Working Papers

July 22, 2016

Sovereign Debt Restructuring and Growth

Description: This paper studies the effect of sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors on growth during the period 1970-2010. We find that there are bad and good (or not so bad) debt restructurings for growth. While growth generally declines in the aftermath of a sovereign debt restructuring, agreements that allow countries to exit a default spell (final restructurings) are associated with improving growth. The impact can be significant. In general, three years after restructuring, growth is about 5 percent lower compared to countries that did not face restructuring over the same period. The exception is for final restructurings, which result in positive growth in the years immediately after the restructuring. Final restructurings tend to be better for growth because they reduce countries’ debt, with the strongest effect for countries that exit restructurings with relatively low debt levels.

July 22, 2016

The Design of Fiscal Reform Packages: Insights from a Theoretical Endogenous Growth Model

Description: This paper studies the impact on growth, welfare, and government debt of fiscal reform packages in a theoretical model drawing together three key features of the endogenous growth literature: (i) investment in technology (in the form of human capital) offsets diminishing marginal productivity of private capital, allowing for perpetual growth in output per capita; (ii) changes in investment behavior because of cuts to distortionary tax rates impact long-run growth; and (iii) public capital has a role influencing total factor productivity and growth. A quantitative simulation using reasonable parameter values suggests that modest capital and/or labor income tax cuts and public investment increases have significant positive effects on consumer welfare but small effects on per capita income growth, where fiscal costs are offset by reductions in unproductive government spending. Capital income tax cuts and public investment increases continue to boost welfare when offset by consumption tax rises (rather than spending cuts), although the welfare benefits of modest labor income tax cuts are outweighed by the costs of a compensating consumption tax increase.

July 22, 2016

Fiscal Multipliers and Institutions in Peru: Getting the Largest Bang for the Sol

Description: With the end of the commodity super cycle, Peru’s potential growth has declined, raising questions of what government policies could do to help boost growth, including over the medium-term. Our econometric analysis shows that public investment multipliers have a larger effect on growth than current spending or tax-related stimulus in the short and medium terms. Peru’s low debt and financial savings grants fiscal space for increasing investment spending, which could also entice and complement private investment, provided the former is efficient, fiscally sustainable and complemented by further reforms in public investment management and changes to the decentralization framework.

July 21, 2016

No Extension without Representation? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Collective Bargaining

Description: In many countries, notably across Europe, collective bargaining coverage is enhanced by government-issued extensions that widen the reach of collective agreements beyond their signatory parties to all firms and workers in the same sector. This paper analyses the causal impact of such extensions on employment using a natural experiment in Portugal: the immediate suspension by the government that took office in 21 June 2011 of the (until then) nearly automatic extensions. The combination of this suspension and the time needed for processing the extension applications resulted in a sharp and unanticipated decline in the extension probability of agreements signed several month earlier around 1 March 2011. Our results, based on a regression discontinuity design and matched employer-employee-agreement panel data, suggest that extensions had a negative impact on employment growth. Moreover, the effects tend to be concentrated among non-affiliated firms. The lack of representativeness of employer associations is a potentially important factor behind the adverse effect of extensions. Another is the role of retro-activity in combination with the administrative delay in processing extensions. This is particularly relevant in the context of a recession.

July 21, 2016

Does Conditionality Mitigate the Potential Negative Effect of Aid on Revenues?

Description: This paper assesses whether conditionality in IMF-supported programs has helped offset the potential negative effect of foreign aid on tax revenues. The analysis—carried out on panel data covering 1993–2012 for 111 low- and middle-income countries—shows that growing use of revenue conditionality by low-income countries partially offsets the depressing effect of foreign grants on tax revenue, particularly on taxes on goods and services. The impact of conditionality is strong in countries where aid dependence is high and where institutions are strong, suggesting that revenue conditionality cannot substitute for weak institutions in mitigating the negative effect of aid on tax revenue collection.

July 21, 2016

The Role of Fiscal Transfers in Smoothing Regional Shocks: Evidence from Existing Federations

Description: We assess the extent to which fiscal transfers smooth regional shocks in three large federations: the U.S., Canada, and Australia. We find that fiscal transfers offset 4-11 percent of idiosyncratic shocks (risk-sharing) and 13-24 percent of permanent shocks (redistribution). This fiscal insurance largely operates through automatic stabilizers embedded in a central budget primarily through federal taxes and transfers to individuals, rather than transfers from the central government to state budgets. These results have implications for the design of fiscal risk-sharing mechanisms in the euro area.

July 14, 2016

Gender Equality and Economic Diversification

Description: We show that gender inequality decreases the variety of goods countries produce and export, in particular in low-income and developing countries. We argue that this happens through at least two channels: first, gender gaps in opportunity, such as lower educational enrollment rates for girls than for boys, harm diversification by constraining the potential pool of human capital available in an economy. Second, gender gaps in the labor market impede the development of new ideas by decreasing the efficiency of the labor force. Our empirical estimates support these hypotheses, providing evidence that gender-friendly policies could help countries diversify their economies.

July 12, 2016

6½ Decades of Global Trade and Income: “New Normal” or “Back to Normal” after GTC and GFC?

Description: Global merchandise trade expanded rapidly over the last 6½ decades and its relationship with global income has seen ebbs and flows. This paper examines the shifts in this relationship using time series data over 1950-2014 and situates it in the current and longer term context. The conjunctural context comes from, among other things, the “great trade collapse” (GTC) and the global financial crisis (GFC) in 2009, and developments since then. The longer term context comes from the relative role of “globalization” and “technology” shocks in accounting for the short and long run variance of global exports and income. The paper estimates trade and income elasticities using ADL models taking account of structural breaks, and impulse response functions from structural VARs. The estimated SVAR model provides a lens to ask whether global trade and income are in a “new normal’ or only “back to (an old) normal” after the GTC and GFC.

July 12, 2016

The Fiscal Multiplier in Small Open Economy: The Role of Liquidity Frictions

Description: This paper studies the fiscal multiplier using a small-open-economy DSGE model enriched with financial frictions. It shows that the multiplier is large when frictions are present in domestic and international financial markets. The reason is that in the model government bonds are more liquid than private financial assets and that entrepreneurs face liquidity constraints. A bond-financed fiscal expansion eases these constraints and stimulates investment and hence growth. This mechanism, however, breaks down under the assumption of perfect international capital mobility, suggesting that conventional models which ignore the presence of frictions in international capital markets tend to underestimate the fiscal multiplier.

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July 11, 2016

South Africa: Labor Market Dynamics and Inequality

Description: This paper analyzes the determinants of high unemployment in South Africa by studying labor market dynamics using individual level panel data from the Quarterly Labor Force Survey. While prior work experience and gender are found to be important determinants of the job-finding rate, education attainment and race are important determinants of the job-exit rate. Using stock-flow equations, counterfactual exercises are conducted to quantify the role of these different transition rates on unemployment. The paper also explores the contribution of unemployment towards inequality. Reducing unemployment is found to be important for reducing inequality – estimates suggest that a 10 percentage point reduction in unemployment lowers the Gini coefficient by 3 percent. Achieving a similar reduction solely through transfers would require a 40 percent increase in government transfers.