Working Papers
2018
August 24, 2018
Fiscal Transparency, Borrowing Costs, and Foreign Holdings of Sovereign Debt
Description: This paper explores the effects of fiscal transparency on the borrowing costs of 33 emerging and developing economies (EMs), and on foreign demand for their sovereign debt. Using multiple indicators, including a constructed one based on the published data in the IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Yearbook, we measure the separate effects of the three dimensions of fiscal transparency: openness of the budget process, fiscal data transparency, and accountability of fiscal actors. The results suggest that higher fiscal transparency reduces sovereign interest rate spreads and increases foreign holdings of sovereign debt, with each dimension of fiscal transparency playing a different role. Availability of detailed cross-country comparable fiscal data, especially for balance sheet items, has shown to increase foreign investors’ willingness in holding EM sovereign debt.
August 22, 2018
Understanding Euro Area Inflation Dynamics: Why So Low for So Long?
Description: Despite closing output gaps and tightening labor markets, inflation has remained low in the euro area. Based on an augmented Phillips Curve framework, we find that this phenomenon—sometimes attributed to low global inflation—has been primarily caused by a remarkable persistence of inflation, keeping it low despite the reduction in slack. This feature is shown to be specific to the euro area (in comparison with the United States). Monetary policy needs to stay accommodative to help guide inflation back to target.
August 21, 2018
Foreign Direct Investment in New Member State of the EU and Western Balkans: Taking Stock and Assessing Prospects
Description: FDI has played a strong role in the export-led growth of eastern European countries that are now members of the European Union (EU). Largely sourced from advanced Europe, FDI inflows were motivated by the intention to pursue new markets and cost efficiency. Over time, foreign investment has restructured the exports sector in these countries in favor of products that are considered more technology-intensive. As these countries face skills shortage and rising wages, what is needed for FDI to continue playing a strong role? Can the Western Balkan countries, who are not yet EU members and have in recent years stepped up financial incentives and policy initiatives to court investors, emulate the experience? This paper takes stock of the FDI experience of both these groups and tries to estimate their potential gains from additional policy efforts.
August 16, 2018
Employment Protection Deregulation and Labor Shares in Advanced Economies
Description: Labor market deregulation, intended to boost productivity and employment, is one plausible, yet little studied, driver of the decline in labor shares that took place across most advanced economies since the early 1990s. This paper assesses the impact of job protection deregulation in a sample of 26 advanced economies over the period 1970-2015, using a newly constructed dataset of major reforms to employment protection legislation for regular contracts. We apply the local projection method to estimate the dynamic response of the labor share to our reform events at both the country and the country-industry levels. For the latter, we employ a differences-in-differences identification strategy using two identifying assumptions grounded in theory—namely that job protection deregulation should have larger negative effects in industries characterized by (i) a higher “natural” propensity to adjust the workforce, and (ii) a lower elasticity of substitution between capital and labor. We find a statistically significant, economically large and robust negative effect of deregulation on the labor share. In particular, illustrative back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that job protection deregulation may have contributed about 15 percent to the average labor share decline in advanced economies. Together with existing evidence regarding the macroeconomic gains from job protection and other labor market reforms, our results also point to the need for policymakers to address efficiency-equity trade-offs when designing such reforms.
August 7, 2018
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: An Appraisal
Description: This paper assesses the landmark Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), from the perspective of both the U.S. itself and the wider world. The reform has many positive aspects including steps to broaden the base of, and reduce marginal rates under, the personal income tax (PIT), reduce distortions to investment and financing decisions, and mitigate outward profit shifting. But the TCJA has a large fiscal price tag and leaves significant uncertainty as to how the U.S. tax system will develop. The PIT changes could have better targeted relief at low earners, and there is scope to more fully address distortions in business taxation. The novel international provisions create a complex array of both positive and negative international spillovers, and have the potential to significantly reshape the wider international tax system.
