Working Papers
2015
January 23, 2015
Learning, Monetary Policy and Asset Prices
Description: We explore the stability properties of interest rate rules granting an explicit response to stock prices in a New-Keynesian DSGE model populated by Blanchard-Yaari non-Ricardian households. The constant turnover between long-time stock holders and asset-poor newcomers generates a financial wealth channel where the wedge between current and expected future aggregate consumption is affected by the market value of financial wealth, making stock prices non-redundant for the business cycle. We find that if the financial wealth channel is sufficiently strong, responding to stock prices enlarges the policy space for which the rational expectations equilibrium is both determinate and learnable (in the E-stability sense of Evans and Honkapohja, 2001). In particular, the Taylor principle ceases to be necessary and also mildly passive policy responses to inflation lead to determinacy and E-stability. Our results appear to be more prominent in economies characterized by a lower elasticity of substitution across differentiated products and/or more rigid labor markets.
January 23, 2015
Does Supply or Demand Drive the Credit Cycle? Evidence from Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe
Description: Countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) experienced a credit boom-bust cycle in the last decade. This paper analyzes the roles of demand and supply factors in explaining this credit cycle. Our analysis first focuses on a large sample of bank-level data on credit growth for the entire CESEE region. We complement this analysis by five case studies (Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, and Romania). Our results of the panel data analysis indicate that supply factors, on average and relative to demand factors, gained in importance in explaining credit growth in the post-crisis period. In the case studies, we find a similar result for Lithuania and Montenegro, but the other three case studies point to the fact that country experiences were heterogeneous.
January 22, 2015
Governments’ Payment Discipline: The Macroeconomic Impact of Public Payment Delays and Arrears
Description: This paper considers the impact of changes in the payment discipline of governments on the private sector. We argue that increased delays in public payments can affect private sector liquidity and profits and hence ultimately economic growth. We test this prediction empirically for European Union countries using two complementary approaches. First, we use annual panel data, including a newly constructed proxy for government arrears. We find that payment delays and to some extent estimated arrears lead to a higher likelihood of bankruptcy, lower profits, and lower economic growth. However, while this approach allows a broad set of variables to be included, it restricts the number of time periods. We therefore complement it with a Bayesian VAR approach on quarterly data for selected countries faced with significant payment delays. We again find that the likelihood of bankruptcies rises when governments increase the average payment period.
January 22, 2015
Revisiting the Concept of Dollarization: The Global Financial Crisis and Dollarization in Low-Income Countries
Description: The economic literature has examined deposit dollarization in nominal terms, typically focusing on the ratio of foreign currency deposits to broad money. However, while private agent demand for foreign currency may remain unchanged in foreign currency terms, there could be large fluctuations in the dollarization ratio simply due to exchange rate movements. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring dollarization that removes these exchange rate effects, and demonstrates that beyond the variance of inflation and depreciation, the level of inflation and size of depreciation also matter for dollarization. While dollarization in nominal terms surged during the recent global financial crisis, there was a downward trend in real terms. Employing a set of econometric estimators, this paper investigates whether “real” dollarization during 2006–09 was associated with the crisis, and the role of initial macroeconomic conditions, quality of institutions, risk aversion, and prudential measures. We find that exchange rate appreciation and reductions in sovereign risk do moderate dollarization; but the results for global volatility have low statistical significance, perhaps because global shocks tend to preserve, to a large extent, relative attractiveness of foreign assets. Nonetheless, estimated impulse-response functions point to a large but short-lived positive impact of global volatility on dollarization, which could reflect economic agents heightened concerns about spillover effects of global uncertainty on the domestic economy.
January 22, 2015
Credit Booms and Macroeconomic Dynamics: Stylized Facts and Lessons for Low-Income Countries
Description: Using a comprehensive database on bank credit, covering 135 developing countries over the period 1960–2011, we identify, document, and compare the macro-economic dynamics of credit booms across low- and middle-income countries. The results suggest that while the duration and magnitude of credit booms is similar across country groups, macro-economic dynamics differ somewhat in low-income countries. We further find that surges in capital inflows are associated with credit booms. Moreover, credit booms associated with banking crises exhibit distinct macroeconomic dynamics, while also reflecting a potentially large deviation of credit from country fundamentals. These results suggest that low-income countries should remain mindful of the inter-linkages between financial liberalization, increased cross-border banking activities, and rapid credit growth.
