Working Papers
2014
November 12, 2014
Limiting Taxpayer "Puts" - An Example from Central Counterparties
Description: Nonbanks such as central counterparties (CCPs) are a useful lens to see how regulators view the role of the lender-of-last-resort (LOLR). This paper explores the avenues available when a nonbank failure is likely, specifically by considering the options of keeping CCPs afloat. It is argued that CCPs have, by regulatory fiat, become “too important to fail,” and thus the imperative should be greater loss-sharing by all participants that better align the distribution of risks and rewards of CCPs, the clearing members and derivative end-users. In the context of LOLR, the proposed variation margin gains haircut (VMGH) is discussed as a way of limiting the taxpayer put.
November 12, 2014
Do IMF-Supported Programs Catalyze Donor Assistance to Low-Income Countries?
Description: This study explores whether IMF-supported programs in low-income countries (LICs) catalyze Official Development Assistance (ODA). Based on a comprehensive set of ODA measures and using Propensity Score Matching approach to address selection bias, we show that programs addressing policy or exogenous shocks have a significant catalytic impact on both the size and the modality of ODA. Moreover, the impact is greatest when LICs are faced with substantial macroeconomic imbalances or large shocks. Nevertheless, when countries attracting similar donor assistance before shocks are matched results for bilateral ODA turn insignificant, suggesting that the catalytic impact is attributed primarily to multilateral ODA.
October 30, 2014
Fiscal Devaluation in a Monetary Union
Description: Using a DSGE model calibrated to the euro area, we analyze the international effects of a fiscal devaluation (FD) implemented as a revenue-neutral shift from employer's social contributions to the Value Added Tax. We find that a FD in ‘Southern European countries’ has a strong positive effect on output, but mild effects on the trade balance and the real exchange rate. Since the benefits of a FD are small relative to the divergence in competitiveness, it is best addressed through structural reforms.
October 30, 2014
Policy and Spillover Analysis in the World Economy: A Panel Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Approach
Description: This paper develops a structural macroeconometric model of the world economy, disaggregated into forty national economies. This panel dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model features a range of nominal and real rigidities, extensive macrofinancial linkages, and diverse spillover transmission channels. A variety of monetary policy analysis, fiscal policy analysis, spillover analysis, and forecasting applications of the estimated model are demonstrated. These include quantifying the monetary and fiscal transmission mechanisms, accounting for business cycle fluctuations, and generating relatively accurate forecasts of inflation and output growth.
October 30, 2014
Official Financial Flows, Capital Mobility, and Global Imbalances
Description: We use a cross-country panel framework to analyze the effect of net official flows (chiefly foreign exchange intervention) on current accounts. We find that net official flows have a large but plausible effect on current account balances. The estimated effects are larger with instrumental variables (42 cents to the dollar on average compared to 24 without instruments), reflecting a possible downward bias in regressions without instruments owing to an endogenous response of net official flows to private financial flows. We consistently find larger impacts of net official flows when international capital flows are restricted and smaller impacts when capital is highly mobile. A further result is that there is an important positive effect of lagged net official flows on current accounts that we believe operates through the portfolio balance channel.
October 28, 2014
Non-Defaultable Debt and Sovereign Risk
Description: We quantify gains from introducing non-defaultable debt as a limited additional financing option into a model of equilibrium sovereign risk. We find that, for an initial (defaultable) sovereign debt level equal to 66 percent of trend aggregate income and a sovereign spread of 2.9 percent, introducing the possibility of issuing non-defaultable debt for up to 10 percent of aggregate income reduces immediately the spread to 1.4 percent, and implies a welfare gain equivalent to a permanent consumption increase of 0.9 percent. The spread reduction would be only 0.1 (0.2) percentage points higher if the government uses nondefaultable debt to buy back (finance a “voluntary” debt exchange for) previously issued defaultable debt. Without restrictions to defaultable debt issuances in the future, the spread reduction achieved by the introduction of non-defaultable debt is short lived. We also show that allowing governments in default to increase non-defaultable debt is damaging at the time non-defaultable debt is introduced and inconsequential in the medium term. These findings shed light on different aspects of proposals to introduce common euro-area sovereign bonds that could be virtually non-defaultable.
