Working Papers
2020
August 7, 2020
The Economic Effects of COVID-19 Containment Measures
Description: Containment measures are crucial to halt the spread of the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic but entail large short-term economic costs. This paper tries to quantify these effects using daily global data on real-time containment measures and indicators of economic activity such as Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) emissions, flights, energy consumption, maritime trade, and mobility indices. Results suggest that containment measures have had, on average, a very large impact on economic activity—equivalent to a loss of about 15 percent in industrial production over a 30-day period following their implementation. Using novel data on fiscal and monetary policy measures used in response to the crisis, we find that these policy measures were effective in mitigating some of these economic costs. We also find that while workplace closures and stay-at-home orders are more effective in curbing infections, they are associated with the largest economic costs. Finally, while easing of containment measures has led to a pickup in economic activity, the effect has been lower (in absolute value) than that from the tightening of measures.
August 7, 2020
Financial Inclusion: What Have We Learned So Far? What Do We Have to Learn?
Description: The past two decades have seen a rapid increase in interest in financial inclusion, both from policymakers and researchers. This paper surveys the main findings from the literature, documenting the trends over time and gaps that have arisen across regions, income levels, and gender, among others. It points out that structural, as well as policy-related, factors, such as encouraging banking competition or channeling government payments through bank accounts, play an important role, and describes the potential macro and microeconomic benefits that can be derived from greater financial inclusion. It argues that policy should aim to identify and reduce frictions holding back financial inclusion, rather than targeting specific levels of inclusion. Finally, it suggests areas for future research.
August 7, 2020
The Nature of Islamic Banking and Solvency Stress Testing - Conceptual Considerations
Description: This paper provides a conceptual overview of key aspects of the design and implementation of solvency stress testing of Islamic banks. Based on existing regulatory standards and prudential practice, the paper explains how Islamic finance principles and their impact on various risk drivers affect the capital assessment of asset-oriented financial intermediation under stress. The formal specification of these risk factors helps operationalize and integrate the stress testing of Islamic banks within established frameworks for financial stability analysis.
August 7, 2020
Productivity in the Netherlands
Description: Although GDP growth in the Netherlands has recently been stronger than in peer countries, the main contributor has been the growth in labor. If GDP is divided by labor, productivity growth appears to have been slower than in peers. This chapter discusses both exogenous and endogenous factors behind the disappointing productivity growth in the Netherlands and derives policy implications.
August 7, 2020
Exchange Rate Pass-Through in the Caucasus and Central Asia
Description: This paper estimates the extent and speed of exchange rate pass-through (ERPT) in seven Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) countries using monthly data over the January 1995–May 2020 period. The estimations are performed using the local projections method. We find that the average pass-through in the CCA is about 10 percent on impact and about 25 percent after 12 months. There is no evidence of asymmetric ERPT with respect to the size and the sign of exchange rate changes. The pass-through is broadly unchanged in fixed versus floating exchange rate regimes. There has been a downward shift in the speed of ERPT in the aftermath of the global financial crisis as CCA countries have entered a relatively low inflation environment. The pass-through estimates could be used by the CCA monetary authorities for inflation projections. The absence of non-linearities in the pass-through with respect to the exchange rate regime suggests that transition from fixed to floating exchange rate regimes in the region is not likely to impose additional inflationary costs.
August 7, 2020
Demographic Transition and Pension Reforms: Adding Demographics to GIMF
Description: The Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model developed at the International Monetary Fund for policy analysis and international economic research. This paper documents the incorporation of demographic features into the model. The analysis presented illustrates how these new features enable the model to estimate some of the macroeconomic consequences of changing demographics.
August 7, 2020
Do Multi-Sector Bond Funds Pose Risks to Emerging Markets?
Description: Emerging economies in the post-crisis period increasingly saw portfolio debt inflows from a type of large international investment fund: Multi-Sector Bond Funds (MSBFs). These investors have lacked adequate representation in the literature. This paper constructs a new detailed database from micro-level MSBF emerging market (EM) holdings from 2009:Q4–2018:Q2. Exploiting this data, the paper assesses the risks they pose to the financial stability of specific emerging bond markets. The data shows that MSBFs are highly concentrated–both in their positions and their decision-making. The empirical results further suggest that MSBFs exhibit opportunistic behavior (and more so than other investment funds). In periods of high risk aversion, large MSBF portfolio reallocations out of EMs can be associated with underperformance of the same markets, signaling the importance of monitoring their footprint and better understanding their asset allocation decisions.
August 7, 2020
Managing Macrofinancial Risk
Description: We augment a linearized dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with a tractable endogenous risk mechanism, to support the joint analysis of monetary and macroprudential policy. This state dependent conditional heteroskedasticity mechanism specifies the conditional variances of structural shocks as functions of the business or financial cycle. The resultant heteroskedastic linearized DSGE model preserves the satisfactory simulation and forecasting performance of its nested homoskedastic counterpart for the conditional means of endogenous variables, while substantially improving its goodness of fit to their conditional distributions. In particular, the model matches the key stylized facts of growth at risk. Accounting for state dependent conditional heteroskedasticity makes it optimal for monetary policy to respond more aggressively to the business cycle, and for macroprudential policy to manage the resilience of the banking sector more actively over the financial cycle.
July 31, 2020
Privacy Provision, Payment Latency, and Role of Collateral
Description: The new boundary between publicly and privately provided payments systems and the role of collateral may be changing. Recent technological developments have made it feasible for markets and policymakers to contemplate abolishing physical cash, and replacing it with electronic alternatives like digital tokens. This paper focuses on two concepts: (i) privacy provision that results in increased awareness of and concern with problems of privacy in payments systems; and (ii) payment latency, and how the new fintech world is likely to result in reduced counterparty and interest rate risk for corporate treasurer. The paper ties these issues from the lens of collateral, especially the analogy of collateral reuse and digital tokens.
July 31, 2020
Poverty and Social Protection in Bulgaria
Description: Absolute poverty has dropped markedly in Bulgaria but income inequality has increased substantially in the aftermath of the GFC. This increase is due to a rise in market income inequality that was compounded by a reduction in fiscal redistribution. The redistributive role of direct taxation has declined with the introduction of a flat tax and social spending is relatively low and decreasing (as a share of GDP), is concentrated on a few social risks, and experienced a decline in its redistributive efficiency. The COVID-19 crisis is likely to deepen income inequality, increasing the room for redistributive policies.