Working Papers
2017
January 30, 2017
Curbing Corporate Debt Bias
Description: Tax provisions favoring corporate debt over equity finance (“debt bias”) are widely recognized as a risk to financial stability. This paper explores whether and how thin-capitalization rules, which restrict interest deductibility beyond a certain amount, affect corporate debt ratios and mitigate financial stability risk. We find that rules targeted at related party borrowing (the majority of today’s rules) have no significant impact on debt bias—which relates to third-party borrowing. Also, these rules have no effect on broader indicators of firm financial distress. Rules applying to all debt, in contrast, turn out to be effective: the presence of such a rule reduces the debt-asset ratio in an average company by 5 percentage points; and they reduce the probability for a firm to be in financial distress by 5 percent. Debt ratios are found to be more responsive to thin capitalization rules in industries characterized by a high share of tangible assets.
January 30, 2017
Czech Magic: Implementing Inflation-Forecast Targeting at the CNB
Description: This paper describes the CNB’s experience implementing an inflation-forecast targeting (IFT) regime, and the building of a system for providing the economic information that policymakers need to implement IFT. The CNB’s experience has been very successful in establishing confidence in monetary policy in the Czech Republic and should provide useful guidance for other central banks that are considering adopting an IFT regime.
January 30, 2017
International Remittances, Migration, and Primary Commodities in FSGM
Description: This paper adds international migration and remittances into the IMF’s Flexible System of Global Models (FSGM). FSGM is a global general equilibrium model with endogenous primary commodity markets. A method to estimate the structural dynamics of major remitter regions is proposed. The dynamics of remittances and migration in FSGM are calibrated to be consistent with the main stylized facts of the empirical estimates. Structural disturbances pertinent to current global remittance flows are examined. These disturbances include disruptions to oil supply, output variation in Europe and the United States, labor nationalization policies in Saudi Arabia, and a global reduction in the cost to remit. The multilateral framework illustrates how remittance inflows need not originate from the region with the underlying economic disturbance but can arise from third party remitter regions affected by global commodity markets. The results also illustrate that the correlation of remittance inflows and the real GDP of labor-exporting economies can be either positively or negatively correlated. The evidence suggests that the behavioral incentive to migrate and remit cannot be deduced from correlations of real GDP and remittance inflows.
January 30, 2017
Financial Deepening in Mexico
Description: International comparisons reveal that—even controlling for a host of explanatory factors—credit depth is exceptionally low in Mexico. Using panel data methods linking credit growth and fundamentals, this paper estimates a long-term gap between actual and expected credit of about 40 percent of GDP. Possible explanations include the history of banking crises, the large informal sector and an inefficient legal system. Using a disequilibrium regression approach, this paper also finds that supply factors are particularly important as determinants of credit in Mexico. Recent financial reforms address many of the supply constraints, but their success will depend on implementation. The main challenge going forward will be to support financial deepening, while limiting risks to financial stability.
January 27, 2017
Corporate Restructuring and Its Macro Effects
Description: This paper describes issues in Korea’s corporate sector, the need for restructuring, and the authorities’ initiatives and challenges. It then identifies lessons from other countries’ experience and conducts an econometric analysis based on cross-country aggregate data, compared with previous studies which mostly use firm-level data. This analysis finds that restructuring episodes, while sometimes challenging in the short term, have typically been associated with more rapid economic growth afterward. Corporate restructuring could have a negative effect on the labor and the financial markets in the short term, but is associated with positive growth through increased investment and capital productivity in the medium term, outpacing the negative effects.
January 27, 2017
Risk Taking and Interest Rates: Evidence from Decades in the Global Syndicated Loan Market
Description: We study how low interest rates in the United States affect risk taking in the market of crossborder leveraged corporate loans. To the extent that actions of the Federal Reserve affect U.S. interest rates, our analysis provides evidence of a cross-border spillover effect of monetary policy. We find that before the crisis, lenders made ex-ante riskier loans to non- U.S. borrowers in response to a decline in short-term U.S. interest rates, and, after it, in response to a decline in longer-term U.S. interest rates. Economic uncertainty and risk appetite appear to play a limited role in explaining ex-ante credit risk. Our results highlight the potential policy challenges faced by central banks in affecting credit risk cycles in their own jurisdictions.
January 27, 2017
Oil Prices and the Global Economy
Description: This paper presents a simple macroeconomic model of the oil market. The model incorporates features of oil supply such as depletion, endogenous oil exploration and extraction, as well as features of oil demand such as the secular increase in demand from emerging-market economies, usage efficiency, and endogenous demand responses. The model provides, inter alia, a useful analytical framework to explore the effects of: a change in world GDP growth; a change in the efficiency of oil usage; and a change in the supply of oil. Notwithstanding that shale oil production today is more responsive to prices than conventional oil, our analysis suggests that an era of prolonged low oil prices is likely to be followed by a period where oil prices overshoot their long-term upward trend.
January 27, 2017
Money and Credit: Theory and Applications
Description: We develop a theory of money and credit as competing payment instruments, then put it to work in applications. Buyers can use cash or credit, with the former (latter) subject to the inflation tax (transaction costs). Frictions that make the choice of payment method interesting also imply equilibrium price dispersion. We deliver closed-form solutions for money demand. We then show the model can simultaneously account for the price-change facts, cash-credit shares in micro payment data, and money-interest correlations in macro data. We analyze the effects of inflation on welfare, price dispersion and markups. We also describe nonstationary equilibria as self-fulfilling prophecies, which is standard, except here it entails dynamics in the price distribution.
January 27, 2017
What Are Reference Rates For?
Description: What is the precise role of reference rates? Why does it matter if LIBOR was manipulated? To address these questions, I analyze the use of reference rates in floating-rate loans and interestrate derivatives in the context of lending relationships. I develop a simple framework combining maturity transformation with three key frictions which generate meaningful funding risk and a rationale for risk management. Reference rates like LIBOR mitigate contractual incompleteness, facilitating management of funding risk. As bank funding costs move with bank credit risk, it makes sense for the reference rate to have a bank credit risk component. Manipulation can add noise, reducing the usefulness of reference rates for this purpose.
January 24, 2017
Collect More, Spend Better: Public Investment in Asian Frontier Markets
Description: We use a dynamic small open economy model to explore the macroeconomic impact of alternative public investment scaling-up scenarios, analyzing how improving the efficiency of capital spending and of tax revenue collection affect growth and debt sustainability for three fast-growing Southeast Asian economies: Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam. We show that a gradual public investment profile is more favorable than front-loading capital spending because we assume governments are able to gradually learn how to invest more efficiently, accelerating public capital accumulation and therefore growth. We discuss the pros and cons of alternative financing options and identify the financing mix that generates the best macroeconomic outcome. Sometimes overlooked, improving the efficiency of revenue collection over time may ease the burden of fiscal adjustment, achieving higher GDP growth with substantially lower debt-to-GDP ratios, and will help policymakers efficiently meet the challenge of addressing large infrastructure gaps while maintaining debt sustainability.