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This paper explores the impact of financial stress (FS) on consumer confidence (CC) using survey data.

We use novel household-level survey data on CC by the Reserve Bank of India. FS data come from the financial stress index (FSI) released by the Tracking Asian Integration of Asian Development Bank. The sample period is 2015–2023. We align the lagged monthly values of FSI with the household-level data to uncover the impact of FS on household confidence in the economy.

Rising FS leads to increased pessimism among households regarding the state of the economy. Educated and well-off households are more sensitive to FS. Moreover, FS significantly impacts confidence regarding households’ own consumption basket and economic scenarios. A disaggregated analysis reveals that FS related to foreign exchange and debt spread causes greater pessimism among households than in the equity market and banking sector. Additionally, the impacts of FS are asymmetric, with above-average FS lowering household attitudes, while below-average FS increases optimism about the economy’s outlook.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine the impact of FS on household CC using household-level data for an emerging economy such as India. Micro-level data allow us to explore the impact of FS on household perceptions of current economic situations and future outlooks. We also uncover the impact of FS on households’ confidence in their own economic outcomes.

This study aims to analyze the imbalances in the public finance structure of Pakistan’s economy and highlight the need for comprehensive reforms. Specifically, it aims to contribute to the empirical literature by analyzing the relationship between fiscal vulnerability, financial stress and macroeconomic policies in Pakistan’s economy between 1971 and 2020.

The study develops an index of fiscal vulnerability, an index of financial stress and an index of macroeconomic policies. The fiscal vulnerability index is based on the patterns of fiscal indicators resulting from past trends of the selected variables in Pakistan’s economy. The financial stress in Pakistan is caused from the financial disorders that are acknowledged in the composite index, which is based on variables with the potential to indicate periods of stress stemming from the foreign exchange market, the securities market and the monetary policy components. The macroeconomic policies index is developed to analyze the mechanism through which fiscal vulnerability and financial stress have influenced macroeconomic policies in Pakistan. The causal association between fiscal vulnerability, financial stress and macroeconomic policies is analyzed using the auto-regressive distributive lags approach.

There exists a long-run relationship between the three indices, and a bi-directional causality between fiscal vulnerability and macroeconomic policies.

This study contributes to the development of a fiscal monitoring mechanism, which has the basic purpose of analyzing the refinancing risk of public liabilities. Moreover, it focuses on fiscal vulnerability from a macroeconomic perspective. The study tries to develop a framework to assess fiscal vulnerability in light of “The Risk Octagon” theory, which focuses on three risk components: fiscal variables, macroeconomic-disruption-associated shocks and non-fiscal country-specific variables. The initial contribution of this work to the literature is to develop a framework (a fiscal vulnerability index, financial stress index and macroeconomic policies index) for effective and result-oriented macro-fiscal surveillance. Moreover, empirical literature emphasized and advised developing countries to develop their own capacity mechanisms to assess their fiscal vulnerability in light of the IMF guidelines regarding vulnerability assessments. This study thus attempts to fulfill the said gap identified in literature.

Needs change as people get older. Procuring resources to satisfy them can generate anguish and insecurities in consumers due to their financial situation. This study aims to analyze the relationship between age and financial stress among Mexican adults and estimate the age of their maximum financial stress.

This study is based on constructing a financial stress indicator using the confirmatory factor analysis and linear regression models with a quadratic term, employing data from the National Survey on Financial Inclusion 2021.

Results show that the relationship between age and financial stress follows a quadratic pattern, with a maximum level at age 56, which varies according to sex, marital status, number of dependents, education and regions. These findings interest financial product designers and policy developers who aim to improve consumers' well-being.

Longitudinal studies and indicators, such as financial fragility, are needed to facilitate refining models over time.

There is no evidence of studies that have addressed the age of maximum financial stress in Latin America. Doing so is relevant because identifying the stages in life when adults are most vulnerable to financial stress helps assess its causes more precisely, thus mitigating its adverse effects.

Climate change not only causes serious economic losses but also influences financial stability. The related research is still at the initial stage. This paper aims to examine and explore the impact of climate change on financial stability in China.

This paper first uses vector autoregression model to study the impact of climate change to financial stability and applies NARDL model to assess the nonlinear asymmetric effect of climate change on China’s financial stability using monthly data from 2002 to 2018.

