Working Papers

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2024

December 23, 2024

Chinese Housing Market Sentiment Index: A Generative AI Approach and An Application to Monetary Policy Transmission

Description: We construct a daily Chinese Housing Market Sentiment Index by applying GPT-4o to Chinese news articles. Our method outperforms traditional models in several validation tests, including a test based on a suite of machine learning models. Applying this index to household-level data, we find that after monetary easing, an important group of homebuyers (who have a college degree and are aged between 30 and 50) in cities with more optimistic housing sentiment have lower responses in non-housing consumption, whereas for homebuyers in other age-education groups, such a pattern does not exist. This suggests that current monetary easing might be more effective in boosting non-housing consumption than in the past for China due to weaker crowding-out effects from pessimistic housing sentiment. The paper also highlights the need for complementary structural reforms to enhance monetary policy transmission in China, a lesson relevant for other similar countries. Methodologically, it offers a tool for monitoring housing sentiment and lays out some principles for applying generative AI models, adaptable to other studies globally.

December 23, 2024

Trade Policy and Jobs in Vietnam: The Unintended Consequences of US-China Trade Tensions

Description: We use the US-China tariffs of 2018-19 as an exogenous shock to export opportunities in Vietnam to identify how trade policy affects job creation. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we first show that US tariffs on China increased the range of products exported by Vietnam to the US in the two years after the hikes. We then show using firm level data that this expansion in export opportunities led to job creation. Around 5% extra jobs were created in firms hit with average tariffs above 15%. Results point towards this effect being driven mostly by female employment.

December 23, 2024

Industrial Policy and State Ownership: How Do Commercial Banks Allocate Credit in China?

Description: Using a novel data set with bank-sector-level annual loan data from 137 commercial banks in China from 2004 to 2021 and a quantified industrial policy data set based on text analysis, this paper explores the effects of industrial policy on bank credit provision. While the paper finds no conclusive evidence that commercial banks allocate, on average, more credit to sectors promoted by the central government, it does find heterogenous sensitivities of banks to industrial policy. Rural commercial banks tend to respond most positively to industrial policy compared to other commercial banks. Banks that have lower asset quality, are smaller, have a higher liquidity ratio, and are not listed are more responsive to industrial policy. In addition, sectors dominated by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) benefit more when there is an industrial policy announcement, while policies in SOE-dominated sectors will crowd out credit to other sectors, because SOEs are less risky, both economically and politically. Therefore, banks face a trade-off between political pressure and profitability in response to industrial policy, leading to distortions of financial resource allocation in favor of SOEs.

December 20, 2024

On Cross-Border Crypto Flows: Measurement Drivers and Policy Implications

Description: Cross-border crypto flows (CBCFs) are not systematically measured and are poorly understood. After defining CBCFs and the channels through which they materialize, we review the various approaches to measure them through two case studies. We also quantify the dynamics and drivers of CBCFs through a push/pull factor SVAR model. We find an increasingly large volume of CBCFs, although considerable heterogeneity remains across estimates. Furthermore, CBCFs are more sensitive to push factors than regular capital flows. Our findings call for accurate and comprehensive measurement and monitoring of CBCFs and the need to rethink capital account restrictions in a more digitalized world.

December 20, 2024

Monetary Policy and Inflation Scares

Description: A salient feature of the post-COVID inflation surge is that economic activity has remained resilient despite unfavorable supply-side developments. We develop a macroeconomic model with nonlinear price and wage Phillips curves, endogenous intrinsic indexation and an unobserved components representation of a cost-push shock that is consistent with these observations. In our model, a persistent large adverse supply shock can lead to a persistent inflation surge while output expands if the central bank follows an inflation forecast-based policy rule and thus abstains from hiking policy rates for some time as it (erroneously) expects inflationary pressures to dissipate quickly. A standard linearized formulation of our model cannot account for these observations under identical assumptions. Our nonlinear framework implies that the standard prescription of "looking through" supply shocks is a good policy for small shocks when inflation is near the central bank's target, but that such a policy may be quite risky when economic activity is strong and large shocks drive inflation well above target. Moreover, our model implies that the economic costs of "going the last mile" – i.e. a tight stance aimed at returning inflation quickly to target – can be substantial.

