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This article examines interlinkages between four major exchange rates, namely, USD–INR, EUR–INR, GBP–INR and JPY–INR in terms of returns and volatility spillovers using a vector autoregressive-multivariate GARCH–BEKK framework. In addition, we analyse the impact of RBI intervention on the returns, volatility and covariance of these exchange rates. The study finds significant bidirectional causality-in-mean and causality-in-variance between all four exchange rates. The estimation results suggest that RBI intervention in the form of net purchase of dollars leads to depreciation of INR vis-à-vis USD, EUR, GBP and JPY. Furthermore, we find that RBI intervention not only significantly affects the volatility of INR vis-à-vis USD, EUR and GBP but also explains significant amount of covariance between USD–INR and the other three exchange rates. JEL Classification: C32, G15, E58, F31

This study examines how various bank groups operating in India have fared macro stress events and conduct macro stress testing (MST) to trace the impact of certain macroeconomic stress scenarios on the credit quality of five Indian bank groups, that is, the State Bank of India (SBI) and its associates (SBGs), nationalised banks (NBs), old private sector banks (OPBs), new private sector banks (NPBs) and foreign banks (FBs), using panel data from 1997 to 2014. Credit quality is modelled as a function of both macroeconomic variables (output growth, interest rate, inflation rate and exchange rate) and idiosyncratic variables (profitability and size indicator of bank business activity). The model is estimated by employing a panel cointegration approach, and the impact of adverse scenarios on the estimated credit quality is computed. Empirical findings show that credit quality is pro-cyclical in nature and rises in the event of a slowdown in the economy. In general, the credit quality of Indian bank groups is found to be inversely and significantly related to the economy’s growth rate, inflation rate, exchange rate and profits of banks and positively and significantly related to the interest rate. Shock analysis also reveals that a downturn in the economy through certain adverse scenarios has a significant adverse impact on the credit quality. The shocks are quickly propagated across banks with substantial heterogeneities present in different bank groups. Thus, macroeconomic policy measures promoting growth with price stability are expected to impact credit quality positively. Further, measures at the bank level can improve credit quality by enhancing their profitability. JEL Classifications: C32, C58, E170, G21

This article examines the determinants of government yields in India using weekly data from April 2001 through June 2012. The analysis covers treasury bills with residual maturity of 15–91 days and government securities of residual maturity 1, 5 and 10 years. The empirical estimates show that a long-run relationship exists between each of these interest rates and the policy rate, rate of growth of money supply, inflation, interest rate spread, foreign interest rate and forward premium. At the same time, the empirical results show that the relative importance of the determinants varies across the maturity spectrum. The normalised generalised variance decompositions suggest that the policy rate and the rate of growth of high powered money are more important in explaining the proportion of variation in shorter-term interest rates than the longer-term rates. The weight of the forward premium also diminishes as we move towards higher maturity interest rates. The inflation rate becomes relatively less important in explaining variations in the yields as the maturity of the security increases. The yield spread, on the other hand, is more important in explaining the longer-term rates. The results also show that a large proportion of the variation in the rates on the 5-year and 10-year government securities is attributed to the interest rate itself, suggesting that the unexplained variation may be a result of cyclical factors that are relatively more important for longer-term rates but are not captured by the yield spread and are omitted from the estimations in this article due to the high frequency of data employed here. JEL Classification: C5, E43

This paper examines various measures of synchronisation of recessions, including clustering of the onset of recession across economies, proportion of economies in expansion and the diffusion index of international coincident indexes, and shows that the recent global recession is possibly the most concerted in the post-world-war period. Factors that contributed to the synchronisation and severity of the recession, such as trade and financial linkages and timing of policy actions, are analysed.

This paper develops univariate (ARIMA and ARCH/GARCH) and multivariate models (VAR, VECM and Bayesian VAR) to forecast short- and long-term rates, viz., call money rate, 15–91 days Treasury Bill rates and interest rates on Government securities with (residual) maturities of one year, five years and 10 years. Multivariate models consider factors such as liquidity, repo rate, yield spread, inflation rate, foreign interest rates and forward premium. The paper finds that multivariate models generally outperform univariate ones over longer forecast horizons. Overall, the paper concludes that the forecasting performance of Bayesian VAR models is satisfactory for most interest rates and their superiority in performance is marked at longer forecast horizons.

This article describes aforward-looking modelfor long-term interest rates. It shows that movements in expected deficits relative to movements in actual deficits are a statistically significant determtnant of changes in long-term interest rates. Other determinants include changes in actual government purchases, movements in the expected unemployment rate relative to changes in the actual unemployment rate, the expected rate of growth in the money supply, and inflation uncertainty.