October 27, 2014
The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Banking Globalization
Description: Although cross-border bank lending has fallen sharply since the crisis, extending our bank ownership database from 1995-2009 up to 2013 shows only limited retrenchment in foreign bank presence. While banks from OECD countries reduced their foreign presence (but still represent 89% of foreign bank assets), those from emerging markets and developing countries expanded abroad and doubled their presence. Especially advanced countries hit by a systemic crisis reduced their presence abroad, with far flung and relatively small investments more likely to be sold. Poorer and slower growing countries host fewer banks today, while large investments less likely expanded. Conversely, faster host countries’ growth and closeness to potential investors meant more entry. Lending by foreign banks locally grew more than cross-border bank claims did for the same home-host country combination, and each was driven by different factors. Altogether, our evidence shows that global banking is not becoming more fragmented, but rather is going through some important structural transformations with a greater variety of players and a more regional focus.
October 27, 2014
Gross Private Capital Flows to Emerging Markets: Can the Global Financial Cycle Be Tamed?
Description: This paper assesses empirically the key drivers of private capital flows to a large sample of emerging market economies in the last decade. It analyzes the effect of the global financial cycle, measured by the VIX, on capital flows and investigates the role of fundamentals and country characteristics in mitigating or amplifying its effect. Using interaction models, we find the effect of the VIX to be non-linear. For low levels of the VIX, capital flows are driven by fundamental factors. During periods of stress, the VIX becomes the dominant driver of capital flows while other determinants, with the exception of interest rate differentials, lose statistical significance. Our results also suggest that the effect of global financial conditions on gross private capital flows increases with the host country’s level of financial sector development. Finally, our results imply that countries cannot fully insulate themselves from global financial shocks, unless creating a fragmented global financial system.
October 24, 2014
Global Risks and Collective Action Failures: What Can the International Community Do?
Description: Abstract What do climate change, global financial crises, pandemics, and fragility and conflict have in common? They are all examples of global risks that can cross geographical and generational boundaries and whose mismanagement can reverse gains in development and jeopardize the well-being of generations. Managing risks such as these becomes a global public good, whose benefits also cross boundaries, providing a rationale for collective action facilitated by the international community. Yet, as many public goods, provision of global public goods suffer from collective action failures that undermine international coordination. This paper discusses the obstacles to addresing these global risks effectively, highlighting their implications for the current juncture. It claims that remaining gaps in information, resources, and capacity hamper accumulation and use of knowledge to triger appropriate action, but diverging national interests remain the key impediment to cooperation and effectiveness of global efforts, even when knowledge on the risks and their consequences are well understood. The paper argues that managing global risks requires a cohesive international community that enables its stakeholders to work collectively around common goals by facilitating sharing of knowledge, devoting resources to capacity building, and protecting the vulnerable. When some countries fail to cooperate, the international community can still forge cooperation, including by realigning incentives and demonstrating benefit from incremental steps toward full cooperation.
October 23, 2014
Public Employment and Compensation Reform During Times of Fiscal Consolidation
Description: This paper compiles and compares recent and past measures introduced to contain the public wage bill in a number of emerging and advanced economies to assess their effectiveness in bringing down expenditure in a sustained way. In the aftermath of the Great Recession a number of countries have approved measures on the wage bill as part of fiscal consolidation efforts. These recent episodes are compared to past cases implemented in advanced economies over the period 1979–2009. Findings suggest that public wage bill consolidation episodes pre and post 2009 are similar in many respects. Moreover, typically countries that were able to achieve more sustained reductions in the wage bill have implemented to larger extent structural measures, and/or these measures were accompanied with substantial social dialogue and consensus.