Working Papers
2018
July 10, 2018
Losing to Blackouts: Evidence from Firm Level Data
Description: Many developing economies are often hit by electricity crises either because of supply constraints or lacking in broader energy market reforms. This study uses manufacturing firm census data from Ethiopia to identify productivity losses attributable to power disruptions. Our estimates show that these disruptions, on average, result in productivity losses of about 4–10 percent. We found nonlinear productivity losses at different quantiles along the productivity distribution. Firms at higher quantiles faced higher losses compared to firms around the median. We observed patterns of systematic shutdowns as firms attempt to minimize losses.
July 10, 2018
Who Pays for Financial Crises? Price and Quantity Rationing of Different Borrowers by Domestic and Foreign Banks
Description: Financial crises result in price and quantity rationing of otherwise creditworthy business borrowers, but little is known about the relative severity of these two types of rationing, which borrowers are rationed most, and the roles of foreign and domestic banks. Using a dataset from 50 countries containing over 18,000 business loans with information on the lender, the borrower, and contract terms, we find that publicly-listed borrowers are rationed more by prices or interest rates, whereas privately-held borrowers are rationed more by the number of loans. Also, the global financial crisis appears to have changed how banks price borrower risk. Further, there are important differences between foreign and domestic banks and between U.S. and non-U.S. loans.
July 6, 2018
Bank Competition, Risk Taking, and their Consequences: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage and Labor Markets
Description: Bank competition can induce excessive risk taking due to risk shifting. This paper tests this hypothesis using micro-level U.S. mortgage data by exploiting the exogenous variation in local house price volatility. The paper finds that, in response to high expected house price volatility, banks in U.S. counties with a competitive mortgage market lowered lending standards by twice as much as those with concentrated markets between 2000 and 2005. Such risk taking pattern was associated with real economic outcomes during the financial crisis, including higher unemployment rates in local real sectors.
July 6, 2018
Central Bank Communication and Monetary Policy Surprises in Chile
Description: This paper assesses the quality of the CBC’s communication policy by looking at the predictability and effectiveness of monetary policy communications by the Central Bank of Chile (CBC). To do so, we construct indeces of monetary policy surprises for the three major communication channels of the CBC: the release of policy meetings’ statements, minutes, and monetary policy reports (IPoM). We assess monetary policy predictability and efficacy by looking at the size and time-evolution of monetary policy surprises associated with meeting statements and the impact of the above communication channels on asset markets. We find that, in general, the CBC’s has been effective in its forward guidance through its statements and IPoM. Policy actions are quite predictable, especially post the global financia crisis. The response of equity prices and the exchange rate to monetary policy surprises have the right sign but are not robust. We also find an asymmetric response of equity prices to minutes suggesting that market participants extract information on the status of the economy especially when minutes have a loosening effect. Finally, to look at the macroeconomic impact we find that a 100 bps monetary policy tightening shock implies a decline in economic activity (IMACEC) of about 2 pp. after one year, while the response of inflation is more muted.
July 6, 2018
Self-insurance Against Natural Disasters: The Use of Pension Funds in Pacific Island Countries
Description: Pacific island countries are exposed to significant risks from natural disasters. As a disaster relief measure, Fiji allowed pre-retirement pension withdrawls in the wake of Cyclone Winston in 2016. Motivated by this policy action, we provide a normative analysis of the use of early pension withdrawals after disasters, by setting up a life-cycle saving model with myopic households facing large natural disaster shocks. The model demonstrates the key trade-off between building up sufficient retirement savings and ensuring the access to savings against natural disaster shocks, and sheds light on welfare implications of early pension withdrawals.
July 6, 2018
Trend Inflation and Inflation Compensation
Description: This paper incorporates market-based inflation expectations to the growing literature on trend inflation estimation, and finds that there has been a significant decline in euro area trend inflation since 2013. This finding is robust to using different measures of long-term inflation expectations in the estimation, both market-based and surveys. That evidence: (i) supports the expansion of ECB’s UMP measures since 2015; (ii) provides a metric to monitor long-term inflation expectations following their introduction, and the likelihood of a sustained return of inflation towards levels below, but close to, 2% over the medium term
July 6, 2018
Commodity Price Movements and Banking Crises
Description: We develop an empirical model to predict banking crises in a sample of 60 low-income countries (LICs) over the 1981-2015 period. Given the recent emergence of financial sector stress associated with low commodity prices in several LICs, we assign price movements in primary commodities a key role in our model. Accounting for changes in commodity prices significantly increases the predictive power of the model. The commodity price effect is economically substantial and robust to the inclusion of a wide array of potential drivers of banking crises. We confirm that net capital inflows increase the likelihood of a crisis; however, in contrast to recent findings for advanced and emerging economies, credit growth and capital flow surges play no significant role in predicting banking crises in LICs.
July 6, 2018
Estimates of Potential Output and the Neutral Rate for the U.S. Economy
Description: Estimates of potential output and the neutral short-term interest rate play important roles in policy making. However, such estimates are associated with significant uncertainty and subject to significant revisions. This paper extends the structural multivariate filter methodology by adding a monetary policy block, which allows estimating the neutral rate of interest for the U.S. economy. The addition of the monetary policy block further improves the reliability of the structural multivariate filter.
June 27, 2018
Evaluating IMF Training: What Can We Learn?
Description: The IMF provides training to its membership in its core areas of expertise mainly through its Institute for Capacity Development (ICD) or formerly the IMF Institute (INS). This paper looks at the methods that ICD used to evaluate this activity and analyzes the data collected over the period 2006–13. Since 2015, ICD has undertaken a review of its curriculum and revamped its courses and evaluations. Hence this paper provides a detailed analysis of the situation prior to the review.The study's novel feature is its attempt to distill information from all evaluation sources in one place. It also conducts analysis to explain the evaluation results using participant demographic information. An important message that emerges from the different surveys is that ICD’s training program is well liked. Notable differences in results surface when sorting evaluations results by course type or by geographic location, and whether evaluations were filled out by participants or by their sponsoring managers.
June 25, 2018
Drivers of Labor Force Participation in Advanced Economies: Macro and Micro Evidence
Description: Despite significant headwinds from population aging in most advanced economies (AEs), labor force participation rates show remarkably divergent trajectories both across countries and across di erent groups of workers. Participation increased sharply among prime-age women and, more recently, older workers, but fell among the young and prime-age men. This pa- per investigates the determinants of these trends using aggregate and individual-level data. We nd that the bulk of the dramatic increase in the labor force attachment of prime-age women and older workers in the past three decades can be explained by changes in labor mar- ket policies and institutions, structural transformation, and gains in educational attainment. Technological advances such as automation, on the other hand, weighed on the labor supply of prime-age and older workers. In light of the dramatic demographic shifts expected in the coming decades in many AEs, our ndings underscore the need to invest in education and training, reform the tax system, reduce early retirement incentives, improve the job-matching process, and help individuals combine family and work life in order to alleviate the pressures from aging on labor supply.