Working Papers
2024
November 15, 2024
China’s Path to Sustainable and Balanced Growth
Description: After decades of high growth, the Chinese economy is facing headwinds from slowing productivity growth and a declining workforce that are projected to lower potential growth substantially in the longer term. We project China’s potential growth over the medium to long term, showing that potential growth could slow to around 3.8 percent on average between 2025-30 and to around 2.8 percent on average over 2031-40 in the absence of major reforms. We present a reform scenario with structural reforms to lift productivity growth and rebalancing China’s growth towards more consumption, that would help China transition to “high-quality”—balanced, inclusive, and green—growth. We use production function and general equilibrium modelling approaches to show that potential growth could remain at around 4.3 percent between 2025-40 under the reform scenario.
November 15, 2024
Quarterly Projection Model for the Bank of Ghana: Extensions and Applications
Description: The paper documents the latest extensions of the Bank of Ghana’s Quarterly Projection Model (QPM), used regularly to produce policy analysis and forecasts in support of the Bank’s policy processes. The decomposition of GDP allows to separate the agriculture and oil sectors, driven by exogenous and international developments, from non-agriculture non-oil activities, which are more relevant from the central bank’s perspective of assessing the business cycle position. Inter-sectoral price spillovers and their role in the formation of inflation expectations are explicitly accounted, with important policy implications. Specific model applications – including impulse response functions and simulations of shocks that affect agricultural production, e.g., those caused by climate disruptions; and counterfactual simulations to evaluate recent policy choices – highlight the usefulness of the extended QPM in providing a more detailed account of the economic developments, enhance forecast coverage, and broaden its underlying narrative, thus strengthening the BOG’s forward-looking policy framework.
November 15, 2024
Foreign Exchange Intervention Under the Integrated Policy Framework: The Case of India
Description: This paper analyzes the effectiveness of foreign exchange intervention (FXI) in mitigating economic and financial shocks in India by applying the Integrated Policy Framework (IPF). It highlights how FXI can be a complementary tool in mitigating the tradeoff between output and inflation, specifically under large economic shocks amid temporarily shallow FX markets. The paper indicates that while FXI can soften adverse impacts on domestic demand and output during severe risk-off shocks, its benefits under normal conditions with liquid FX markets are limited.
November 15, 2024
Growth Convergence and Public Finances of India and its States
Description: Lack of convergence in per capita income across Indian states requires greater resources for lower-income states for investment and improved public services. Central and state governments need to raise revenue (both tax and non-tax), dismantle the administered pricing mechanism, reduce subsidies, and reorient expenditure toward national and state-level priorities. This is essential to ensure India remains on a sustainable fiscal path with higher growth, given the high public debt at the centre and state level. The observed wide differences in fiscal parameters across states require a tailored policy for each state. The large stock of debt of several states puts at risk the adequate financing of growth-enchancing expenditures.
November 8, 2024
Citizens Perceptions of Tax Authorities and Tax Efficiency
Description: This paper examines the relationship between citizens’ perceptions of tax authorities and the governments’ efficiency in collecting VAT and CIT revenues in Africa. Drawing on data from 32 countries over 2014-2019, we find a negative and significant association between negative perceptions of trust in authorities (the tax department) from the Afrobarometer survey and tax efficiency for these revenue categories. A 1 percent increase in the share of citizens’ perception of little or no trust in the tax department leads to a 0.22 percent decrease in VAT tax efficiency, controlling for macroeconomic indicators. The magnitude of the effect is significantly greater in fragile compared to non-fragile states. For corporate income tax productivity focusing on tax payments of corporates we find a significant effect only in fragile states. Perceptions about corruption in tax authorities have a similar effect on VAT and CIT tax efficiency since perceptions about trust and corruption capture the tendency to misappropriate revenues but we are unable to distinguish the two effects except for fragile states. Our findings suggest that in the face of fragility, policies aimed at improving fiscal capacity should place a high importance on ensuring that citizens believe resources will be used properly, an aspect of tax policy not typically prioritized.
November 8, 2024
Identifying Determinants of FX Stability in Mozambique
Description: In early 2021, as monetary policy tightening reversed a multi-year trend of Metical depreciation, the exchange rate vis-à-vis the US dollar de facto stabilized. This report discusses elements of the market structure and other drivers of Metical stability since mid-2021. The particularities of Mozambique, a small open economy with an export sector that has a strong foreign currency cost structure, provide important insights into that discussion, as does the structure and development of the Foreign Exchange (FX) market.
November 1, 2024
Public Investment Management Bottlenecks in Low-income Countries
Description: This paper uses principal component analysis (PCA) to identify bottlenecks to effective public investment management in LIDCs. The paper describes the current state of affairs regarding public investment and public investment management in LIDCs, drawing on the results of IMF Public Investment Management Assessments (PIMAs). PCA is used to analyze which public investment institutions are likely to be most important for investment efficiency estimates across the countries covered by PIMAs so far. Drawing on alternative input data, we identify five PIMA institutions that are systematically highly correlated to estimates of public investment efficiency in LIDCs and are likely to be high priorities in many PIM reform processes: Project management, Project appraisal, Procurement, Availability of funding, and Project selection. This does not mean that these five are the only important institutions – this will depend on country circumstances. The practical steps to strengthen PIM in LIDCs are elaborated in a separate How-to-Note.
November 1, 2024
Demand for Ethanol Considering Spatially Differentiated Fuel Retailers
Description: The document presents an innovative analysis of ethanol demand, emphasizing the significant role of spatially differentiated fuel retailers in shaping consumer preferences and fuel-switching behavior. Utilizing a nested logit model and data from Brazilian fuel retailers, the study reveals that ethanol demand is highly responsive to price changes, with relative price elasticity exceeding that of gasoline. Key findings indicate that retailer characteristics, such as branding and location, influence consumer preferences, highlighting the importance of considering spatial differentiation in demand estimation models. The study's results have profound implications for policy-making, suggesting that encouraging the use of ethanol as an alternative energy source can serve as an effective climate change mitigation strategy. The recommendations stress the need for policies that account for consumer price sensitivities and the competitive landscape of fuel retailers. This could enhance the adoption of cleaner fuels and reduce dependency on imported oil, aligning with broader environmental and economic objectives.
November 1, 2024
Dynamic Development Accounting and Relative Income Traps
Description: Previous research suggests that economy-wide poverty traps are rarely observed in the data. In this paper, we explore a related hypothesis: low-income countries rarely improve their position relative to the US. Using finite state Markov chains, we show that upwards mobility is indeed limited. Since capital-output ratios are similar across countries, and human capital is also converging, the persistence of low relative income seems to originate in the persistence of low relative TFP. We study the dynamics of relative TFP and how they interact with absolute levels of human capital, casting new light on the future of convergence.
November 1, 2024
Inelastic Demand Meets Optimal Supply of Risky Sovereign Bonds
Description: We present evidence of inelastic demand for risky sovereign bonds and explore its implications for optimal government debt policies. Using monthly changes in the composition of a major international bond index, we identify flow shocks unrelated to fundamentals that shift the available bond supply. From these shocks, we estimate an inverse demand elasticity of -0.30 and show that it increases with countries’ default risk. We formulate a sovereign debt model with endogenous default and inelastic investors, calibrated to our empirical estimates. By penalizing additional borrowing, an inelastic demand acts as a disciplining device that reduces default risk and bond spreads.