Working Papers
2020
July 3, 2020
Non-Financial Corporate Debt in Advanced Economies, 2010–17
Description: This paper studies the evolution of non-financial corporate debt among publicly listed companies in major advanced economies between 2010 and 2017. Since 2010, firms have started to rely more on corporate bond markets and have used part of their debt to increase their holdings of cash. In our sample of some 5,000 firms, we find substantial differences across countries, industries, firms, and years in leverage and debt maturity, and we also identify time factors that are common drivers of capital structures. Within countries, loosening an index of financial conditions seems to be associated with lengthening debt maturity after controlling for firms’ characteristics. Across firms and countries, leveraging and lengthening debt maturity have been greater where economic growth was stronger. Tighter financial conditions are positively associated with an increase in short-term debt financing. Quantile regressions suggest that there is substantial heterogeneity among firms on how they react to macro-financial conditions: large increases in long-term debt financing and large declines in short-term debt financing tend to be driven more by better macroeconomic performance, while large increases in short-term debt financing are more strongly impacted by tighter financial conditions. Since the paper uses data up to 2017, it does not reflect developments that occurred during the coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, sensitivity analysis shows that a significant amount of corporate debt, representing more than 5 percent of GDP, could be at risk in some countries, with an adverse spillover to the financial system if financial conditions tighten or economic growth slows down. This suggests that vulnerabilities should be closely monitored and policy action taken if warranted.
July 3, 2020
Gender Inequality and Economic Growth: Evidence from Industry-Level Data
Description: We study whether higher gender equality facilitates economic growth by enabling better allocation of a valuable resource: female labor. By allocating female labor to its more productive use, we hypothesize that reducing gender inequality should disproportionately benefit industries with typically higher female share in their employment relative to other industries. Specifically, we exploit within-country variation across industries to test whether those that typically employ more women grow relatively faster in countries with ex-ante lower gender inequality. The test allows us to identify the causal effect of gender inequality on industry growth in value-added and labor productivity. Our findings show that gender inequality affects real economic outcomes.
July 3, 2020
Determinants of Inclusive Growth in ASEAN
Description: Over the past decades ASEAN countries have experienced rapid economic growth accompanied by a dramatic fall in poverty rates, but income inequality has not retreated. This research aims at identifying factors which could contribute to more equally distributed growth in ASEAN. To measure inclusive growth, we use a variable integrating per capita income growth and an equity index. A cross-country panel analysis of the impact of macro-structural factors on inclusive growth and its two components suggests that fiscal redistribution, female labor force participation, productivity growth, FDI inflows, digitalization, and savings significantly drive inclusive growth. A scenario analysis based on our econometric results suggests that the implementation of fiscal redistribution and labor market-oriented structural reforms could help significantly accelerate inclusive growth in ASEAN.
July 3, 2020
Global Value Chains and Productivity: Micro Evidence from Estonia
Description: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented collapse in global economic activity and trade. The crisis has also highlighted the role played by global value chains (GVC), with countries facing shortages of components vital to everything from health systems to everyday household goods. Despite the vulnerabilities associated with increased interconnectedness, GVCs have also contributed to increasing productivity and long-term growth. We explore empirically the impact of GVC participation on productivity in Estonia using firm-level data from 2000 to 2016. We find that higher GVC participation at the industry level significantly boosts productivity at both the industry and the firm level. Frontier firms, large firms, and exporting firms also benefit more from GVC participation than non-frontier firms, small firms, and non-exporting firms. We also find that GVC participation of downstream industries has a negative correlation with productivity. Frontier firms and large firms benefit more from GVC participation of upstream industries, while non-frontier firms and small firms benefit more from GVC participation of downstream industries. Our results suggest that policies designed to promote participation in GVCs are important to raise aggregate productivity and potential growth in Estonia.
July 3, 2020
It is Only Natural: Europe’s Low Interest Rates
Description: Estimates of the natural interest rate are often useful in the analysis of monetary and other macroeconomic policies. The topic gathered much attention following the great financial crisis and the Euro Area debt crisis due to the uncertainty regarding the timing of monetary policy normalization and the future path of interest rates. Using a sample of European countries (including several members of the Euro Area), this paper provides estimates of country-specific natural interest rates and some of their drivers between 2000 and 2019. In line with the literature, our findings suggest that natural interest rates declined during this period, and despite a rebound in the last few years of it, they have not recovered to their pre-crisis levels. The paper also discusses the implications of the decline in natural interest rates for monetary conditions and debt sustainability.
July 3, 2020
Agricultural Market Integration in India
Description: We assess the degree of cross-market price discrepancy (a proxy for market integration), its evolution over time, and proximate determinants, using monthly price data for 21 agricultural goods and 60 markets in India. Econometric analysis shows that cross-market price integration is positively associated with the level of transportation infrastructure, and distance between market pairs. There is no robust evidence that price integration has increased in recent years, suggesting that any positive effects of recent policy initiatives are either small, outweighed by the identified determinants of integration, or yet to come.
July 3, 2020
A TIP Against the COVID-19 Pandemic
Description: A universal testing and isolation policy is the most viable way to vanquish a pandemic. Its implementation requires: (i) an epidemiological rather than clinical approach to testing, sacrificing accuracy for scalability, convenience and speed; and (ii) state intervention to ramp up production, similar to True Industrial Policy (TIP), on a global level to achieve a scale and speed the market alone would fail to provide. We sketch a strategy to tackle market failures and implement smart testing, especially in densely populated areas. The estimated cost of testing is dwarfed by its return, mitigating the economic fallout of the pandemic.
July 3, 2020
Global Banks’ Dollar Funding: A Source of Financial Vulnerability
Description: Leading up to the global financial crisis, US dollar activity by global banks headquartered outside the United States played a crucial role in transmitting shocks originating in funding markets. Although post-crisis regulation has improved banking systems’ resilience, US dollar funding remains a global vulnerability, as evidenced by strains that reemerged in March 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. We show that shocks to US dollar funding costs lead to financial stress in the home economies of these global non-US banks, and to spillovers to borrowers, especially emerging economies. US dollar funding vulnerability amplifies these negative effects, while some policy-related factors act as mitigators, such as swap line arrangements between central banks and international reserve holdings. Thus, these vulnerabilities should be monitored and, to the extent possible, controlled.
June 26, 2020
Wealth Inequality and Private Savings: The Case of Germany
Description: This paper explores the interaction between corporate ownership concentration and private savings, and by extension, the current account balance in Germany. As high corporate savings largely reflected capital income accruing to wealthy households and increasingly retained in closely-held firms, the buildup of external imbalances in Germany has been accompanied by widening top income inequality, rising private savings and compressed consumption rates. Rising corporate profits in an environment of high business wealth concentration account for 90 percent of the rise in the private savings rate and a third of the increase in the German current account surplus over 1999–2016.
June 26, 2020
Dampening Global Financial Shocks: Can Macroprudential Regulation Help (More than Capital Controls)?
Description: We show that macroprudential regulation can considerably dampen the impact of global financial shocks on emerging markets. More specifically, a tighter level of regulation reduces the sensitivity of GDP growth to VIX movements and capital flow shocks. A broad set of macroprudential tools contribute to this result, including measures targeting bank capital and liquidity, foreign currency mismatches, and risky forms of credit. We also find that tighter macroprudential regulation allows monetary policy to respond more countercyclically to global financial shocks. This could be an important channel through which macroprudential regulation enhances macroeconomic stability. These findings on the benefits of macroprudential regulation are particularly notable since we do not find evidence that stricter capital controls provide similar gains.