Working Papers
2015
May 1, 2015
Too Much of a Good Thing? Prudent Management of Inflows under Economic Citizenship Programs
Description: Economic Citizenship Programs (ECPs) have recently been proliferating, with large and potentially volatile inflows of investment and fiscal revenues generating significant benefits for small economies, but also posing substantial challenges. This paper discusses recent developments and implications of such programs for fiscal discipline and the real economy, including risks to macroeconomic and financial stability, with a focus on small state economies. It discusses the prudent management of these programs, overviews strategies to minimize risks to various sectors, and addresses potential governance and integrity challenges. The paper proposes a framework for managing inflows and savings from ECPs to contain macroeconomic risks, and it recommends the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund (SWF) where such revenues are large and persistent.
April 30, 2015
The Role of Productivity, Transportation Costs, and Barriers to Intersectoral Mobility in Structural Transformation
Description: The process of economic development is characterized by substantial reallocations of resources across sectors. In this paper, we construct a multi-sector model in which there are barriers to the movement of labor from low-productivity traditional agriculture to modern sectors. With the barrier in place, we show that improvements in productivity in modern sectors (including agriculture) or reductions in transportation costs may lead to a rise in agricultural employment and through terms-oftrade effects may harm subsistence farmers if the traditional subsistence sector is larger than a critical level. This suggests that policy advice based on the earlier literature needs to be revised. Reducing barriers to mobility (through reductions in the cost of skill acquisition and institutional changes) and improving the productivity of subsistence farmers needs to precede policies designed to increase the productivity of modern sectors or decrease transportation costs.
April 30, 2015
From Natural Resource Boom to Sustainable Economic Growth: Lessons for Mongolia
Description: Some resource-rich developing countries are in the process of harnessing immense mining resources towards inclusive growth and prosperity. Nevertheless, tapping into natural resources could be challenging given the large front-loaded investment, volatile capital flows and exposure to global commodity markets. Public investment is needed to remove the often-large infrastructure gap and unlock the economic potential. However, too rapid fiscal outlays could push the economy to its limit of absorptive capacity and increase macro-financial vulnerabilities. This paper utilizes a structural model-based approach to analyze macroeconomic impacts of different public investment strategies on key fiscal and non-fiscal variables such as debt, consumption, sovereign wealth fund, and real exchange rates. We apply the model to Mongolia and draw policy recommendations from the analysis. We find that fiscal policy adjustment, particularly moderating infrastructure investment and optimizing investment efficiency is needed to maintain macroeconomic and external stability, as well as to boost the long-term sustainable growth for Mongolia.
April 30, 2015
Fair Weather or Foul? The Macroeconomic Effects of El Niño
Description: This paper employs a dynamic multi-country framework to analyze the international macroeconomic transmission of El Niño weather shocks. This framework comprises 21 country/region-specific models, estimated over the period 1979Q2 to 2013Q1, and accounts for not only direct exposures of countries to El Niño shocks but also indirect effects through thirdmarkets. We contribute to the climate-macroeconomy literature by exploiting exogenous variation in El Niño weather events over time, and their impact on different regions crosssectionally, to causatively identify the effects of El Niño shocks on growth, inflation, energy and non-fuel commodity prices. The results show that there are considerable heterogeneities in the responses of different countries to El Niño shocks. While Australia, Chile, Indonesia, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Africa face a short-lived fall in economic activity in response to an El Niño shock, for other countries (including the United States and European region), an El Niño occurrence has a growth-enhancing effect. Furthermore, most countries in our sample experience short-run inflationary pressures as both energy and non-fuel commodity prices increase. Given these findings, macroeconomic policy formulation should take into consideration the likelihood and effects of El Niño weather episodes.
