Browsing by Author "Monteiro, Sofia"
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- Banks’ portfolio of government debt and sovereign riskPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Monteiro, SofiaWe analyze domestic, foreign, and central banks holdings of public debt for 31 countries for the period of 1989-2022, applying panel regressions and quantile analysis. We conclude that an increase in sovereign risk raises the share of domestic banks’ portfolio of public debt and reduces the percentage holdings in the case of central banks. Better sovereign ratings also increase (decrease) the share of commercial (central) banks’ holdings. Furthermore, the effects of an increment in the risk for domestic investors have increased since the 2010 financial crisis.
- Beyond borders : assessing the influence of geopolitical tensions on sovereign risk dynamicsPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Monteiro, SofiaWe assess the impact of geopolitical risk and world uncertainty on the sovereign debt risk of 26 European Economies during the period 1984-2022, through the implementation of OLS-Fixed Effects regressions and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM). We find that geopolitical tensions and global uncertainty in border countries contribute to the rise of European country’s sovereign risk as measured by 5- and 10-year Credit Default Swaps (CDS) and bond returns. Moreover, this interconnection is more pronounced during turbulent times such as the subprime crisis. Lastly, we found that geopolitical tensions in other country’ groups such as South America and Asia have a significant impact on the government risks of European countries.
- Beyond the centre : tracing decentralization’s Influence on time-varying fiscal sustainabilityPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Jalles, João Tovar; Monteiro, SofiaThis paper explores the nuanced relationship between fiscal decentralization and fiscal sustainability. Employing panel data analyses, it scrutinizes how decentralization influences fiscal discipline across different governmental levels. Results for 185 countries show that while tax decentralization often hampers the degree of fiscal responsiveness, potentially due to misaligned local and national objectives and loss of scale efficiency, spending decentralization can enhance fiscal outcomes by promoting efficient resource allocation. These findings are contextualized within a broad range of economic and political environments, highlighting that the impacts of decentralization are contingent upon local capacities and overarching governance frameworks. Hence, we contribute to the understanding of fiscal policies’ complexity in decentralized systems and offer significant policy insights for fiscal sustainability in varied administrative contexts
- Determinants of trade partner concentration : an analysis for European countriesPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Menescal, Lucas; Monteiro, SofiaAfter computing the Gini and Herfindahl-Hirschman indexes for exports and imports partner concentration for a set of 31 European countries between 1995 and 2023, we analyse the role of macroeconomic, institutional and uncertainty effects on the partner concentration (diversification) of exports and imports. From our analysis, we disentangle different effects, namely that while global GDP leads to an increase in concentration in both exports and imports, internal rates of return increase exports diversification, reducing it for imports. Additionally, European uncertainty reduces the concentration of the product countries’ origin/destination for imports and exports, respectively. Our results provide a comprehensive set of results that enable public authorities and firms to minimize their risks when trading with the exterior
- Echoes of instability : how geopolitical risks shape government debt holdingsPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Monteiro, SofiaRecognizing the profound influence of geopolitical risks and world uncertainty on financial investment behaviour, this study uses a comprehensive approach to assess the impact of rising geopolitical risk on sovereign debt holdings for a panel of 24 OECD economies from Q1 2004 to Q4 2023. To do so, we employ Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) fixed effects and Quantile Regression techniques within a panel data framework to capture the nuanced effects on both domestic and foreign entities. We find that escalating geopolitical tension decreases government debt holdings among domestic entities, notably domestic Banks, while foreign investors increase their ownership. This phenomenon is more pronounced for high proportion levels of debt in investor’s portfolios. Our results allow us to conclude that while domestic economic agents display clearer risk aversion, foreign economic agents have a more risk-taking behaviour in what concerns the financial investment on government debt.
