Working Papers
2015
September 28, 2015
Reaping the Benefits from Global Value Chains
Description: Against the backdrop of the rise of global value chains (GVCs), particularly in Asia, this paper documents key developments of GVCs and investigates what factors cause economies to reap greater benefits from GVC participation. Key findings include: first, moving toward a more upstream position in production and raising economic complexity are associated with the country increasing its share of GVC value added. Second, fostering GVC participation and expanding the share of the domestic value added in a value chain require efforts to reduce trade barriers, enhance infrastructure, foster human capital formation, support research and development, and improve institutions.
September 23, 2015
What Measure of Inflation Should a Developing Country Central Bank Target?
Description: In closed or open economy models with complete markets, targeting core inflation enables monetary policy to maximize welfare by replicating the flexible price equilibrium. We analyze this result in the context of developing economies, where a large proportion of households are credit constrained and the share of food expenditures in total consumption expenditures is high. We develop an open economy model with incomplete financial markets to show that headline inflation targeting improves welfare outcomes. We also compute the optimal price index, which includes a positive weight on food prices but, unlike headline inflation, assigns zero weight to import prices.
September 23, 2015
How to De-Dollarize Financial Systems in the Caucasus and Central Asia?
Description: Dollarization rates in the Caucasus and Central Asia (CCA) region are among the highest in the world, with adverse consequences for macroeconomic stability, monetary policy transmission, and financial sector development. Using dynamic panel data models, we find that foreign exchange deposits and loans in the CCA are mainly driven by volatile inflation and exchange rates, low financial depth, and asymmetric exchange rate policies biased toward depreciation. Although there is no unique formula for success, empirical studies and cross-country experiences suggest that credible monetary and exchange rate frameworks, low and stable inflation, and deep domestic financial markets are essential ingredients of any de-dollarization strategy. In implementation, policymakers need to consider proper sequencing of policies, effective communication as well as risks from potential financial disintermediation and instability, and/or capital flight.
September 23, 2015
Managing the Fed’s Liftoff and Transmission of Monetary Policy
Description: In recent years, many money and repo rates in the United States have been between zero and 25 basis points. As Fed’s liftoff approaches, the question of the level of these rates (and the markets that determine them) becomes increasingly important. The paper discusses (i) whether the Fed can control short–term rates as it starts to tighten; and (ii) what are the advantages and disadvantages of using asset sales versus a large reverse repo program (RRP). A large RRP by the Fed will deprive the financial system of the money pool (i.e., GSEs and money market funds) as the Fed will directly absorb the money on to its balance sheet. This will rust the financial plumbing that connects the money pool to collateral suppliers. Some asset sales may be preferred to a large RRP as this will result in a market-determined repo rate and will allow the Fed to reach its monetary policy liftoff objectives with minimal footprint on market plumbing. We also discuss cost of issuing short tenor T-bills relative to a large RRP in a rising rate environment.
September 11, 2015
Building a Better Union: Incentivizing Structural Reforms in the Euro Area
Description: The momentum for structural reforms is waning in the euro area at a time when even faster progress is needed to boost productivity and growth, achieve real economic convergence, and improve the resilience of the monetary union. What can the European Union (EU) institutions do to bridge this divide? This paper argues for greater simplicity, transparency and accountability in the EU governance framework for structural reforms. Our three interrelated proposals—“outcome-based” benchmarking; better use of existing EU processes to strengthen oversight and reduce discretion; and improved financial incentives—could help advance reforms. Ex post monitoring by an independent EU-level “structural council” and ex ante policy innovation by national productivity councils could strengthen accountability and ownership. Deeper governance reforms should be considered in the medium-term with a view toward a greater EU role in promoting convergence.
September 10, 2015
“But we are different!”: 12 Common Weaknesses in Banking Laws, and What to Do About Them
Description: Well-designed banking laws are critical for regulating the market access and operations of banks, as well as their removal from the market in case of failure. While at a financial policy level there is a broad consensus as to the content of banking laws, from a legal perspective their drafting often leaves something to be desired. In spite of what is often argued, the types of weaknesses of banking laws are hardly country-specific; many weaknesses are shared by many banking laws. This working paper discusses those weaknesses and ways to remedy them, by focusing on a selected set of legal policy principles.
September 8, 2015
Demand for Value Added and Value-Added Exchange Rates
Description: We examine the role of cross-border input linkages in governing how international relative price changes influence demand for domestic value added. We define a novel value-added real effective exchange rate (REER), which aggregates bilateral value-added price changes, and link this REER to demand for value added. Input linkages enable countries to gain competitiveness following depreciations by supply chain partners, and hence counterbalance beggar-thy-neighbor effects. Cross-country differences in input linkages also imply that the elasticity of demand for value added is country specific. Using global input-output data, we demonstrate these conceptual insights are quantitatively important and compute historical value-added REERs.
September 8, 2015
Delegated Portfolio Management, Benchmarking, and the Effects on Financial Markets
Description: We analyze the implications of linking the compensation of fund managers to the return of their portfolio relative to that of a benchmark—a common solution to the agency problem in delegated portfolio management. In the presence of such relativeperformance- based objectives, investors have reduced expected utility but markets are typically more informative and deeper. Furthermore, in a multiple asset/market framework we show that (i) relative performance concerns lead to an increase in the correlation between markets (financial contagion); (ii) benchmark inclusion increases price volatility; (iii) home bias emerges as a rational outcome. When information is costly, information acquisition is hindered and this attenuates the effects on informativeness and depth of the market.
September 8, 2015
Is There a Debt-threshold Effect on Output Growth?
Description: This paper studies the long-run impact of public debt expansion on economic growth and investigates whether the debt-growth relation varies with the level of indebtedness. Our contribution is both theoretical and empirical. On the theoretical side, we develop tests for threshold effects in the context of dynamic heterogeneous panel data models with cross-sectionally dependent errors and illustrate, by means of Monte Carlo experiments, that they perform well in small samples. On the empirical side, using data on a sample of 40 countries (grouped into advanced and developing) over the 1965- 2010 period, we find no evidence for a universally applicable threshold effect in the relationship between public debt and economic growth, once we account for the impact of global factors and their spillover effects. Regardless of the threshold, however, we find significant negative long-run effects of public debt build-up on output growth. Provided that public debt is on a downward trajectory, a country with a high level of debt can grow just as fast as its peers in the long run.
September 3, 2015
Aid and Growth at the Regional Level
Description: This paper brings the aid effectiveness debate to the sub-national level. We hypothesize the nonrobust results regarding the effects of aid on development in the previous literature to arise due to the effects of aid being insufficiently large to measurably affect aggregate outcomes. Using geocoded data for World Bank aid to a maximum of 2,221 first-level administrative regions (ADM1) and 54,167 second-level administrative regions (ADM2) in 130 countries over the 2000-2011 period, we test whether aid affects development, measured as nighttime light growth. Our preferred identification strategy exploits variation arising from interacting a variable that indicates whether or not a country has passed the threshold for receiving IDA's concessional aid with a recipient region's probability to receive aid, in a sample of 478 ADM1 regions and almost 8,400 ADM2 regions from 21 countries. Controlling for the levels of the interacted variables, the interaction provides a powerful and excludable instrument. Overall, we find significant correlations between aid and growth in ADM2 regions, but no causal effects.