The paper explores the lending behaviour of financial intermediaries over the business cycle in the light of new theories emphasising agency costs. During a “credit crunch” loans from financial intermediaries are unobtainable at any price, so that credit may have a “causal” role in...

This paper examines the causes of asset price inflation and deflation in the Australian economy, their links with borrowing and recent problems that have arisen for banks’ balance sheets. Implications for the business cycle and monetary policy are drawn out in some detail. The difficulties...

This paper reports estimation and testing of general lag formulations of demand for M1, M3 and broad money (BM) using new data for the own rates of return on money. Own rate effects have become more important in the recently-deregulated financial environment. Own interest rates are found to be...

A presumption in much of the earlier literature on real exchange rates suggests their behaviour is decoupled from fundamentals. This paper develops a theoretical model which allows for increased globalisation and integration of international financial markets in a world where goods markets are...

The hypothesis that deviations from PPP follow a random process is tested against two alternatives that the real exchange rate reverts to a constant equilibrium level (long-run PPP); and that it reverts to an equilibrium level which is itself a function of shifts in commodity prices (long-run...

The paper addresses the question of whether financial liberalisation and innovation have significantly altered consumption behaviour by reducing liquidity constraints as capital markets have become more flexible. A consumption model in which the permanent income hypothesis and extreme Keynesian...

The 1980s witnessed large increases in corporate debt and sustained asset price inflation. More recently, asset prices, particularly commercial property prices, have fallen significantly. The effect of these changes on balance sheets, and their implications for the business cycle, have generated...

This paper examines the relationship between the inventory cycle and the business cycle. It uses both macro-economic data and data from surveys of individual firms’ actual and expected inventory accumulation. It is argued that over the past decade and a half, the amplitude of the inventory...

This paper examines the behaviour of the real Australian dollar exchange rates against the US dollar and Japanese yen over the last two decades. It is argued that country differences in relative productivity growth in the traded goods sectors can help explain movements in the real rates. Using...

Widespread increases in corporate leverage occurred over the 1980s in Australia. There was also considerable variation in leverage across firms. This paper uses a sample of 209 firms, observed annually between 1973 and 1991, to explore both cross-sectional and time variation in financial...