by Joseph Joyce

Financial Globalization and Inequality

The global financial crisis slowed the pace of financial globalization, while the impact of the pandemic on its future course is unclear. But enough time has elapsed to assess the record of integrated financial markets that greatly expanded in the 1990s and early 2000s. The evidence on one issue—financial openness and inequality—is clear: financial globalization has increased inequality.

Enrico D’Elia of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and Roberta De Santiss, also of ISTAT, analyzed this issue in their 2019 working paper, “Growth Divergence and Income Inequality in OECD Countries: The Role of Trade and Financial Openness.” They used an error-correction model to differentiate between short- and long-run effects on the Gini index, and divided the OECD countries into low-, middle- and high income over the period of 1995-2016. Increases in financial integration, as measured by foreign assts and liabilities scaled by GDP, increased income disparities in both the short- and long-run in the total sample. In the long-run there is a negative effect on the Gini index within the low-income countries, but there is a much larger positive impact within the high-income group. They attribute this finding to the advantage that the financial sector derives from financial innovation in those countries. In their results relating to growth, they reported that financial openness had a positive impact on the economic growth of the middle-income group alone, and it only occurred in the short-run.

 by New Deal democrat

Weekly Indicators for March 2 – 6 at Seeking Alpha

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.

Two important data considerations this week: (1) for the first time, some YoY comparisons – e.g., restaurant reservations – are compared with data after the onset of the pandemic. The distortions will intensify next week and last at least through the end of April; and (2) long-term interest rates, in particular for Treasury bonds, have considerably affected the long leading forecast.

As usual, clicking over and reading brings you up to the virtual moment, and rewards me just a little bit for the effort I put in to generating the forecasts and nowcast.

by New Deal democrat

Weekly Indicators for February 22 – 26 at Seeking Alpha

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.

After months of virtually no changes in any of the time frames, suddenly there is activity in all of them. Some of it:

– is short term noise due to the disaster in Texas, some

– is related to the pace and effects of vaccination availability against COVID-19, and

– some of it is the resulting change in long term interest rates.

As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment about the economy, and will bring me a penny or so for my troubles.