Working Papers
2024
March 1, 2024
Climate Policies as a Catalyst for Green FDI
Description: This paper assesses the role of climate policies as a catalyst of low carbon technologies deployment through foreign direct investment (FDI). Leveraging detailed cross-border project-level information, it identifies “green” FDI and finds that a higher number of active climate policies is associated with higher levels of green FDI inflows. Importantly, climate policies do not appear to be linked to lower levels of non-green projects, suggesting relatively small overall costs from the green transition. The paper also finds heterogeneity across sectors and policy instruments. The association between climate policies and green projects is particularly strong in energy and manufacturing, and when the composition of the recipient's climate portfolio is tilted towards binding policies (e.g., taxes and regulation) and expenditure measures. Finally, results point to policy spillovers, whereby larger climate policy portfolios in the source country are linked to higher green FDI outflows, but green subsidies can discourage them. This, in turn, implies that subsidies could hamper efforts to deploy low-carbon technologies across countries.
March 1, 2024
Fiscal Implications of Global Decarbonization
Description: Internationally coordinated climate mitigation policies can effectively put the world on a path toward achieving the agreed Paris temperature goals. Such coordination could be initiated by large players, such as China, the US, India, the African Union, and the European Union. We find that the implications for fiscal revenues over time will be shaped by a combination of rising carbon prices, the gradual erosion of existing fuel tax bases, and possible revenue sharing arrangements. Public spending rises during the transition to build green public infrastructure, promote innovation, and support clean technology deployment. Countries will also need financing for compensating vulnerable households and industries, and to transfer funds to poor countries. With well-designed climate-fiscal policy relying on carbon pricing, global decarbonization will have anything from moderately positive to moderately negative impacts on fiscal balances in high-income countries. For middle and low-income countries, net fiscal impacts are generally positive and can be significant. Revenue sharing at the global level would make an historical contribution to breaching the financial divide between rich and poor countries.
March 1, 2024
Do Capital Inflows Spur Technology Diffusion? Evidence from a New Technology Adoption Index
Description: We construct a novel measure of technology adoption, the Embodied Technology Imports Indicator (ETI), available for 181 countries over the period 1970-2020. The ETI measures the technological intensity of imports of each country by leveraging patent data from PATSTAT and product-level trade data from COMTRADE. We use this index to assess the link between capital flows and the diffusion of new technologies across emerging economies and low-income countries. Through a local projection difference-in-differences approach, we establish that variations in statutory capital flow regulations increase technological intensity by 7-9 percentage points over 5 to 10 years. This increase is accompanied by a significant 28-33 pp rise in the volume of gross capital inflows, driven primarily by foreign direct investment (21 pp increase), and a 9 to 12 percentage points shift in the level of Real GDP per capita in PPP terms.
March 1, 2024
Trade Spillovers of Domestic Subsidies
Description: As governments resort to industrial policies to achieve economic and non-economic objectives, the number of subsidies implemented each year has more than tripled in the last decade. Using detailed data across a large number of advanced and emerging economies, we empirically investigate the effects of domestic subsidies on international trade flows. Estimates from a difference-in-difference specification show that on average subsidies promote both exports and imports. These effects are partly driven by selection into subsidies, as governments target export-oriented and import-competing products. The results however mask significant differences across countries. Specifically, exports of subsidized products from G20 emerging markets increase 8 percent more than exports of other products, with no evidence of selection. The gravity estimates confirm that subsidies promote international relative to domestic trade. These spillover effects are concentrated in some industries, such as electrical machinery, and are stronger when subsidies are given through tax breaks than other policy instruments. The subsidy-led rise in trade calls for international cooperation to manage risks of retaliatory actions and possible drifts towards a subsidy war.
March 1, 2024
Inflated Concerns: Exposure to Past Inflationary Episodes and Preferences for Price Stability
Description: Using individual-level survey data for both advanced economies and emerging markets spanning over 45 years for 42 countries, we show that cohorts who have had higher exposure to past inflationary episodes (levels, as well as to more persistent or to more volatile inflation), systematically express higher concerns over rising prices. The link between past high inflation exposure and expressed concerns over price stability is particularly strong when an individual’s exposure occurs in the latter part of her working-age (as in lifecycle theory). The impact of past exposure to high inflation on contemporaneous preferences over price stability increases when surveyed in the midst of high ongoing inflation and with macroeconomic instability (as measured by GDP growth volatility), but diminishes with the quality of institutions.
