No abstract

The previous financial crisis has revealed the importance of risk in the financial and business cycle within the economy. This paper examines relationship among three cycles in the economy, namely (i) business cycle macro risk, (ii) credit cycle and (iii) risk cycle, and their impacts toward individual bank performance. We examine the responses of individual bank credit cycle and risk cycle toward a shock in business cycle macro risk and its consequence to the bank performance. We use Indonesian data for period of 2005q1 to 2014q4. We use unbalanced panel data of individual banks’ balance sheet with Panel Vector Autoregressive approach based on GMM style estimation by implementing PVAR package developed by Abrigo and Love (2015). The result shows dynamic relationship between business cycle macro risk and financial risk cycles. The study also observes prominent role of risk cycles in driving bank performance. We also show the existence of financial accelerator phenomenon in Indonesian banking system, in which financial cycles precede the business cycle macro risk.

Indonesia has managed the complex challenges of the global economy well. The country's capital outflows were smaller in 2018 than during the Taper Tantrum in 2013; the rupiah had regained most of its lost ground by January 2019; the Indonesian stock market has outperformed its peers; growth is forecast to remain stable; inflation is low; unemployment remains below its five-year average; consumer and business confidence are robust; and the government budget has improved through a smaller deficit and cheaper borrowing costs. But significant risks remain. This paper assesses these risks and evaluates the adequacy of Indonesia's crisis management framework. It finds that the framework has serious deficiencies that could see liquidity challenges become systemic solvency crises. The framework effectively removes Bank Indonesia as the lender of last resort, risks politicising the process of crisis response, and could mean slower, less effective responses to crises. This paper explores how the framework could be improved and what reforms could be undertaken to deepen Indonesia's financial system, strengthen financial resilience, and boost the long-term growth outlook.

In the empirical literature, large and abrupt declines in capital inflows, or sudden stops, typically hit asset markets and generate output losses in the receiving countries. The significant decrease in capital flows to emerging markets in 2018 is a unique opportunity to test this premise. Using Indonesian data, we found that the sharp decline in capital inflows for over two consecutive quarters in 2018 had an adverse impact on the currency, equities, and bond markets, but no discernible output loss was recorded. Real GDP growth remained resilient throughout 2018 and held broadly steady at around 5 percent in the first quarter of 2019. Furthermore, asset markets rebounded quickly, regaining most of the losses incurred by March 2019. We attribute this resilience to Indonesia’s strong macroeconomic fundamentals and responsive fiscal and monetary policies. We argue that to sustain this resilience in the years to come, complementary structural reforms to boost export-oriented FDI would be needed. The 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic has put the emerging economies to the test again, with a possibly more significant impact. We will revisit our analysis in the future in the aftermath of the pandemic.