The results show that both positive and negative climate shocks do harm to financial stability. In the short term, the effect of positive climate shocks on financial stability is greater than the negative climate shocks in the current period, but less in the lag period. In the long term, negative climate shocks bring larger adjustments to financial stability relative to positive climate shocks. Moreover, compared with the short-term effect, climate change is more destructive to financial stability in the long run.

The paper provides a quantitative reference for assessing the nexus between climate change and financial stability from a nonlinear and asymmetric perspective, which is beneficial for understanding climate-related financial risks.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of foreign capital shifts on economic activities and asset prices in South Korea.

The authors in this paper apply the Bayesian threshold vector autoregressive (TVAR) model to estimate the regimes of large and low inflows of foreign capital. Then, structural impulse-response analysis is used to check whether the responses of the variables differ across the estimated regimes. The model is estimated using quarterly data of foreign capital inflows, gross domestic product (GDP), consumer price index, credit to the private non-financial sector, real effective exchange rate (REER), stock returns and house prices.

The main findings suggest that large inflows of gross foreign capital, foreign direct investments (FDI) and foreign portfolio investments (FPI) are ineffective to boost economic growth, but large inflows of other foreign investments (OFIs) significantly contribute to GDP. The decreases in the foreign capital inflows are associated with larger depreciation of REER. The large inflows of gross foreign capital, FDI and OFIs are associated with further expansion of credit supply to private non-financial sectors.

The policy implications of foreign capital inflows are of particular importance to all the emerging markets alike. However, the empirical analysis is limited to the case of South Korea due to various reasons. The experience with international capital inflows among emerging markets is heterogeneous. Therefore, it would be better to take each case of emerging market individually. In addition, TVAR analysis requires a long data sample, which unfortunately is not available for most of the emerging markets.

The foreign capital inflows are shown to be procyclical and notoriously volatile in many studies. Nevertheless, this topic has commonly been studied using linear VAR models, which do not properly deal with the cyclical characteristics of foreign capital inflows. This study attempts to resolve these methodological limitations by examining a non-linear VAR model that is capable of capturing the structural breaks associated with the cyclical behaviors of foreign capital inflows.

This paper aims to assess the fiscal sustainability in Egypt during the period 1990–2018 using deficit accounts (DA) approach. It also tries to investigate the possibility of applying generational accounts (GA) in Egypt as a new approach to assess fiscal sustainability.

This paper tries to assess fiscal sustainability in Egypt during 1990–2018 using DA and GA approaches. DA approach includes primary deficit indicator, tax gap indicator, augmented Dickey-Fuller stationarity test for debt/GDP ratio and Johansen co-integration test between government revenues and expenditures. However, concerning the possibility of applying GA in Egypt, field study form was designed including specific questions to academic and executive economic experts to investigate if it is possible to apply GA in Egypt.

The empirical findings of the field study indicate that Egypt witnessed fiscal sustainability during the period 1990–2018 using DA. On the other hand, there are various obstacles, including administrative, technical, legal and political obstacles which hinder Egypt from applying GA to assess fiscal sustainability.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this paper assesses fiscal sustainability in Egypt using DA for a longer and updated time series within 1990–2018. In addition, it is the first paper to examine the possibility of assessing fiscal sustainability using GA approach in Egypt.

The reduction of costs has a more and more relevant role in the healthcare context, therefore, a large effort is done by health providers to this aim, for example, by reducing the length of hospital stay (LOS) of patients undergoing surgery. Fast track surgery fits perfectly this issue and was applied to patients undergoing knee replacement surgery due to Osteoarthritis, one of the most common diseases of aged population. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Lean six sigma was applied to analyze the implementation of fast track surgery through the define, measure, analyze, improve, control roadmap, used as a typical problem-solving approach. It is characterized by five operational phases, which make possible the achievement of fixed goals through a rigorous process of defining, measuring, analyzing, improving and controlling business problems.

The corrective action, consisting in the application of fast track surgery, improved both effectiveness and efficiency of the process of care. The average length of hospital stay (LOS) was reduced from 8.34 to 6.68 days (–19.9 percent) and its standard deviation from 2.41 to 1.99 days (–17.1 percent). The statistical significance of this decrease was verified by means of proper tests. Moreover, some variables influencing the LOS were identified.

The follow up and the satisfaction of patients were not analyzed and could be a future development of this study.

Patients will experience a faster recovery while the hospital will benefit from a rise of available beds. The effect is a general improvement of hospital management.

The introduction of fast track surgery for patients undergoing knee replacement surgery made significantly reduce LOS and, consequently, costs’ with a money saving of more than 50,000 euro per year.