August 6, 2018
Road to Industrialized Africa: Role of Efficient Factor Market in Firm Growth
Description: After a decade of rapid growth, industrialization has lost ground with shrinking manufacturing sector and high informality in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper explores how land market and labor regulations affect factor allocative efficiency and firm performance in SSA. Using pooled data on firm balance sheets for 40 countries in SSA, the results identify significant land and labor misallocations due to limited market allocation of land and inappropriate regulatory policies. Using variations in ethnic diversity and the intensity of regulatory actions to peer firms at subnational level as instrumental variables, local average treatment effects show large productivity gains from factor reallocations, especially for marginally productive firms. Panel data results for Nigerian firms confirm factor market inefficiency as a principal driver of declining productivity, while showing that the 2011 minimum wage reform increased firm size. The results imply that improving formal regulation is critical to support firm growth at the stage of weak legal capacity, while informal sector monitoring gets effective as legal capacity develops.
August 3, 2018
Assessing the Impact of Structural Reforms Through a Supply-side Framework: The Case of Argentina
Description: The paper uses a supply-side framework based on a production function approach to assess the role of structural reforms in boosting long-term GDP growth in Argentina. The impact of product, labor, trade, and tax reforms on each supply-side channel—capital accumulation, labor utilization, and total factor productivity, proxied with an efficiency estimate—is assessed separately and then combined to derive the total impact on growth. The largest effect of structural reforms, involving regulatory changes that promote competition and facilitate flexible forms of employment, comes through the productivity/efficiency channel. Pro-competition regulation also improves labor utilization, while lower entry barriers and trade tariffs are important for capital accumulation. Structural reforms could have substantial effects on Argentina’s long-term GDP growth; for example, an ambitious reform effort to improve business regulatory environment would add 1–1½ percent to average annual growth of GDP.
August 3, 2018
Bunching at 3 Percent: The Maastricht Fiscal Criterion and Government Deficits
Description: This paper estimates the effects of the Maastricht treaty’s fiscal criterion on EU countries’ general government deficits. We combine treatment effects methods with bunching estimation, and find that the 3 percent deficit rule acts as a “magnet”, increasing the number of observations around the threshold, while reducing the occurrence of both large government deficits and surpluses. After the rule is adopted, the distribution of government deficits among EU countries displays 20 percent excess mass around the deficit ceiling compared to a counterfactual distribution in which countries have the same observable characteristics but without the fiscal rule. Most of the bunching response comes from a reduction in the number of high deficit observations. We also find that the average treatment effect on fiscal deficits is positive and statistically significant. Finally, we derive country-specific impacts under a rank invariance assumption and find that all EU countries have seen their fiscal position improve on average as a result of the deficit rule.
August 3, 2018
Predicting Fiscal Crises
Description: This paper identifies leading indicators of fiscal crises based on a large sample of countries at different stages of development over 1970-2015. Our results are robust to different methodologies and sample periods. Previous literature on early warning sistems (EWS) for fiscal crises is scarce and based on small samples of advanced and emerging markets, raising doubts about the robustness of the results. Using a larger sample, our analysis shows that both nonfiscal (external and internal imbalances) and fiscal variables help predict crises among advanced and emerging economies. Our models performed well in out-of-sample forecasting and in predicting the most recent crises, a weakness of EWS in general. We also build EWS for low income countries, which had been overlooked in the literature.
August 2, 2018
The Term Structure of Growth-at-Risk
Description: Using panel quantile regressions for 11 advanced and 10 emerging market economies, we show that the conditional distribution of GDP growth depends on financial conditions, with growth-at-risk (GaR)—defined as growth at the lower 5th percentile—more responsive than the median or upper percentiles. In addition, the term structure of GaR features an intertemporal tradeoff: GaR is higher in the short run; but lower in the medium run when initial financial conditions are loose relative to typical levels, and the tradeoff is amplified by a credit boom. This shift in the growth distribution generally is not incorporated when solving dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models with macrofinancial linkages, which suggests downside risks to GDP growth are systematically underestimated.