March 1, 2024
Medium-term Macroeconomic Effects of Russia’s War in Ukraine and How it Affects Energy Security and Global Emission Targets
Description: Russia’s war in Ukraine has disrupted the supply of natural gas for many European countries, triggering an energy crisis and affecting energy security. We simulate the medium-term effects of these trade disruptions and find that most European countries have limited GDP losses but those more dependent on Russian natural gas face moderate losses. European fossil fuel consumption and emissions are reduced and after accounting for the war impacts, achieving Europe’s emission targets becomes slightly less costly. In terms of energy security, the war eliminates European energy dependency from Russian imports, but most of the natural gas and oil imports will be substituted by other suppliers. We also find that constructing a new Russian pipeline to China does not provide significant macroeconomic benefits to either country.
February 23, 2024
An Integrated Policy Framework (IPF) Diagram for International Economics
Description: The Mundell-Fleming IS-LM approach has guided generations of economists over the past 60 years. But countries have experienced new problems, the international finance literature has advanced, and the composition of the global economy has changed, so the scene is set for an updated approach. We propose an Integrated Policy Framework (IPF) diagram to analyze the use of multiple policy tools as a function of shocks and country characteristics. The underlying model features dominant currency pricing, shallow foreign exchange (FX) markets, and occasionally-binding external and domestic borrowing constraints. Our diagram includes the use of monetary policy, FX intervention, capital controls, and domestic macroprudential measures. It has four panels to explore four key trade-offs related to import consumption, home goods consumption, the housing market, and monetary policy. Our extended diagram adds fiscal policy into the mix.
February 23, 2024
Navigating the Evolving Landscape between China and Africa’s Economic Engagements
Description: China and Africa have forged a strong economic relationship since China’s accession to the WTO in 2001. This paper examines the evolution of these economic ties starting in the early 2000s, and the subsequent shift in the relationship triggered by the commodity price collapse in 2015 and by the COVID-19 pandemic. The potential effects on the African continent of a further slowdown in Chinese growth are analyzed, highlighting the varying effects on different countries in Africa, especially those heavily dependent on their economic relationship with China. The conclusion offers a discussion of ways how African countries and China could adapt to the changing relationship.
February 23, 2024
Determinants of Zombie Banks in Emerging Markets and Developing Economies
Description: While deeply undercapitalized banks have been shown to misallocate credit to weak firms, the drivers of such zombie banks are less researched, particularly across countries. To furnish empirical evidence, we compile a dataset of undercapitalized banks from emerging markets and developing economies. We classify zombie banks as those not receiving remedial treatment by owners or regulators or, alternatively, remaining chronically undercapitalized. Using logit regressions, we find that country-specific factors are more influential for zombie status than bank characteristics, alhough some become significant when disaggregating by region. The paper’s overall findings imply the need for a proper regulatory framework and an effective resolution regime to deal with zombie banks more decisively.
February 23, 2024
A New Measure of Central Bank Independence
Description: This paper constructs a new index for measuring de jure central bank independence, the first entirely new index in three decades. The index draws on a comprehensive dataset from the IMF’s Central Bank Legislation Database (CBLD) and Monetary Operations and Instruments Database (MOID) and weightings derived from a survey of 87 respondents, mostly consisting of central bank governors and general counsels. It improves upon existing indices including the Cukierman, Webb, and Neyapti (CWN) index, which has been the de facto standard for measuring central bank independence since 1992, as well as recent extensions by Garriga (2016) and Romelli (2022). For example, it includes areas absent from the CWN index, such as board composition, financial independence, and budgetary independence. It treats dimensions such as the status of the chief executive as composite metrics to prevent overstating the independence of statutory schemes. It distills ten key metrics, simplifying current frameworks that now include upwards of forty distinct variables. And it replaces the subjective weighting systems relied on in the existing literature with an empirically grounded alternative. This paper presents the key features of the new index; a companion, forthcoming paper will provide detailed findings by country/region, income level, and exchange rate regime.