Working Papers
2013
October 23, 2013
Modeling Banking, Sovereign, and Macro Risk in a CCA Global VAR
Description: The purpose of this paper is to develop a model framework for the analysis of interactions between banking sector risk, sovereign risk, corporate sector risk, real economic activity, and credit growth for 15 European countries and the United States. It is an integrated macroeconomic systemic risk model framework that draws on the advantages of forward-looking contingent claims analysis (CCA) risk indicators for the banking systems in each country, forward-looking CCA risk indicators for sovereigns, and a GVAR model to combine the banking, the sovereign, and the macro sphere. The CCA indicators capture the nonlinearity of changes in bank assets, equity capital, credit spreads, and default probabilities. They capture the expected losses, spreads and default probability for sovereigns. Key to the framework is that sovereign credit spreads, banking system credit risk, corporate sector credit risk, economic growth, and credit variables are combined in a fully endogenous setting. Upon estimation and calibration of the global model, we simulate various negative and positive shock scenarios, particularly to bank and sovereign risk. The goal is to use this framework to analyze the impact and spillover of shocks and to help identify policies that would mitigate banking system, sovereign credit risk and recession risk—policies including bank capital increases, purchase of sovereign debt, and guarantees.
October 23, 2013
Growth Following Investment and Consumption-Driven Current Account Crises
Description: Current account deficits imply increasing liabilities to the rest of the world. External sustainability then depends on whether these can be met in the future without defaulting, i.e., normally through trade account surpluses. To run such surpluses without a fall in consumption, capital inflows should be used to increase future output. This paper tentatively finds that current account deficits reversals that follow investment booms are marked by better growth performance than those following consumption booms. It also shows that many recent large current account deficits have been predominantly the result of consumption or non-productive investment booms.
October 23, 2013
Fiscal Discipline in WAEMU: Rules, Institutions, and Markets
Description: This paper gauges the scope for market discipline and the effectiveness of the regional surveillance framework in the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). The paper finds that the responsiveness of sovereign bond rates to governments’ fiscal behavior in the regional financial market remains limited. In addition, the paper examines the effectiveness of fiscal rules and institutions in an environment where financial markets fall short of exerting a significant disciplining effect on governments.
October 23, 2013
Inclusive Growth and Inequality in Senegal
Description: The paper examines Senegal’s growth performance from the perspective of its povertyreducing and distributional characteristics, and discusses policies that might help make growth more inclusive. The main findings are that poverty has fallen in the last two decades, but poverty reduction has slowed in recent years. Although available indicators sometimes give conflicting signals on distributional shifts, people in the middle of the income distribution have received the most benefit, mainly in urban areas. Further progress in poverty reduction and inclusiveness would require sustained high growth and exploration of growth opportunities in the sectors with high earning potential for the poor. Better-targeted social policies and more attention to the regional distribution of spending would also help reduce poverty and improve inclusiveness.
October 23, 2013
The Economic Performance Index (EPI): an Intuitive Indicator for Assessing a Country's Economic Performance Dynamics in an Historical Perspective
Description: Existing economic indicators and indexes assess economic activity but no single indicator measures the general macro-economic performance of a nation, state, or region in a methodologically simple and intuitive way. This paper proposes a simple, yet informative metric called the Economic Performance Index (EPI). The EPI represents a step toward clarity, by combining data on inflation, unemployment, government deficit, and GDP growth into a single indicator. In contrast to other indexes, the EPI does not use complicated mathematical procedures but was designed for simplicity, making it easier for professionals and laypeople alike to understand and apply to the economy. To maximize ease of understanding, we adopt a descriptive grading system. In addition to a Raw EPI that gives equal weights to its components, we construct a Weighted EPI and show that both indexes perform similarly for U.S. data. To demonstrate the validity of the EPI, we conduct a review of U.S. history from 1790 to 2012. We show that the EPI reflects the major events in U.S. history, including wars, periods of economic prosperity and booms, along with economic depressions, recessions, and even panics. Furthermore, the EPI not only captures official recessions over the past century but also allows for measuring and comparing their relative severity. Even though the EPI is simple by its construction, we show that its dynamics are similar to those of the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) and The Conference Board Coincident Economic Index® (CEI).