April 30, 2015
What has Capital Liberalization Meant for Economic and Financial Statistics
Description: The liberalization of capital flows both in the domestic economy and cross-border has been among the most important policies adopted by IMF member countries over recent decades. The impact has been wide-ranging. This paper looks at the impact on the field of economic and financial statistics in the past two decades, as statisticians have responded to the changing policy needs. The paper considers the historical context of changes that have occurred, draws out the key trends, and asks where these trends might lead statisticians in the foreseeable future. The paper considers that there has been nothing short of a revolution in the field of economic and financial statistics over the past two decades led by a need for greater transparency; greater standardization; new data sets to support understanding of financial interconnections and financial sector risks; and the strengthening of the governance of the statistical function through greater independence of statistical agencies.
April 29, 2015
Determinants of Bank Interest Margins in the Caucasus and Central Asia
Description: In this paper, we use a bank-level panel dataset to investigate the determinants of bank interest margins in the Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) over the period 1998–2013. We apply the dealership model of Ho and Saunders (1981) and its extensions to assess the extent to which high spreads of banks in the CCA can be related to bank-specific variables, to competition, and to macroeconomic factors. We find that interest spreads are affected by operating cost, credit risk, liquidity risk, bank size, bank diversification, banking sector competition, and macroeconomic policies; but the impact depends on the country.
April 29, 2015
Non-FDI Capital Inflows in Low-Income Developing Countries: Catching the Wave?
Description: Low-income countries (LIDCs) are typically characterized by intermittent and very modest access to private external funding sources. Motivated by recent developments in private flows to LIDCs this paper makes two contributions: First, it constructs a new comprehensive dataset on gross private capital flows with special focus on non-FDI flows in LIDCs. Concentrating on LIDCs and more specifically on gross non-FDI private flows is intentionally aimed at closing a gap in existing datasets where country coverage of developing economies is limited mainly to emerging markets (EMs). Second, using the new data, it identifies several shifting patterns of gross non-FDI private inflows to LIDCs. A surprising fact emerges: since the mid 2000's periods of surges in gross non-FDI private inflows in LIDCs are broadly comparable to those of EMs. Moreover, while gross non-FDI inflows to LIDCs are on average much lower than those to EMs, we show that the LIDC top quartile gross non-FDI inflow is comparable to the EM median inflow and converging to the EM top quartile inflow.
April 29, 2015
Financial Crisis, US Unconventional Monetary Policy and International Spillovers
Description: We study the impact of the US quantitative easing (QE) on both the emerging and advanced economies, estimating a global vector error-correction model (GVECM) and conducting counterfactual analyses. We focus on the effects of reductions in the US term and corporate spreads. First, US QE measures reducing the US corporate spread appear to be more important than lowering the US term spread. Second, US QE measures might have prevented episodes of prolonged recession and deflation in the advanced economies. Third, the estimated effects on the emerging economies have been diverse but often larger than those recorded in the US and other advanced economies. The heterogeneous effects from US QE measures indicate unevenly distributed benefits and costs.
April 28, 2015
Understanding Residential Real Estate in China
Description: China’s residential real estate sector plays an important role in the economy and has been a key driver of growth. Since 2014 the sector has softened visibly, reflecting overbuilding across many cities. An orderly adjustment of the sector is welcome. The key questions are how severe the adjustment will be and how long it will last. This paper uses various datasets, an analytical framework to estimate demand and supply conditions, and develops a number of scenarios to determine the oversupply both at the national level and by city tiers. It highlights that the adjustment will be a multiyear process with adverse implications for investment and growth. Smaller cities, as well as those in the Northeast region, face more challenging demand-supply dynamics. The key will be to allow the adjustment to take place, while avoiding a too sharp of an economic slowdown.
Notes: Full text is also available in Chinese.
April 28, 2015
Is Islamic Banking Good for Growth?
Description: The rapid growth of Islamic banking has attracted much attention lately in the economic literature. At the same time, a mature body of the literature has shown that financial development is broadly conducive to economic growth, which raises the question as to whether a similar conclusion holds for Islamic banking. Against this backdrop, this paper investigates the relationship between Islamic banking development and economic growth in a sample of low and middle income countries, using data over the period 1990-2010. The results show that, notwithstanding its relatively small size compared to the economy and the overall size of the financial system, Islamic banking is positively associated with economic growth even after controlling for various determinants, including the level of financial depth. The results are robust across across different specifications, sample composition and time periods.