Economic analysis and research

The rise in non-tariff protectionist measures has been associated to the weakness in global trade over the last few years. We investigate the effect of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) on export growth over the period 2009-2013 using administrative data at the firm-product-destination level in Spain. According to our findings, non-tariff protectionist measures significantly reduce export growth at the product-destination level. Moreover, NTBs also hinder export growth at the firm level and negatively affect other firm outcomes such as productivity growth. In contrast, the impact of liberalizing non-tariff measures is not statistically significant.

Using Dutch, Spanish, and U.S. confidential supervisory data this study finds marked heterogeneity in the transmission of monetary policy across banks, insurance companies, and pension funds, across the three banking systems, and across banks within each banking system. While insurance companies and pension funds do not transmit home-country monetary policy internationally, banks do, with the direction and strength of the transmission determined by their business models and balance sheet characteristics. The paper is part of the latest project of the International Banking Research Network.

We analyse how the contract structure between gas stations and the wholesale operator affects price strategies. Using daily data on prices of different gas stations in Spain, and exploiting the introduction of a regional excise duty in gas stations, the paper finds that independent dealers charge lower margins and react more to competition than supplier operated and branded dealers. We use this result to interpret the inexistent reduction in markups that followed an increase in independent stations due to a change in the Spanish regulation that took place in 2013.

We estimate inflation expectations for several Latin American countries using an affine model that takes as factors the observed inflation and the parameters generated from zero-coupon yield curves of nominal bonds. By implementing this approach, we avoid the use of inflation-linked securities, which are scarce and less liquid in many of these markets, and obtain market measures of inflation expectations free of any risk premium, eliminating potential biases included in other measures such as breakeven rates. We find that inflation expectations in the long-run are fairly anchored in Chile and Mexico, while those in Brazil and Colombia are more volatile and less anchored. We also find that expected inflation increases at longer horizons in Brazil and Chile, while it is decreasing in Colombia and Mexico.

We document a rise and fall of the natural interest rate (r*) for several advanced economies, which starts increasing in the 1960’s and peaks around the end of the 1980’s. We reach this conclusion after showing that the Laubach and Williams (2003) model cannot estimate r* accurately when either the IS curve or the Phillips curve is flat. In those empirically relevant situations, a local level specification for the observed interest rate can precisely estimate r*. An estimated Panel ECM suggests that the temporary demographic effect of the young baby-boomers mostly accounts for the rise and fall.

The new Survey of Financial Competences was fielded between 2016 Q4 and 2017 Q2, measuring the knowledge and understanding of financial concepts by the Spanish adult population, as well as its holding, acquisition and use of various savings, debt and insurance vehicles. This article provides an overview of the methods and main results of the survey