Working Papers
2020
September 25, 2020
Managing Fiscal Risks from State-Owned Enterprises
Description: Ensuring that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are efficient and managed prudently is important for economic and social reasons. It is also crucial to contain fiscal risks and reduce the burden on taxpayers from recurrent and large bailouts. Governments need to develop stronger capacity to monitor and mitigate the risks from SOEs. We present a risk tool to benchmark the performance of SOEs relative to their peers and assess their vulnerabilities, including through stress tests. A strategy to mitigate risks requires the right incentives for managers to perform and for government agencies to conduct effective oversight. Incorporating SOEs in overall fiscal targets would promote greater fiscal discipline and transparency.
September 25, 2020
A Simple Macrofiscal Model for Policy Analysis: An Application to Cambodia
Description: The paper describes a semistructural macrofiscal approach to simulating and forecasting macroeconomic policies. Our canonical model is adapted to Cambodia and we demonstrate its application with an illustrative scenario of macroeconomic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Complemented with near-term forecasting tools and expert judgment, the dynamics of the model helps to inform policymakers about medium-term transmission channels and thus guide policy advice.
September 25, 2020
The Monetary Policy Credibility Channel and the Amplification Effects in a Semi-structural Model
Description: The paper extends a standard semi-structural model to account for nonlinear and asymmetric effects of monetary policy credibility. In our setting, central bank credibility is proportional to the deviation of inflation expectations from the announced inflation target, with positive deviations being more costly compared to negative ones. A loss in policy credibility as a result of shocks leads to a more persistent, backward-looking inflation process, and is associated with lower output. We find that the extended model with credibility effects matches well the key macroeconomic data over specific past episodes for Indonesia and Philippines and consider its adaptation to integrated policy frameworks as an area for further exploration.
September 25, 2020
Demographics and the Housing Market: Japan’s Disappearing Cities
Description: How does a shrinking population affect the housing market? In this study, drawing on Japan’s experience, we find that there exists an asymmetric relationship between housing prices and population change. Due to the durability of housing structures, the decline in housing prices associated with population losses is estimated to be larger than the rise in prices associated with population increases. Given that population losses have been and are projected to be more acute in rural areas than urban areas in Japan, the on-going demographic transition in Japan could worsen regional disparities, as falling house prices in rural areas could intensify population outflows. Policy measures to promote more even population growth across regions, and avoid the over-supply of houses, are critical to stabilize house prices with a shrinking population.
September 25, 2020
The Fiscal Multiplier of Public Investment: The Role of Corporate Balance Sheet
Description: This paper explores whether public investment crowds out or crowds in private investment. To this aim, we build a database of about half a million firms from 49 countries. We find that the effect of public investment on corporate investment depends both on leverage and financial constraints. Public investment boosts private investment for firms with low leverage. However, for firms with high leverage, private investment does not react to an increase in public investment, in line with theory (Myers 1977). We also find that the effect of public investment on corporate investment is much weaker for firms that are financially constrained.
September 25, 2020
Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis: A Framework for Sustainable Government-To-Person Mobile Money Transfers
Description: During the 2020 pandemic, the majority of countries have provided income support to households at an unprecedented speed and scale. Social distancing measures and the large penetration of mobile phones in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) have encouraged government-to-person (G2P) transfers through mobile platforms. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for sustainable money solutions in support of social assistance. The framework consists of eight building blocks that may help policymakers i) take stock and assess emergency fixes taken to scale up mobile money in a crisis context and ii) develop sustainable long-term solutions for mobile G2P transfers.
September 25, 2020
Do FX Interventions Lead to Higher FX Debt? Evidence from Firm-Level Data
Description: Central banks often buy or sell reserves-–-so called FX interventions (FXIs)---to dampen sharp exchange rate movements caused by volatile capital flows. At the same time, these interventions may entail unintended side effects. In this paper, we investigate whether FXIs incentivize firms to take on more unhedged FX debt, thereby increasing medium-term corporate vulnerabilities. Using a novel dataset with close to 5,000 nonfinancial firms across 19 emerging markets covering 2002--2017, we find that the firm-level share of FX debt rises following intensive use of FXIs, particularly for non-exporting firms in shallow financial markets with no FX debt to begin with. The magnitude of this effect is economically significant, with one standard deviation increase in FXI leading to an average 2 percentage points increase in the FX debt share. For reference, the median share of FX debt in the sample is zero.
September 25, 2020
Should Inequality Factor into Central Banks' Decisions?
Description: Inequality is increasingly a concern. Fiscal and structural policies are well-understood mitigators. However, less is known about the potential role of monetary policy. This paper investigates how inequality matters for monetary policy within a tractable Two-Agent New Keynesian model that captures important dimensions of inequality. We find some support for making inequality an explicit target for monetary policy, particularly if central banks follow standard Taylor rules.
September 25, 2020
The Macroeconomic Effects of Structural Reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean
Description: This paper estimates the macroeconomic effects of structural reforms in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) using the dataset constructed by Alesina et al. (2020). We find that large changes in the reform index have positive effects on GDP and employment that reach 2 percent after 5 years. Furthermore, reforms boost investment, exports, imports, and reduce export concentration, in addition to favoring tradable sectors. Nonetheless, the results also indicate that the effects of reforms have not been uniform across different segments of the population. These findings bring to the forefront the need to consider accompanying policies to ensure that reforms promote inclusive growth. Moreover, evidence from country case studies using the synthetic control method point to heterogeneous effects of reforms on income per capita.
September 25, 2020
To Pass (or Not to Pass) Through International Fuel Price Changes to Domestic Fuel Prices in Developing Countries: What Are the Drivers?
Description: While many developing countries limit the international fuel price pass through to domestic fuel prices, others do not. Against this backdrop, we examine the factors that determine whether governments allow international fuel price changes to be passed through to domestic prices in developing countries using a dataset spanning 109 developing countries from 2000 to 2014. The paper finds that the pass-through is higher when changes in international prices are moderate and less volatile. In addition, the flexibility of the pricing mechanism allows for higher pass-through while exchange rate depreciation and lower retail fuel prices in neighboring countries inhibit it. The econometric results also underscore the fact that countries with inflation tend to experience lower pass-through, whereas those with high public debt exhibit larger pass-through. Finally, no evidence is found that political variables or environmental policies matter with regard to fuel price dynamics in the short-term. These findings, which are consistent across fuel products (gasoline, diesel and kerosene), allow us to draw important policy lessons for fuel subsidy reforms.