- Energy price dynamics in the face of uncertainty shocks and the role of exchange rate regimes : a global crosscountry analysisPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Jalles, João; Monteiro, SofiaThis study examines the effects of geopolitical risk and global uncertainty on energy prices, conditioned by different exchange rate regimes, for 185 economies over the period 1980-2023. The central question is how uncertainty impacts energy prices and whether exchange rate flexibility mediates these effects. Using panel data techniques, including OLS and Panel VAR, we assess both demand and supply-side channels, exploring country-specific differences. Our key findings indicate that uncertainty shocks significantly raise energy prices, particularly in countries with flexible exchange rates, where currency depreciation amplifies global price fluctuations. Asymmetric results are found regarding emerging markets, with flexible exchange rates, which tend to have lower energy prices, while oil-exporting countries and OPEC members experience distinct pricing dynamics. These results underscore the importance of exchange rate policy choices in shaping energy market responses to global shocks. Policymakers may need to adopt complementary measures to manage the volatility arising from global uncertainty
- Inflation tales : the heterogenous price effects from current account dynamicsPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Jalles, João; Monteiro, SofiaThis paper examines the impact of current account balances on energy, headline, and core inflation across developed and developing economies from 1980 to 2023. Using Panel OLS fixed effects, Panel-IV 2SLS and Panel Vector Autoregressive models, we find that an improvement in the current account consistently leads to lower inflation, with heterogeneous effects across inflation components, even when controlling for monetary policy. Our analysis also explores regional differences and contrasts the periods before and after the 2008 subprime crisis, revealing that current account surpluses had a stronger deflationary effect in the more recent period. There is also a negative link between cyclical unemployment and inflation supporting the traditional Phillips curve perspective. These results suggest that policies aimed at improving current account balances, particularly in energy-importing countries, could help mitigate inflationary pressures.
- Private investment and public investment : total rates of return and global balances in the OECDPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Monteiro, SofiaWe assess the relevance of macro rates of return on time-varying fiscal and external sustainability. First, we compute the total public and private macroeconomic rates of return for 16 OECD countries from 1980 to 2022. We find that there is a positive impact of higher investment returns on stimulating higher aggregate demand, therefore resulting in higher tax revenues, which in turn lead to greater fiscal sustainability and more external sustainability by lowering the need for foreign capital and imports of goods and services. Accordingly, we demonstrate that macroeconomic rates of return of both public and private investment positively contribute to fiscal sustainability and that public sector investment also displays the same positive effect on external sustainability.
- Shaken balances: climate risks and the dynamics of fiscal and external sustainabilityPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Jalles, João; Monteiro, SofiaThis paper examines the impact of natural disasters on fiscal and external sustainability across 134 economies from 1980 to 2023. We adopt a two-step approach: first, we estimate country-specific, time-varying sustainability coefficients; second, we assess their determinants using Weighted Least Squares panel regressions with fixed effects. To complement the long-run analysis, we employ local projections to capture the short-term dynamics following disaster-related mortality, vulnerability, and resilience shocks. Results show that natural disasters weaken fiscal sustainability, particularly in emerging and vulnerable economies. Vulnerability exacerbates fiscal and external fragility, while resilience mitigates adverse effects on public accounts. Local projections reveal that fiscal sustainability deteriorates significantly in the medium term after disaster shocks, whereas external sustainability responses are more muted and heterogeneous. Together, these findings highlight the importance of combining long and short-run approaches to understand how climate shocks propagate through macroeconomic channels and to inform adaptive, risk-sensitive fiscal policy frameworks.
- Sovereign risk dynamics in the EU : the time varying relevance of fiscal and external (im)balancesPublication . Afonso, António; Alves, José; Monteiro, SofiaAcknowledging the potential detrimental impact that twin-deficits may have on sovereign risk, this study uses a two-step approach to assess the impact of fiscal and external sustainability on sovereign risk dynamics for a panel of 27 European Economies between 2001Q4 and 2022Q3. To do so, we first estimate a country-specific time-varying measure of fiscal sustainability, through the cointegration between government revenues and expenditures, and of external sustainability, derived from the exports-imports cointegration. We then resort to those time-varying coefficients to assess their impact on sovereign risk, proxied by 10-year CDS and CDS spreads (against the US) making use of Weighted Least Squares (WLS) analysis. Noticeably, we show that an improvement of both fiscal and external sustainability lead to a reduction in sovereign risk. This phenomenon becomes notably pronounced, particularly when examining countries experiencing an upward trajectory in their public debt levels.