Craig S. Hakkio & William R. Keeton, 2009. "Financial stress: what is it, how can it be measured, and why does it matter?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 94(Q II), pages 5-50.
    6. Hamilton, James D & Kim, Dong Heon, 2002. "A Reexamination of the Predictability of Economic Activity Using the Yield Spread," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(2), pages 340-360, May.
    7. David López-Salido & Jeremy C. Stein & Egon Zakrajšek, 2017. "Credit-Market Sentiment and the Business Cycle," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(3), pages 1373-1426.
    8. Stijn Claessens & M Ayhan Kose, 2017. "Asset prices and macroeconomic outcomes: a survey," BIS Working Papers 676, Bank for International Settlements.
    9. Hibiki Ichiue, 2004. "Why Can the Yield Curve Predict Output Growth, Inflation, and Interest Rates? An Analysis with an Affine Term Structure Model," Bank of Japan Working Paper Series 04-E-11, Bank of Japan.
    10. Morell, Joseph, 2018. "The decline in the predictive power of the US term spread: A structural interpretation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 314-331.
    11. Willi Semmler, 2011. "Asset Prices, Booms and Recessions," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-642-20680-1, December.
    12. William English & Kostas Tsatsaronis & Edda Zoli, 2005. "Assessing the predictive power of measures of financial conditions for macroeconomic variables," BIS Papers chapters, in: Bank for International Settlements (ed.), Investigating the relationship between the financial and real economy, volume 22, pages 228-52, Bank for International Settlements.
    13. Zhiwei Zhang, 2002. "Corporate Bond Spreads and the Business Cycle," Staff Working Papers 02-15, Bank of Canada.
    14. Brown, Alessio J. G. & Žarnić, Žiga, 2003. "Explaining the increased German credit spread: The role of supply factors," Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers 412, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    15. Duca, John V., 2013. "Did the commercial paper funding facility prevent a Great Depression style money market meltdown?," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 747-758.
    16. Ang, Andrew & Piazzesi, Monika & Wei, Min, 2006. "What does the yield curve tell us about GDP growth?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 131(1-2), pages 359-403.
    17. Gertler, Mark & Lown, Cara S, 1999. "The Information in the High-Yield Bond Spread for the Business Cycle: Evidence and Some Implications," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 15(3), pages 132-150, Autumn.
    18. Deschamps, Bruno & Ioannidis, Christos & Ka, Kook, 2020. "High-frequency credit spread information and macroeconomic forecast revision," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 358-372.
    19. Holtemöller, Oliver, 2002. "Further VAR evidence for the effectiveness of a credit channel in Germany," SFB 373 Discussion Papers 2002,66, Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes.
    20. Ibarra-Ramírez Raúl, 2021. "The Yield Curve as a Predictor of Economic Activity in Mexico: The Role of the Term Premium," Working Papers 2021-07, Banco de México.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:78:y:2011:i:1:p:149-166. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.