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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 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 three measures of 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., 2017. "Credit prices vs. credit quantities as predictors of economic activity in Europe: which tell a better story?," Bank of Estonia Working Papers wp2017-6, Bank of Estonia, revised 11 Sep 2017.
    • Handle: RePEc:eea:boewps:wp2017-6
    DOI: 10.23656/25045520/62017/0144
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    2. 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.
    3. Claudio Borio & Mathias Drehmann & Dora Xia, 2018. "The financial cycle and recession risk," BIS Quarterly Review, Bank for International Settlements, December.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    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

    credit spreads; finance mix; bank vs open market debt; economic activity; financial crises;
    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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