The global financial cycle: implications for the global economy and the euro area

As financial markets became progressively more integrated internationally over the past decades, economists wondered to what extent policymakers can isolate domestic financial conditions from external factors. This article reviews the terms of this debate and provides fresh evidence on the co-movement in capital flows and stock prices across a panel of 50 advanced and emerging economies. In particular, the article focuses on the relative importance of global risk and US monetary policy for the global financial cycle and touches upon the implications for the exchange rate regime. Global risk aversion emerges as a significant driver of capital flows and stock returns and its impact is amplified by capital account openness, but not necessarily by the exchange rate regime, which matters only for asset prices, not for capital flows. The quantitative relevance of US monetary policy and the US dollar exchange rate seems to be episodic. In particular, the correlation between US interest rates and capital flows throughout the crisis is positive, rather than negative as the theory would predict, indicating the need for further empirical analysis of the role of US monetary policy as the driver of the global financial cycle. The article also finds that financial market tensions have been typically synchronised between the euro area and the United States but that financial conditions in the two areas have often decoupled. Overall, this confirms that the effectiveness of the ECB’s monetary policy has not been impaired by the global financial cycle. JEL Classification: E42, E52, F31, F36, F41