Working Papers
2020
July 24, 2020
A Framework for Estimating Health Spending in Response to COVID-19
Description: We estimate the additional health spending necessary to treat COVID-19 patients. We expand a Susceptible Infected Recovered model to project the number of people requiring hospitalization, use information about healthcare costs by country, and make assumptions about capacity constraints in the health sector. Without social distancing and lockdowns, countries would need to expand health systems ten-fold, on average, to assist all COVID-19 patients in need of hospitalization. Under capacity constraints, effective social distancing and quarantine reduce the additional health spending from a range of $0.6–1 trillion globally to $130–231 billion, and the fatality rate from 1.2 to 0.2 percent, on average.
July 24, 2020
Do Monetary Policy Frameworks Matter in Low Income Countries?
Description: In recent years, many Low-Income Countries (LICs) have implemented substantial reforms to their monetary policy frameworks, but existing economic research has not provided a clear rationale to guide those efforts. In this paper we analyze the role of monetary policy frameworks in the propagation of aggregate shocks, using a large panel dataset of 79 LICs over the period 1990-2015 as well as event study analysis for a group of 28 sub-Saharan African LICs. We find highly significant differences in the propagation of external shocks between the LICs that target monetary aggregates or inflation compared to those that maintain rigid nominal exchange rates as a nominal anchor. We also find that the large surprise devaluation of the Central African Franc (CFA) in January 1994 had highly significant effects on the GDP growth of 10 CFA countries compared to 18 similar countries that were outside the CFA zone. Our empirical analysis provides strong support for the role of monetary policy frameworks in facilitating macroeconomic stability in LICs—a conclusion that is particularly relevant as LICs now face a multitude of similar shocks associated with the global COVID-19 pandemic.
July 24, 2020
The Real Effects of Mobile Money: Evidence from a Large-Scale Fintech Expansion
Description: Mobile money services have rapidly expanded across emerging and developing economies and enabled new ways through which households and firms can conduct payments, save and send remittances. We explore how mobile money use can impact economic outcomes in India using granular data on transactions from Paytm, one of the largest mobile money service provider in India with over 400 million users. We exploit the period around the demonetization policy, which prompted a surge in mobile money adoption, and analyze how mobile money affects traditional risk-sharing arrangements. Our main finding is that mobile money use increases the resilience to shocks by dampening the impact of rainfall shocks on nightlights-based economic activity and household consumption. We complement these findings by conducting a firm survey around a phased targeting intervention which incentivized firms to adopt the mobile payment technology. Our results suggest that firms adopting mobile payments improved their sales after six-months of use, compared to other firms. We also elicit firms’ subjective expectations on future sales and find mobile payment adoption to be associated with lower subjective uncertainty and greater sales optimism.
July 24, 2020
Public Debt and r - g at Risk
Description: As interest rate-growth differentials (r-g) turned negative in many countries, governments consider pursuing fiscal expansion and the potential risks involved. Using a large sample of advanced and emerging economies, our analysis suggests that high public debts can lead to adverse future r-g dynamics. Specifically, countries with higher initial public debt experience (i) a shorter duration of negative r-g episodes and a higher probability of reversal, (ii) higher average r-g, and (iii) a more right-skewed r-g distribution, that implies higher down-side risks. Furthermore, high-debt countries experience larger increases in interest rates in response to (iv) an unexpected decline in domestic output and (v) an increase of global volatility. Results are stronger when public debts are denominated in foreign currencies.
July 17, 2020
COVID-19 and Emerging Markets: An Epidemiological Model with International Production Networks and Capital Flows
Description: We quantify the macroeconomic effects of COVID-19 for a small open economy by calibrating a SIR-multi-sector-macro model. We measure sectoral supply shocks utilizing teleworking and physical job proximity, and demand shocks with credit card purchases. Both shocks are also affected from changing infection rates under different lockdown scenarios. Being an open economy amplifies the economic costs through two main channels. First, the demand shock has domestic and external components. Second, the initial shock is magnified due to domestic and international input-output linkages.