December 20, 2024

Industrialization and the Big Push: Theory and Evidence from South Korea

Description: We study how one-time subsidies for adoption of modern technology drove Korea's industrialization in the 1970s. Leveraging unique historical data, we provide causal evidence consistent with coordination failures: adoption improved adopters' performance and generated local spillovers, with firms more likely to adopt when other local firms had already adopted. We incorporate these findings into a quantitative model, where the potential for multiple steady states depends on parameters mapped to the causal estimates. In our calibrated model, Korea's one-time subsidies shifted its economy to a more industrialized steady state, increasing heavy manufacturing's GDP share by 8.6% and export intensity by 16.2%. Larger market access amplifies the effects of these subsidies, as the gains from adoption increase with firms' scale.

December 20, 2024

Chasing the Dream: Industry-Level Productivity Developments in Europe

Description: European countries are lagging behind in productivity growth, with significant productivity gaps across industries. In this study, we use comparable industry-level data to explore the patterns and sources of total factor productivity (TFP) growth across 28 countries in Europe over the period 1995–2020. Our empirical results highlight four main points: (i) TFP growth is driven largely by the extent to which countries are involved in scientific and technological innovation as the leader country or benefiting from stronger knowledge spillovers; (ii) the technological gap is associated with TFP growth as countries move towards the technological frontier by adopting new innovations and technologies; (iii) increased investment in information and communications technology (ICT) capital and research and development (R&D) contributes significantly to higher TFP growth; and (iv)the impact of human capital tends to be stronger when a country is closer to the technological frontier. The core findings of this study call for policy measures and structural reforms to promote innovation and facilitate the diffusion of new and existing technologies across Europe.

December 20, 2024

A Confidence-Financial Inclusion Nexus in the Caucasus and Central Asia?

Description: We document novel evidence that confidence in macrofinancial stability has a positive impact on financial inclusion in CCA countries and more broadly. This channel is particularly important for CCA countries, with confidence gains of 1 unit leading to 0.7 unit improvement in financial inclusion. Institutional factors such as level of governance and reliance on transparent policy rules and robust financial safety nets explain a large fraction of the variability in confidence in the region. We find that governance reforms are critical for deepening financial inclusion while the impact of inflation targeting, fiscal rules and deposit insurance schemes is positive and material only when governance levels exceed certain thresholds.

December 20, 2024

The Urgency of Conflict Prevention – A Macroeconomic Perspective

Description: Can macroeconomic policy effectively help prevent armed conflicts? This paper contends that two key criteria need to be satisfied: the long-term benefits of prevention policies must exceed the costs associated with uncertain forecasts, and the policies themselves must be directly able to contribute to conflict prevention. This paper proposes policy simulations, based on a novel method of Mueller et al (2024a) that integrates machine learning and dynamic optimization, to show that investing in prevention can generate huge long-run benefits. Returns to prevention policies in countries that have not suffered recently from violence range from $26 to $75 per $1 spent on prevention, and for countries with recent violence, the rate of return could be as high as $103 per $1 spent on prevention. Furthermore, an analysis of the available data and results in the literature suggest that sound macroeconomic policies and international support for these policies can play key roles in conflict prevention. Based on these findings, this paper proposes actionable recommendations, for both global and domestic policymakers as well as international financial institutions and multilateral organizations, to promote peace and stability through macroeconomic policy.

December 20, 2024

Size and Resilience of the Blue Economy in Pacific Island Economies

Description: Economic output and livelihoods in Pacific Island economies (PIEs) rely greatly on ocean-related sectors and products, known as the ”Blue Economy”. Yet, marine ecosystems are under mounting pressure of climate change and human degradation, exposing PIEs to very large risks, while they have only limited technical and financial capacity to mitigate them. This paper aims: first to estimate the size of the Blue Economy in PIEs, based on comprehensive international input-output tables; and second to simulate the impact of selected shocks in PIEs, so as to provide insights on the resilience of the Blue Economy to shocks, including from climate change.

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