Economic Fluctuation, Local Government Bond Risk and Risk-Taking of City Commercial Banks

Countercyclical fiscal regulation can mitigate economic risk, but this is bound to increase the scale of local government debt during an economic downturn, and then spread risk to the banking sector, forming potential financial instability factors. We extracted the three most important variables in this process: economic fluctuation, local debt risk and bank risk-taking to build an econometric model and found that: (1) both economic fluctuations and local government bond risks have a significant impact on bank risk-taking, which is negatively correlated with local economic growth, while the increase of local government bond risks tends to increase bank risk-taking in the long run; (2) the impact of local government debt risk significantly increases the loans of city commercial banks flowing into the construction industry. Therefore, the impact of local government bond risk on city commercial banks is concentrated in the impact on their construction loans. This study has an important reference value for timely and moderate countercyclical regulation, preventing local debt risk from spreading to banks, constructing a sustainable local government−bank ecology, and promoting sustainable economic development.

Demand or supply shock during the COVID-19 crisis: empirical evidence from public firms in Indonesia

Purpose In examining an economic fluctuation, researchers often refer to the theories of impaired access to capital which mostly explain, from the perspective of bank lending supplies, a shock in firm’s access to investment would decrease its capital expenditures and net debt issuance during crisis period. However, some studies show that this is not always the case. A demand shock theory can explain the decrease in firm’s capital expenditures and net debt issuance during crisis period, but there should be no causal link between the two. This is because firms naturally do not invest during crisis period because of a decrease in investment wealth during crisis period. This paper aims to examine these theories with respect to the Covid-19 crisis in Indonesia. Design/methodology/approach The change in firms’ capital expenditure and net debt issuance is analyzed using a non-parametric difference-in-difference and matching estimator across four firm-dimensions to see whether the implications of the supply shock theory apply to the current crisis or if that firms naturally do not invest during the crisis. In addition, this paper provides the result of panel regression to confirm the causal link between firms’ investment funds and capital expenditure, with an addition of consumer confidence index to accommodate the implications of the demand shock theory. Findings The results of this paper show that the implications of the supply shock theory cannot explain the economic fluctuation during the Covid-19 crisis. Rather, the results suggest that firms naturally do not want to invest during the crisis and that the demand shock can better explain the economic fluctuation during the Covid-19 crisis. This is confirmed by the result of panel regression which shows that only consumer confidence index has a significant positive relationship with firms’ capital expenditure. Originality/value This is the first study to examine the theory of impaired access to capital with respect to the Covid-19 crisis in Indonesia.

A Multifractal Cross-Correlation Analysis of Economic Policy Uncertainty: Evidence from China and US

In this study, we utilized the prevailing economic policy uncertainty index (EPU) as the proxy of state economic fluctuation and investigated Sino–US economic fluctuation long horizon cross-correlation with a multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis (MF-DCCA). With the MF-DCCA approach, we found a reliable long-range cross-correlation between China and US EPU changes. In addition, we discovered that a power law cross-correlation existed for the variation of most scaling orders. However, no persistence of cross-correlations was detected within the Sino–US EPU change series. Additionally, we implemented Rényi exponent and spectrum singularity checks. Both the examination results proved series multifractality with the presented arch-shaped curves. We further calculated the Hölder exponent bounds within each series and found that the China EPU changes had maximal multifractality with the largest exponent difference.