Working Papers
2015
April 28, 2015
Do Resource Windfalls Improve the Standard of Living in Sub-Saharan African Countries?: Evidence from a Panel of Countries
Description: We examine the impact of resource windfall on the standard of living both in the short-run and long-run, using a sample of 130 countries, 1963-2007. Then, we systematically investigate the effect of resource windfall on welfare in three different groups of countries: We find that in the short-run resource windfall is welfare enhancing in the whole sample, especially via increases in income and decreases in inequality. However, in SSA countries, the size of welfare improvement is small and it is smaller and almost zero after one year in fragile Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. In the whole sample, a resource windfall shock leads to significant welfare growth even in the long-run, but we couldn’t find any significant long-run effect of resource windfall in SSA countries.
April 28, 2015
Hong Kong’s Growth Synchronization with China and the U.S.: A Trend and Cycle Analysis
Description: This paper investigates the synchronization of Hong Kong SAR’s economic growth with mainland China and the United States. This paper identifies trends of economic growth based on the permanent income hypothesis. Specifically, the paper confirms whether real consumption in Hong Kong SAR and mainland China satisfy the permanent income hypothesis, at least in a weak form. It then identifies the permanent and transitory components of income of each economy using a simple state-space model. It uses structural vector autoregression models to analyze how permanent and transitory shocks originating from mainland China and the United States affect the Hong Kong economy, and how such influences evolve over time. The paper’s main findings suggest that transitory shocks from the United States remain a major driving force behind Hong Kong SAR’s business cycle fluctuations. On the other hand, permanent shocks from mainland China have a larger impact on Hong Kong SAR’s trend growth.
April 22, 2015
Capital Control Measures: A New Dataset
Description: This paper presents a new dataset of capital control restrictions on both inflows and outflows of 10 categories of assets for 100 countries over the period 1995 to 2013. Building on the data in Schindler (2009) and other datasets based on the analysis of the IMF’s Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions (AREAER), this dataset includes additional asset categories, more countries, and a longer time period. The paper discusses in detail the construction of the dataset and characterizes the data with respect to the prevalence and correlation of controls across asset categories and between controls on inflows and controls on outflows, the aggregation of the separate categories into broader indicators, and the comparison of this dataset with other indicators of capital controls.
April 7, 2015
A Simple Multivariate Filter for Estimating Potential Output
Description: Estimates of potential output are an important ingredient of structured forecasting and policy analysis. Using information on consensus forecasts, this paper extends the multivariate filter developed by Benes and others (2010). Although the estimates in real time are more robust relative to those of naïve statistical filters, there is still significant uncertainty surrounding the estimates. The paper presents estimates for 16 countries and provides an example of how the filtered estimates at the end of the sample period can be improved with additional information.
April 3, 2015
Macroprudential Policy and Labor Market Dynamics in Emerging Economies
Description: Emerging economies have high shares of self-employed individuals running owner-only firms who, in contrast to many salaried firms, have little access to formal financing and therefore rely on informal financing (input credit) from other firms. We build a small open economy real business cycle model with labor and financial market frictions where formal credit markets, informal credit, and the structure of the labor market interact. The model successfully replicates the cyclical behavior of sectoral employment, formal credit, and the main macroeconomic aggregates in emerging economies. We show that a countercyclical macroprudential policy that reduces formal credit fluctuations has positive though quantitatively limited effects on consumption and output volatility, but generates larger unemployment fluctuations in response to productivity shocks; the same policy increases labor market and aggregate volatility in response to net worth shocks. The link between input credit and the labor market structure---key for capturing the cyclical dynamics of labor and credit markets in the data---plays a crucial role for these results.
April 3, 2015
Investment in Emerging Markets We Are Not in Kansas Anymore…Or Are We?
Description: We document that (i) although private investment growth in emerging markets has decelerated in recent years, it came down from cyclical highs and remains close to pre-crisis trends; and (ii) investment-to-output ratios generally remain close to or above historical averages. We show that investment is positively related to expect future profitability, cash flows and debt flows, and negatively associated with leverage. Critically, it is also positively related to (country-specific) commodity export prices and capital inflows. Lower commodity export prices and expected profitability, a moderation in capital inflows, and increased leverage account for the bulk of the recent investment deceleration.
April 2, 2015
Recent U.S. Labor Force Dynamics: Reversible or not?
Description: The U.S. labor force participation rate (LFPR) fell dramatically following the Great Recession and has yet to start recovering. A key question is how much of the post-2007 decline is reversible, something which is central to the policy debate. The key finding of this paper is that while around ¼–? of the post-2007 decline is reversible, the LFPR will continue to decline given population aging. This paper’s measure of the “employment gap” also suggests that labor market slack remains and will only decline gradually, pointing to a still important role for stimulative macro-economic policies to help reach full employment. In addition, given the continued downward pressure on the LFPR, labor supply measures will be an essential component of the strategy to boost potential growth. Finally, stimulative macroeconomic and labor supply policies should also help reduce the scope for further hysteresis effects to develop (e.g., loss of skills, discouragement).
April 1, 2015
How Did Markets React to Stress Tests?
Description: We use event study methods to compare the market reaction to U.S. and EU-wide stress tests performed from 2009 to 2013. Typically, stress tests have a positive impact on stressed banks’ returns. While the 2009 U.S. stress test had a large positive outcome, the impact of subsequent U.S. exercises decreased over time. The 2011 EU exercise is the only EU-wide stress test that resulted in a significant negative market reaction. Comparing past exercises suggests that the qualitative aspects of the governance of stress tests can matter more for stock market participants than technical elements, such as the level of the minimum capital adequacy threshold or the extent of data disclosure.
April 1, 2015
Frontiers of Monetary Policymaking: Adding the Exchange Rate as a Tool to Combat Deflationary Risks in the Czech Republic
Description: The paper first describes how the Czech National Bank (CNB) moved gradually from a fixed exchange rate regime to the frontiers of Inflation-Forecast Targeting. It then focuses on the CNB’s recent experience in adding the exchange rate as a complementary monetary policy tool to stimulate the economy and combat the risks of deflation when the policy interest rate is at the zero lower bound. It assesses the theoretical basis of such a policy, the communications approach used by the CNB when announcing the new framework, and the effects thus far on inflation and output.
March 30, 2015
Assessing China’s Corporate Sector Vulnerabilities
Description: This paper documents and assesses the risk stemming from rising corporate indebtedness in China using a firm-level dataset of listed firms. It finds that while leverage on average is not high, there is a fat tail of highly leveraged firms accounting for a significant share of total corporate debt, mainly concentrated in the real estate and construction sector and state-owned enterprises in general. The real estate and construction firms tend to face lower borrowing costs and could withstand a modest increase of interest rate shocks despite their high leverage. The corporate sector is however vulnerable to a significant slowdown in the real estate and construction sector. Our sensitivity analysis suggests that the share of debt that would be in financial distress would rise to about a quarter of total listed firm debt in the event of a 20 percent decline in real estate and construction profits.