Working Papers
2022
July 22, 2022
Unorthodox Expenditure Procedures in CEMAC and WAEMU Countries
Description: This paper takes stock of unorthodox expenditure procedures in CEMAC and WAEMU countries and assesses their potential fiscal impact. “Unorthodox procedures” are defined as spending practices that bypass legal provisions governing public expenditure processes and circumvent regular controls or other budgetary rules, including those related to budget time limits, approved ceilings, or approved appropriations. The paper shows that despite PFM reforms, recourse to such procedures has persisted—resulting in the accumulation of arrears; inadequate fiscal reporting, including large stock-flow adjustments; and corruption vulnerabilities.
July 19, 2022
Natural Gas in Europe: The Potential Impact of Disruptions to Supply
Description: This paper analyzes the implications of disruptions in Russian gas for Europe’s balances and economic output. Alternative sources could replace up to 70 percent of Russian gas, allowing Europe to avoid shortages during a temporary disruption of around 6 months. However, a longer full shut-off of Russian gas to the whole of Europe would likely interact with infrastructure bottlenecks to produce very high prices and significant shortages in some countries, with parts of Central and Eastern Europe most vulnerable. With natural gas an important input in production, the capacity of the economy would shrink. Our findings suggest that in the short term, the most vulnerable countries in Central and Eastern Europe — Hungary, Slovak Republic and Czechia — face a risk of shortages of as much as 40 percent of gas consumption and of gross domestic product shrinking by up to 6 percent. The effects on Austria, Germany and Italy would also be significant, but would depend on the exact nature of remaining bottlenecks at the time of the shutoff and consequently the ability of the market to adjust. Many other countries are unlikely to face such constraints and the impact on GDP would be moderate—possibly under 1 percent. Immediate policy priorities center on actions to mitigate impacts, including to eliminate constraints to a more integrated gas market via easing infrastructure bottlenecks, to accelerate efforts in defining and agreeing solidarity contributions, and to promote stronger pricing pass through and other measures to generate greater energy savings. National responses and RePowerEU contains many important measures to help address these challenges, but immediate coordinated action is called for, with specific opportunities in each of these areas.
July 19, 2022
The Economic Impacts on Germany of a Potential Russian Gas Shutoff
Description: We analyze the potential impacts on the German economy of a complete and permanent shutoff of the remaining Russian natural gas supplies to Europe, accounting for the curtailment of flows through Nord Stream 1 that has already taken place. We find that such a scenario could lead to gas shortages of 9 percent of national consumption in the second half of 2022, 10 percent in 2023 and 4 percent in 2024, which would be worse in the winter months, and would likely fall on firms, given legal protections on households. We combine the effects of less gas on production with the consequent effects of reduced supply of intermediate goods and services to downstream firms, and with reduced economic activity due to rising uncertainty. Together, these three channels reduce German GDP relative to baseline levels by about 1.5 percent in 2022, 2.7 percent in 2023 and 0.4 percent in 2024, with no gains in subsequent years from deferred economic activity. The associated rise in wholesale gas prices could increase inflation by about 2 percentage points on average in 2022 and 2023. Our simulations suggest that the economic impacts can be reduced significantly by having households voluntarily share a small part of the burden, and by rationing gas supplies more to more gas-intensive and downstream firms. We also suggest other ways to enhance German energy security.
July 19, 2022
Market Size and Supply Disruptions: Sharing the Pain of a Potential Russian Gas Shut-off to the European Union
Description: We assess the supply-side effects on European Union (EU) economic activity if Russian gas imports were to suddenly cease. Unlike other studies, we account for the global scope of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. In the absence of frictions, an open-economy, multi-sector general equilibrium model suggests that the adverse economic impact on the EU shrinks five-fold if integration with the global LNG market is considered. While greater integration provides a buffer for the EU through trade, the flip side is that other LNG importers (such as Japan, South Korea, and Pakistan) see adverse effects from higher prices.
