Working Papers
2016
September 26, 2016
Products and Provinces: A Disaggregated Panel Analysis of Canada’s Manufacturing Exports
Description: The waning of the commodity boom places renewed emphasis on manufacturing as an engine for Canadian growth. However, Canadian manufacturing exports have been relatively stagnant since 2000. While the exchange rate depreciation over the past two years has energized export growth, the response has not been as strong as would have been expected given the size of the depreciation. More fundamental issues appear to be impeding the growth of the Canadian manufacturing sector. This study analyzes the structural factors behind export competitiveness by using unique Canadian data on exports, which are disaggregated both by province and by product. Matching exports to similarly disaggregated data on R&D, the capital stock and other supply-side variables, we find that these variables significantly affect export growth, beyond the impact of the exchange rate. In particular, investment in R&D, capital infrastructure and vocational training improves innovation and production capacity. These results are robust to a factor-augmented approach that controls for multicollinearity.
September 26, 2016
How to Improve Inflation Targeting in Canada
Description: Routine publication of the forecast path for the policy interest rate (i.e. “conventional forward guidance”) would improve the transparency of monetary policy. It would also improve policy effectiveness through its influence on expectations, particularly when there is a risk of low inflation, and the policy rate is constrained by the effective lower bound. Model simulations indicate that a potent macroeconomic strategy, for returning the Canadian economy to potential, combines conventional forward guidance with a fiscal stimulus. As a response to the effective lower bound constraint, and the decline in the world equilibrium real interest rate, this strategy is preferable to raising the inflation target.
September 20, 2016
An Assessment of the Exchange Rate Pass-Through in Angola and Nigeria
Description: This paper estimates the exchange rate pass-through to consumer price inflation in Angola and Nigeria, with particular emphasis on the changes of the pass-through over time. Even though the two countries share smilar dependence on oil exports, this paper reveals different results. For Angola, the long-run exchange rate pass-through to prices is high, though it has weakened in recent years reflecting the de-dollarization of the economy. In Nigeria, there is no stable long-run relationship between the exchange rate and prices, and changes in the exchange rate do not have a significant pass-through effect on inflation. However, the passthrough effect on core inflation is significant.
September 19, 2016
Fragmented Politics and Public Debt
Description: In this paper, we study the impact of fragmented politics on public debt—in particular, between two consecutive legislative elections. Using data for 92 advanced and developing countries during 1975-2015, we find a positive association between political fragmentation and public debt changes. Corruption magnifies the effects; with higher perceived corruption, political fragmentation has a bigger sway on debt increases. The influence of political fragmentation on debt dynamics is somewhat asymmetric, with larger and more significant effects during periods of debt reduction. Establishment of fiscal councils helps attenuate the negative impact of political fragmentation on public debt dynamics.
September 16, 2016
The Effectiveness of Monetary Policy in Small Open Economies: An Empirical Investigation
Description: This paper examines the relative effectiveness of the use of indirect and direct monetary policy instruments in Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, by estimating a restricted Vector Autoregressive model with Exogenous Variables (VARX). The study assumes that the central bank conducts monetary policy using a Taylor-type rule and it evaluates the effects of a reserve requirement policy. The results show that although a positive shock to the policy interest rate has a direct effect on commercial banks' interest rates, there is a weak transmission to the real variables. Furthermore, an increase in the required reserve ratio is successful in reducing private sector credit and excess reserves, while at the same time alleviating pressures on the exchange rate. The findings therefore indicate that central banks in small open economies should consider using reserve requirements as a complement to interest rate policy, to achieve their macroeconomic objectives.
September 16, 2016
Fiscal Rules for Resource Windfall Allocation: The Case of Trinidad and Tobago
Description: Managing resource revenues is a critical policy issue for small open resource-rich countries. This paper uses an open economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to analyze the transmission of resource price shocks and a shock to resource production in the Trinidad and Tobago economy. It also applies alternative fiscal rules to determine the optimal allocation of resource windfalls between spending today and saving in a sovereign wealth fund. The results show that spending all the resource windfall on consumption and investment creates more volatility and amplifies Dutch disease effects, when compared to the case where all the excess revenues are saved. Also, neither a policy of full spending nor full saving of the surplus revenue inflows is optimal if the government is concerned about both household welfare and fiscal stability. In order to minimize deviations from both objectives, the optimal fiscal response suggests that a larger fraction of the resource windfalls should be saved.
September 16, 2016
Regulating Local Government Financing Vehicles and Public-Private Partnerships in China
Description: In this paper, we argue that there is much room for China to strengthen its regulatory framework for public-private partnerships (PPPs). We show that infrastructure projects carried out through local government financing vehicles (LGFVs) were largely unregulated PPPs, and significant fiscal risks have already manifested themselves. While PPPs can potentially provide efficiency gains, they can also be used by governments to circumvent budgetary borrowing constraints. Therefore, effective PPP regulation is key to delivering PPPs’ benefits while containing their potential fiscal risks. The authorities have taken concrete steps in order to establish a sound regulatory framework and foster a new generation of PPPs. However, to make the framework effective, we highlight a few issues to be resolved. Based on international best practice, we propose a four-pillar regulatory framework for China, which could be implemented gradually in three stages.
September 15, 2016
Supervisory Incentives in a Banking Union
Description: We explore the behavior of supervisors when a centralized agency has full power over all decisions regarding banks, but relies on local supervisors to collect the information necessary to act. This institutional design entails a principal-agent problem between the central and local supervisors if their objective functions differ. Information collection may be inferior to that under fully independent local supervisors or under centralized information collection. And this may increase risk-taking by regulated banks. Yet, a “tougher” central supervisor may increase regulatory standards. Thus, the net effect of centralization on bank risk taking depends on the balance of these two effects.
September 15, 2016
Highways to Heaven: Infrastructure Determinants and Trends in Latin America and the Caribbean
Description: Inadequate infrastructure has been widely viewed as a principal barrier to growth and development in Latin America and the Caribbean. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of infrastructure in the region and highlights key areas in which infrastructure networks can be enhanced. The public and private sectors play complementary roles in improving the infrastructure network. Therefore, it is critical to strengthen public investment management processes as well as the regulatory framework, including to ensure an appropriate mix of financing and funding for projects and to address environmental concerns.
September 15, 2016
Spatial Dependence and Data-Driven Networks of International Banks
Description: This paper computes data-driven correlation networks based on the stock returns of international banks and conducts a comprehensive analysis of their topological properties. We first apply spatial-dependence methods to filter the effects of strong common factors and a thresholding procedure to select the significant bilateral correlations. The analysis of topological characteristics of the resulting correlation networks shows many common features that have been documented in the recent literature but were obtained with private information on banks' exposures, including rich and hierarchical structures, based on but not limited to geographical proximity, small world features, regional homophily, and a core-periphery structure.