Working Papers
2018
November 1, 2018
The Labor Market Integration of Migrants in Europe: New Evidence from Micro Data
Description: This paper presents novel empirical evidence on the labor market integration of migrants across Europe. It investigates how successfully migrants integrate in 13 European countries by applying a unified framework to analyze a rich micro dataset with over ten million individuals surveyed between 1998 and 2016. Focusing on employment outcomes, we document substantial heterogeneity in the patterns of labor market integration across host countries and by migrant gender and origin. Our results also point to the importance of cohorts and network effects, initial labor market conditions, and the differential impact of education acquired domestically and abroad in determining migrants’ subsequent employment prospects. The analysis has implications for the design of effective integration policies.
October 31, 2018
The Morning After--The Impact on Collateral Supply After a Major Default
Description: Changes to the regulatory system introduced after the financial crisis include not only mandatory clearing of OTC derivatives at central counterparties and margining of uncleared derivatives, but also prudential measures, including notably a “Liquidity Coverage Ratio” which obliges firms to set aside high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) as a stopgap against anticipated cash outflows. We examine factors which may affect the demand for HQLA in a severely stressed market following a hypothetical default of a major clearing member. Immediately following a major default, the amount of HQLA demanded by the whole market would spike. We estimate the size of the spike and draw conclusions as to whether the depth of the market is adequate to absorb it.
October 24, 2018
The Cost and Benefits of Tax Treaties with Investment Hubs: Findings from Sub-Saharan Africa
Description: This paper investigates the costs and benefits of concluding double tax treaties with investment hubs. Based on a sample of 41 African economies from 1985–2015, the results suggest that signing treaties with investment hubs is not associated with additional investments; yet, these treaties tend to come with nonnegligible revenue losses. Building on a theoretical model, the paper investigates the role of treaty shopping in driving nominal investment flows and provides indirect evidence for its importance in the sample
October 8, 2018
Rightsizing Brazil’s Public-Sector Wage Bill
Description: Brazil’s public-sector wage bill is comparatively high. It grows inertially and competes with other spending. Rightsizing the wage bill could stimulate administrative efficiency and bring more equity into a system where public employees earn more than private in comparable professions. Most importantly, however, a reform is necessary to comply with the Federal government expenditure ceiling and the subnational fiscal responsibility rules. A reform should thus encompass all government levels, and all careers, and should aim to achieve a real decrease in salaries and lower employment. In the medium term, a review of the compensation structure should rationalize the multitude if wage grids, merge allowances into the base wage, and align public sector compensation to private wages in low-skilled professions.
October 8, 2018
Structural Reform Priorities for Brazil
Description: Over the last few decades, Brazil has experienced relatively weak economic growth due to stagnant productivity. To boost productivity, Brazil should embark on an ambitious structural reform process. In doing so, it is crucial that authorities select a few reform priorities to avoid dispersing political capital on an overly broad reform agenda. The paper aims to identify Brazil’s reform priorities in two steps. First, it estimates the impact that different reforms have on Brazil’s productivity. Second, it analyzes survey data to assess the extent of public support for reforms. The results show that banking sector reforms would generate the largest productivity gains and have the highest level of public support. Moreover, they would also be relatively easy to legislate and generate significant fiscal savings.
October 2, 2018
Business Cycle with Bank Intermediation in Oil Economies
Description: The structural model in this paper proposes a micro-founded framework that incorporates an active banking sector with an oil-producing sector. The primary goal of adding a banking sector is to examine the role of an interbank market on shocks, introduce a national development fund and study its link to the banking sector and the government. The government and the national development fund directly play key roles in the propagation of the oil shock. In contrast, the banking sector and the labor market, through perfect substitution between the oil and non-oil sectors, have major indirect impacts in spreading shocks.
September 28, 2018
Rethinking Development Policy: Deindustrialization, Servicification and Structural Transformation
Description: This paper takes a fresh look at the current theories of structural transformation and the role of private and public fundamentals in the process. It summarizes some representative past and current experiences of various countries vis-a-vis structural transformation with a focus on the roles of manufacturing, policy, and the international environment in shaping the trajectory of structural transformation. The salient aspects of the current debate on premature deindustrialization and its relation to a middle-income trap are described as they relate to the path of structural transformation. Conclusions are drawn regarding prospective future paths for structural transformation and development policies.
September 28, 2018
The Effects of Higher Bank Capital Requirements on Credit in Peru
Description: This paper offers novel evidence on the impact of raising bank capital requirements in the context of an emerging market: Peru. Using quarterly bank-level data and exploiting the adoption of bank-specific capital buffers, we find that higher capital requirements have a short-lived, negative impact on bank credit in Peru, although this effect becomes statistically insignificant in about half a year. This finding is robust to estimating different specifications to address concerns about the exogeneity of capital requirements. The fact that the reform was gradual and pre-announced and that banks were highly profitable at the time could explain the short-lived effects on credit.
September 28, 2018
China’s Capacity Reduction Reform and Its Impact on Producer Prices
Description: In late 2015, the Chinese authorities launched a policy to reduce capacity in the coal and steel industries under the wider effort of Supply-Side Structural Reforms. Around the same time, producer price inflation in China started to pick up strongly after being trapped in negative territory for more than fifty consecutive months. So what is behind this strong reflation—capacity cuts in coal and steel, or a strengthening of aggregate demand? Our empirical analyses indicate that a pickup in aggregate demand, possibly due to the government’s stimulus package in 2015-16, was the more important driver. Capacity cuts played a role in propping up coal and steel prices, explaining at most 40 percent of their price increase.
September 28, 2018
Who Creates New Firms When Local Opportunities Arise?
Description: New firm formation is a critical driver of job creation, and an important contributor to the responsiveness of the economy to aggregate shocks. In this paper we examine the characteristics of the individuals who become entrepreneurs when local opportunities arise due to an increase in local demand. We identify local demand shocks by linking fluctuations in global commodity prices to municipality level agricultural endowments in Brazil. We find that the firm creation response is almost entirely driven by young and skilled individuals, as measured by their level of experience, education, and past occupations involving creativity, problem-solving and managerial roles. In contrast, we find no such response within the same municipalities among skilled, yet older individuals, highlighting the importance of lifecycle considerations. These responsive individuals are younger and more skilled than the average entrepreneur in the population. The entrepreneurial response of young individuals is larger in municipalities with better access to finance, and in municipalities with more skilled human capital. These results highlight how the characteristics of the local population can have a significant impact on the entrepreneurial responsiveness of the economy.