Working Papers
2014
July 25, 2014
Real and Financial Vulnerabilities from Crossborder Banking Linkages
Description: This paper looks at the vulnerabilities stemming from banking sector linkages between countries and their macroeconomic effects. It finds that credit risks (from a banking system’s claims on other countries) and funding risks (from a banking system’s liabilities to another) have declined over the past five years. It also finds that funding vulnerabilities have real effects. During normal times, funding vulnerabilities are associated with significant positive GDP growth surprises. During crisis times, funding vulnerabilities are associated with significant negative GDP growth surprises. The results tell us that policymakers should pay more attention to understanding crossborder funding risks.
July 25, 2014
Middle East Transitions: A Long, Hard Road
Description: Since the onset of the Arab Spring, economic uncertainty in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen (Arab Countries in Transition, ACTs) has slowed already sluggish growth; worsened unemployment, particularly of youth; undermined business confidence, affected tourist arrivals, and depressed domestic and foreign direct investment. Furthermore, political and social tensions have constrained reform efforts. Assessing policy options as presented in the voluminous literature on the Arab Spring and based on cross-country experience, this paper concludes that sustainable and inclusive growth calls for a two pronged approach: short term measures that revive growth momentum and partially allay popular concerns; complemented with efforts to adjust the public’s expectations and prepare the ground for structural reforms that will deliver the desired longer tem performance.
July 23, 2014
Mauritius The Drivers of Growth—Can the Past be Extended?
Description: Mauritius’s economic performance has been called “the Mauritian miracle” and the “success of Africa” (Romer, 1992; Frankel, 2010; Stiglitz, 2011), despite difficult initial conditions that led a Nobel Prize Winner in economics to predict stagnation (Meade, 1961). We use growth accounting to analyze the sources of past growth and project potential ranges of growth through 2033. Growth averaged 4½ percent over the past 20 years. Our baseline suggests future growth rates around 3¼ percent, but growth could reach 4-5 percent with strong pro-active policies including (i) improving investment and savings rates; (ii) improving the efficiency of social spending and public enterprise reforms; (iii) investment in education and education reforms; (iii) labor market reforms; and (iv) further measures to reduce bottlenecks and increase productivity. With policies capable of generating 5 percent growth, Mauritius could reach high-income status in 2021, 4 years earlier than under the baseline.
July 22, 2014
Macroprudential Solvency Stress Testing of the Insurance Sector
Description: Over the last decade, stress testing has become a central aspect of the Fund’s bilateral and multilateral surveillance work. Recently, more emphasis has also been placed on the role of insurance for financial stability analysis. This paper reviews the current state of system-wide solvency stress tests for insurance based on a comparative review of national practices and the experiences from Fund’s FSAP program with the aim of providing practical guidelines for the coherent and consistent implementation of such exercises. The paper also offers recommendations on improving the current insurance stress testing approaches and presentation of results.
July 22, 2014
Sovereign Debt Restructurings in Belize: Achievements and Challenges Ahead
Description: This paper examines the causes, processes, and outcomes of the two Belize sovereign debt restructurings in 2006–07 and in 2012–13 that occurred outside of an IMF-supported program. It finds that the motivation for the two debt restructurings differed, as the former was driven by external liquidity concerns while the latter was motivated by a substantial increase in the coupon rates and future fiscal solvency concerns. Despite differential treatment between residents and non-residents, both 2006–07 and 2012–13 debt exchanges were executed through collaborative engagement, due in part to the existence of a broad-based creditor committee and the authorities’ effective communication strategy. However, while providing temporary liquidity relief, neither of the debt restructurings properly addressed long-term debt sustainability concerns. Going forward, the success of the 2012–13 debt restructuring will still depend on the country’s ability to strengthen fiscal efforts and public debt management framework.
July 22, 2014
Progress Towards External Adjustment in the Euro Area Periphery and the Baltics
Description: The euro area periphery countries and the Baltic countries, which had large current account deficits in the run-up to the crisis, needed adjustment of relative prices to achieve both internal and external balances. Thus far, tangible progress has been made through lower wages and/or higher productivity relative to trading partners (“internal devaluation”), which contributed to narrowing current account deficits and shifting output towards the tradables sector. While some early adjusters cut wages more rapidly followed by productivity improvement, others have only slowly improved productivity largely through labor shedding. This adjustment for most countries has come along with a substantial recession as the unit labor cost improvement has largely come from falling employment and much of the current account improvement from import compression. Going forward, these countries still need to generate growing tradables sector employment and to continue adjustment to prevent imbalances from returning as output gaps close.
July 22, 2014
Rebalancing in the Euro Area and Cyclicality of Current Account Adjustments
Description: The paper examines progress with the external rebalancing of euro area deficit countries. Relative prices are adjusting at different pace across countries and with different compositions of wage cuts and labor shedding. There is so far limited evidence of resource re-allocation from non-tradable to tradable sectors, while improved export performance is still dependent on external demand from the rest of world. Current account adjustments have taken place, reflecting structural changes but also cyclical forces, suggesting that part of the improvements may unwind when cyclical conditions improve. Looking ahead, relying only on relative price adjustments (which adversely affects demand) to rebalance the euro area could prove very challenging. Structural reforms will play an important role in the reallocation of resources to the tradable sector and the associated relative price adjustment, while boosting non-price and price competitiveness.
July 21, 2014
Liquidity Trap and Excessive Leverage
Description: We investigate the role of macroprudential policies in mitigating liquidity traps driven by deleveraging, using a simple Keynesian model. When constrained agents engage in deleveraging, the interest rate needs to fall to induce unconstrained agents to pick up the decline in aggregate demand. However, if the fall in the interest rate is limited by the zero lower bound, aggregate demand is insufficient and the economy enters a liquidity trap. In such an environment, agents' exante leverage and insurance decisions are associated with aggregate demand externalities. The competitive equilibrium allocation is constrained inefficient. Welfare can be improved by ex-ante macroprudential policies such as debt limits and mandatory insurance requirements. The size of the required intervention depends on the differences in marginal propensity to consume between borrowers and lenders during the deleveraging episode. In our model, contractionary monetary policy is inferior to macroprudential policy in addressing excessive leverage, and it can even have the unintended consequence of increasing leverage.
July 18, 2014
Output Gap in Presence of Financial Frictions and Monetary Policy Trade-offs
Description: The recent global financial crisis illustrates that financial frictions are a significant source of volatility in the economy. This paper investigates monetary policy stabilization in an environment where financial frictions are a relevant source of macroeconomic fluctuation. We derive a measure of output gap that accounts for frictions in financial market. Furthermore we illustrate that, in the presence of financial frictions, a benevolent central bank faces a substantial trade-off between nominal and real stabilization; optimal monetary policy significantly reduces fluctuations in price and wage inflations but fails to alleviate the output gap volatility. This suggests a role for macroprudential policies.
July 18, 2014
First-Time International Bond Issuance—New Opportunities and Emerging Risks
Description: International bond issuance by debut issuers has risen in recent years. The uptick was a result of both demand and supply factors. The search for yield and demand for portfolio diversification have resulted in demand-driven easy financing conditions. At the same time, rising financing needs for many debut issuers, coupled with reduced access to concessional financing, relatively undeveloped domestic markets, and a favorable interest rate environment have made international bonds an attractive financing alternative for many countries. As bonds issued in the international markets are typically denominated in hard currencies, have large volumes and a bullet structure, exposure to exchange rate and refinancing risk has increased. Therefore, risk-mitigating policy actions are needed to prepare for redemption, support debt sustainability, and secure adequate debt management capacity.