July 17, 2020
A Framework for Assessing the Costs of Pension Reform Reversals
Description: Several European countries are currently considering reversing parts of their pension reforms that were adopted previously to improve sustainability. In this paper we present a framework that allows us to quantify the macroeconomic and fiscal costs of such reversals. We thereby integrate the country-specific information from the latest Ageing Report into a dynamic general equilibrium model with overlapping generations. Focusing on Germany and Slovakia as country cases, our model replicates the Ageing Report’s pension expenditure projections very well. We calculate the macroeconomic impact of first the additional pension reforms needed to contain the public debt pressures arising from population ageing and second the costs of reform reversals. Our model results show that undoing past pension reforms would generate substantial adverse macroeconomic costs and could pose challenges for fiscal sustainability.
July 17, 2020
International Trade and Corporate Market Power
Description: This paper examines the effect of international trade on corporate market power in emerging market economies and developing countries, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis is based on a large firm-level dataset, tariff data by sector and agreggate indicators of international trade for the period 2000-17. Greater trade liberalization and trade integration are associated with significant declines in market power, with the effect being more pronounced for firms in the manufacturing and ICT sectors, private sector firms, and firms with higher initial markups. Firms in sub-Saharan Africa tend to experience signficantly lower markups after allowing greater trade integration. The effects of trade liberalization on market power materializes over time, and there are significant complementarities between trade reforms and real sector reforms.
July 17, 2020
Remittances in Russia and Caucasus and Central Asia: the Gravity Model
Description: Remitances are an important source of external financing in low- and middle-income countries. This paper uses the gravity model to analyze remittance flows in Russia and Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) countries. Standard gravity determinants, such as GDP in sending and recieiving countries, bilateral distance, existence of common borders and common official language, fit remittance flows well. Remittances also react to inflation and exchange rate movements in recipient countries to sustain their purchasing power. In line with the altruism hypothesis, remittances flow to countries with higher age dependency ratio. Remittances are countercyclical and help stabilize outputs in recipient countries. However, global shocks resulting in sharp output losses of sending countries would lead to large volatility and decline of remittance inflows in recipient countries. The results of the analysis can be used to assess the impact of the COVID-19 shock on projected remittance flows into CCA.
July 17, 2020
Accounting for Cloud Computing in the National Accounts
Description: Digitalization and the innovative use of digital technologies is changing the way we work, learn, communicate, buy and sell products. One emerging digital technology of growing importance is cloud computing. More and more businesses, governments and households are purchasing hardware and software services from a small number of large cloud computing providers. This change is having an impact on how macroeconomic data are compiled and how they are interpreted by users. Specifically, this is changing the information and communication technology (ICT) investment pattern from one where ICT investment was diversified across many industries to a more concentrated investment pattern. Additionally, this is having an impact on cross-border flows of commercial services since the cloud service provider does not need to be located in the same economic territory as the purchaser of cloud services. This paper will outline some of the methodological and compilation challenges facing statisticians and analysts, provide some tools that can be used to overcome these challenges and highlight some of the implications these changes are having on the way users of national accounts data look at investment and trade in commercial services.
July 17, 2020
Patterns in Invoicing Currency in Global Trade
Description: This paper presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date panel data set of invoicing currencies in global trade. It provides data on the shares of exports and imports invoiced in US dollars, euros, and other currencies for more than 100 countries since 1990. The evidence from these data confirms findings from earlier research regarding the globally dominant role of the US dollar in invoicing – despite the comparatively smaller role of the US in global trade – and the overall stability of invoicing currency patterns. The evidence also points to several novel facts. First, both the US dollar and the euro have been increasingly used for invoicing even as the share of global trade accounted for by the US and the euro area has declined. Second, the euro is used as a vehicle currency in parts of Africa, and some European countries have seen significant shifts toward euro invoicing. Third, as suggested by the dominant currency paradigm, countries invoicing more in US dollars (euros) tend to experience greater US dollar (euro) exchange rate pass-through to their import prices; also, their trade volumes are more sensitive to fluctuations in these exchange rates.