January 22, 2015
Corporate Financing Trends and Balance Sheet Risks in Latin America
Description: Easy global liquidity conditions, stronger risk appetite and a retrenchment in cross-border bank lending led to a surge in emerging market firms’ bond issuance in international markets (what we term “The Bon(d)anza”). Using firm-level data for five large Latin American economies, we provide evidence of a significant change in companies’ external funding strategies and liability structures after 2010, as well as in the balance sheet risks that firms face. We find that stepped up bond issuance was mostly aimed at re-financing rather than funding investment projects, as firms extended the average duration of their debt while securing lower fixed-rates, reducing roll-over and interest rate risks. The shift towards safer maturity structures has come at the expense of a leveraging-up in foreign-currency-denominated financial debt in several countries— reversing a de-dollarization trend seen during the last decade. We also provide evidence that a substantial part of these bonds were issued through offshore vehicles, suggesting regulatory and tax arbitrage strategies. For some corporations, rising dollar debt and high leverage will be particularly taxing in an environment of US dollar strengthening, less buoyant commodity prices and slowing domestic activity.
January 22, 2015
Fiscal Transparency and the Performance of Government Financial Assets
Description: Stock-flow adjustments are typically measured as the difference between changes in gross debt and deficits. These are interpreted as a proxy for unexplained fiscal discrepancies, and often associated with a lack of fiscal transparency. However, such measures fail to capture the role of financial assets and valuation changes and therefore do not correctly predict fiscal transparency. The purpose of this paper is to provide a more detailed exposition of stock-flow residuals and the relationship with fiscal transparency, highlighting government acquisition of equities and investment fund shares and their performance in secondary markets. The results suggest that the performance of government equity portfolios correlates with fiscal transparency to the extent that fully transparent governments are expected to generate between 6 and 8 percent higher returns on their equity portfolios than others. These findings suggest that the performance of government assets may be a promising area for future research of fiscal transparency and stock-flow residuals.
January 21, 2015
A Volatility and Persistence-Based Core Inflation
Description: Intuitively core inflation is understood as a measure of inflation where noisy price movements are avoided. This is typically achieved by either excluding or downplaying the importance of the most volatile items. However, some of those items show high persistence, and one certainly does not want to disregard persistent price changes. The non-equivalence between volatility and (the lack of) persistence implies that when one excludes volatile items relevant information is likely to be discarded. Therefore, we propose a new type of core inflation measure, one that takes simultaneously into account both volatility and persistence. The evidence shows that such measures far outperform those based on either volatility or persistence. The latter have been advocated in the literature in recent years.
January 21, 2015
The Global Trade Slowdown: Cyclical or Structural?
Description: This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. The analysis uses an empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. An estimate of the relationship between trade and income in the past four decades reveals that the long-term trade elasticity rose sharply in the 1990s, but declined significantly in the 2000s even before the global financial crisis. These results suggest that trade is growing slowly not only because of slow growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but also because of a structural change in the trade-GDP relationship in recent years. The available evidence suggests that the explanation may lie in the slowing pace of international vertical specialization rather than increasing protection or the changing composition of trade and GDP.
January 21, 2015
Youth Unemployment in Advanced Europe: Okun’s Law and Beyond
Description: The crisis has intensified what was previously a chronic unemployment problem in Europe; youth unemployment is now at unprecedented highs in some European countries. This paper assesses the main drivers of youth unemployment in Europe. It finds that much of the increase in youth unemployment rates during the crisis can be explained by output dynamics and the greater sensitivity of youth unemployment to economic activity than adult unemployment. Labor market institutions also play a significant role in explaining the persistently high levels of youth unemployment, especially the tax wedge, minimum wages relative to the median wage, spending on active labor market policies, the opportunity cost of working (measured by the unemployment benefits), vocational training, and labor market duality. This suggests that policies to address youth unemployment should be comprehensive and country-specific, focused on reviving growth and advancing labor market reforms.