July 15, 2022
A Comprehensive Package of Macroeconomic Policy Measures for Implementing China’s Climate Mitigation Strategy
Description: This paper presents ways for China to achieve its climate goals while also attain high-quality growth—growth that is balanced, inclusive, and green. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model that is calibrated to China, multiple scenarios are considered that incorporate a sequence of layered policies: (i) frontloading mitigation with an earlier emissions peak, (ii) power market reforms, and (iii) economic rebalancing. The results highlight that these policies can significantly contribute to the success of the climate strategy overall, including by lowering the shadow price of carbon as well as the associated mitigation costs. Distribution analysis offers proposals to lessen the impact on vulnerable households.
July 15, 2022
Macroprudential Regulation and Sector-Specific Default Risk
Description: This paper studies the transmission of macroprudential policies across both financial and non financial sectors of the economy. It first documents that tighter macroprudential regulations implemented in Europe over the period 2008–2017 lowered default risk not only in the financial, but also in non-financial sectors. Second, the paper analyzes the impact of two reforms in the macroprudential framework. Higher capital requirements improve the long-run resilience of the financial sector but at the cost of raising long-term default risk in non-financial sectors. Strengthening the resolution framework for failing banks has beneficial long-run effects on the default risks of the financial and non-financial sectors. Our results concur with the literature documenting how banks adjust their balance sheet composition and credit supply in reaction to changes in their regulatory environment.
July 15, 2022
Women in Fintech: As Leaders and Users
Description: While digital financial services have made access to finance easier, faster, and less costly, helping to broaden digital financial inclusion, its impact on gender gaps varies across countries. Moreover, women leaders in the fintech industry, although growing, remain scarce. This paper explores the interaction between ‘women’ and ‘fintech’ by examining: (i) the role of women leaders on firm-level performance in the fintech industry; and (ii) the determinants of gender gaps in the usage of digital services to better understand the cross-country differences. Results indicate that greater gender diversity in the executive board is associated with better performance of fintech firms.With regard to determinants of the gender gaps in the usage of digital financial services, we find that higher financial and digital literacy of women is associated with lower gender gaps in digital financial inclusion, and that socio-cultural factors also play a key role.
July 15, 2022
Assessing the Impact of Business Closures on COVID-19 Outcomes
Description: In this paper, we present a framework for assessing the effectiveness of different business closure policies, using New York City as a case study. Business closure policies have been widely implemented in an attempt to slow down the pandemic, but it is difficult to measure the contribution of closures of specific industries to virus transmission. Our framework allows us to estimate the impact of specific industry closures on the spread of COVID-19 via their effects on aggregate mobility. We find that early reopening led to a prolonged pandemic and a large case surge in the second wave during 2020, though the reopening allowed the city to regain its economic function as a consumption hub. An alternative policy that extends the lockdown is found to be more cost-effective as it makes future traveling safer and prevents the economy from relapsing into a more stringent policy regime.
July 8, 2022
Financial Sector and Economic Growth in India
Description: India’s financial sector has faced many challenges in recent decades, with a large, negative, and persistent credit to GDP gap since 2012. We examine how cyclical financial conditions affect GDP growth using a growth-at-risk (GaR) approach and analyze the link between bank balance sheets, credit growth, and long-term growth using bank-level panel regressions for both public and private banks. We find that on a cyclical basis, a negative shock to credit or a rise in macro vulnerability all shift the distribution of growth to the left, with lower expected growth and higher negative tail risks; over the long term, the results indicate that higher credit growth, arising from better capitalized banks with lower NPLs, is associated with higher GDP growth.
July 8, 2022
An Alternative Proof of Minimum Trace Reconciliation
Description: Minimum trace reconciliation, developed by Wickramasuriya et. al. (2019), is an innovation in the literature of forecast reconciliation. The proof, however, is indirect and not easy to extend to more general situations. This paper provides an alternative proof based on the first-order condition in the space of non-square matrix and argues that it is not only simpler but also can be extended to incorporate more general results on minimum weighted trace reconciliation in Panagiotelis et. al. (2021). Thus, our alternative proof not only has pedagogical value but also connects the results in the literature from a unified perspective.