AbstractReplicating the degree of cross-country comovements of macroeconomic aggregates, dynamics of prices and quantities of international trade, and the behavior of consumption and labor remains an important challenge in international business cycle literature. This paper incorporates preference shocks into a standard two-country model in which there exist international frictions, such as costs of transportation and restrictions to international asset trade. Country-specific preference shocks that generate fluctuations in each country's consumption and labor solve the puzzles, except for the discrepancy between theory and data regarding international trade variables. The presence or absence of international frictions plays a limited role in solving the puzzles.

This paper studies the Japanese credit scoring market using data on 2,000 small and medium-sized enterprises and a small business credit scoring (SBCS) model widely used in the market. After constructing a model for determining a bank's profit maximization, some simulation exercises are conducted, and pitfalls of lending based on SBCS are indicated. The simulation results suggest that the reason why SBCS loan losses occur would be the combination of adverse selection and window-dressing problems. In addition, omitted variable bias and transparency of financial statements are important.

We examine the properties of house price fluctuations across eighteen advanced economies over the past forty years. We ask two specific questions: First, how synchronized are housing cycles across these countries? Second, what are the main shocks driving movements in global house prices? To address these questions, we first estimate the global components in house prices and various macroeconomic and financial variables. We then evaluate the roles played by a variety of global shocks, including shocks to interest rates, monetary policy, productivity, credit, and uncertainty, in explaining house price fluctuations using a wide range of FAVAR models. We find that house prices are synchronized across countries, and the degree of synchronization has increased over time. Global interest rate shocks tend to have a significant negative effect on global house prices whereas global monetary policy shocks per se do not appear to have a sizeable impact. Interestingly, uncertainty shocks seem to be important in explaining fluctuations in global house prices.

The malfunction of the monetary transmission mechanism in Japan has been cited as one of the main reasons why the quantitative easing of monetary policy undertaken by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has been insufficient in achieving the objective of an early escape from deflation and the economic slump. The BOJ has quantitatively eased monetary policy, promising to provide as much money as the market needs, and as a result, short term interest rates have fallen to very low levels. However, the growth rate of bank lending particularly to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has been drawing a secular downtrend for years (Chart 1), thus leading to considerable debate over the effectiveness of the monetary policy. The factors underlying the malfunction of the monetary transmission channel lurk both in the financial and non- financial sectors. Of all the underlying factors, there is broad consensus that the "health" of the Japanese financial sector should be considered as the problem of most concern. The financial sector has played a central role in providing external finance to the non- financial sectors through financial intermediation, accumulating credit risks within the financial sector itself. Associated with the non-performing loan problem, the excess accumulation of credit risks in the banking sector lowers the financial intermediation ability. Thus, it impairs the smooth propagation of monetary policy through the credit channel. On the side of non- financial enterprises, SMEs as a driving force in the Japanese economy, in particular, have been struggling with their fundraising. Limited availability of reliable information on SMEs, in other words, the asymmetric information problem of SMEs is pivotal as is often mentioned. Furthermore, it is important to bear in mind that the shortage of collateral is an obstacle to credit availability for SMEs. SMEs with lower credit status seek alternative sources of funding that strengthen the effects of monetary easing. The BOJ announced its intention to purchase asset backed securities (ABS) whose underlying assets are closely related to SME economic activities. One important motivation for this policy arises from the idea that utilizing modern financial tools, i.e., securitization, can be a possible way to solve the overconcentration or excess accumulation of credit risks in the banking sector, albeit it would be a rare move for central banks to buy private debt. The outright purchase is expected to restore the monetary transmission mechanism by helping diversify credit risks in the financial sector among other economic agents including the BOJ. The other motivation of the new policy is to increase fundraising options for SMEs. For example, the BOJ will purchase ABS backed by accounts receivable. The use of accounts receivable as collateral is not a popular fundraising method for SMEs in Japan. SMEs can take advantage of the BOJ's policy to utilize quality assets which have not been effectively used as collateral in the past. SME external financial sources can be multi-tracked, thereby reducing their heavy reliance upon traditional financial intermediation. Thus, through the implementation of "traditional" monetary policy tools to purchase "untraditional" financial assets, the policy is expected to strengthen the monetary transmission mechanism. The spirit of this policy is to effectively improve SME access to financing through accelerating the development of ABS markets, without causing distortions in the ABS markets. The scheme is carefully designed to avoid any moral hazards and to contribute to the removal of obstacles to SME financing through enhancing financial disintermediation.

This paper analyzes the impact of global integration on the dynamics of economic growth and business cycles in the emerging economies of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Asia. In particular, the paper examines the evolution of structural characteristics, growth dynamics, and business cycle properties of these countries during the 1960-2000 period. Although both groups of countries became more open and were able to diversify their industrial structures and export bases over time, the MENA countries lagged behind the Asian economies in both trade integration and the extent of diversification of exports during the globalization period (1986-2000). Although economic growth slowed in both groups during the period of globalization, the extent of the slowdown was much sharper in the MENA countries. Moreover, business cycle fluctuations in the MENA countries were much more volatile than in the Asian economies. In addition, although both groups of countries witnessed a moderation in the amplitude of macroeconomic fluctuations during the globalization period, the decline in the volatility of cyclical fluctuations in the MENA countries was relatively small, partially because of the inability of these countries to utilize the benefits of global integration.