October 18, 2013
Outlook for Interest Rates and Japanese Banks’ Risk Exposures under Abenomics
Description: This paper examines how Japan’s long-term interest rates and Japanese banks’ interest rate risk exposures may evolve under Abenomics. Results from a panel regression analysis for major advanced economies shows that long-term government bond yields in Japan are determined to a large extent by growth and inflation outlook, fiscal conditions, demography, and the investor base of government securities. A further deterioration of fiscal conditions would push up long-term rates by about 2 percentage points over the medium term, but the rise is partly offset by higher demand for safe assets amid population aging and increased purchases by the Bank of Japan. At the same time, illustrative scenarios suggest the interest rate risk exposure of Japanese banks could decline substantially over the next two years. However, if structural and fiscal reforms are incomplete, both long-tem yields and interest-risk exposures of Japanese banks could increase over the medium term.
October 17, 2013
Estimating Parameters of Short-Term Real Interest Rate Models
Description: This paper sheds light on a narrow but crucial question in finance: What should be the parameters of a model of the short-term real interest rate? Although models for the nominal interest rate are well studied and estimated, dynamics of the real interest rate are rarely explored. Simple ad hoc processes for the short-term real interest rate are usually assumed as building blocks for more sophisticated models. In this paper, parameters of the real interest rate model are estimated in the broad class of single-factor interest rate diffusion processes on U.S. monthly data. It is shown that the elasticity of interest rate volatility—the relationship between the volatility of changes in the interest rate and its level—plays a crucial role in explaining real interest rate dynamics. The empirical estimates of the elasticity of the real interest rate volatility are found to be about 0.5, much lower than that of the nominal interest rate. These estimates show that the square root process, as in the Cox-Ingersoll-Ross model, provides a good characterization of the short-term real interest rate process.
October 16, 2013
Fiscal Consolidation in the Euro Area: How Much Can Structural Reforms Ease the Pain?
Description: The IMF’s Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is used to examine the scope for structural reforms in the euro area to offset the negative impact of fiscal consolidation required to put public debt back on a sustainable path. The results suggest that structural reforms in core countries could quite reasonably be expected to offset the near term negative impact on activity arising from the required fiscal consolidation that uses a plausible mix of instruments to achieve the permanent improvement in the deficit. However, for the periphery, where the required consolidation is roughly twice as large as that required in the core, the results suggest that it would take several years before structural reforms could return the level of output back to its pre-consolidation path.
October 14, 2013
Trade Linkages, Balance Sheets, and Spillovers: The Germany-Central European Supply Chain
Description: Germany and the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia (the CE4) have been in a process of deepening economic integration which has lead to the development of a dynamic supply chain within Europe—the Germany-Central European Supply Chain (GCESC). Model-based simulations suggest two key policy implications: First, as a reflection of strengthening trade linkages, German fiscal spillovers to the CE4 and more broadly to the rest of the euro area, have increased over time, but are still relatively small. This is explained by the supply chain nature of trade integration: final demand in Germany is not necessarily the main determinant of CE4 exports to Germany. Second, increased trade openness in both Germany and the CE4 implies a greater exposure of the GCESC to global shocks. However, owing to its strong fundamentals—including sound balance sheets and its safe haven status— Germany plays the role of a regional anchor of stability by better absorbing shocks from other trading partners instead of amplifying their transmission across the GCESC.
October 14, 2013
Monetary and Macroprudential Policy in an Estimated DSGE Model of the Euro Area
Description: In this paper, we study the optimal mix of monetary and macroprudential policies in an estimated two-country model of the euro area. The model includes real, nominal and financial frictions, and hence both monetary and macroprudential policy can play a role. We find that the introduction of a macroprudential rule would help in reducing macroeconomic volatility, improve welfare, and partially substitute for the lack of national monetary policies. Macroprudential policy would always increase the welfare of savers, but their effects on borrowers depend on the shock that hits the economy. In particular, macroprudential policy may entail welfare costs for borrowers under technology shocks, by increasing the countercyclical behavior of lending spreads.