Working Papers
2014
March 12, 2014
Deep Roots of Fiscal Behavior
Description: This paper investigates the determinants of fiscal policy behavior and its time-varying volatility, using panel data for a broad set of advanced and emerging market economies during the period 1990–2012. The empirical results show that discretionary fiscal policy is influenced by policy inertia, the level of public debt, and the output gap in both advanced and emerging market economies. In addition, the paper finds that macro-financial factors—such as real exchange rate, financial development, interest rates, asset prices, and natural resource rents—and demographic and institutional factors—such as the old-age dependency ratio, the quality of institutions, and policy anchors such as fiscal rules and IMF-supported stabilization programs—tend to have a significant effect on fiscal policy behavior. The results also indicate that higher government debt leads to more volatile fiscal behavior, while fiscal rules and higher institutional quality reduce the volatility of fiscal policy over time.
March 12, 2014
Efficient Energy Investment and Fiscal Adjustment in Senegal
Description: Senegal's fiscal deficit and public debt have been on the rise in recent years owing partly to an ailing and inefficient oil-based energy sector. In this paper we use a two-sector, open-economy, dynamic general equilibrium model to investigate the effects of varying fiscal policy instruments one at a time and of policy packages that increase public investment in energy and infrastructure in scenarios with varying degrees of debt finance and with different types of supporting fiscal adjustment. Lowering the fiscal deficit by raising taxes and cutting government expenditure has adverse effects on growth, real wages and the supply of public services. Senegal does not need, however, to undertake such difficult fiscal adjustment. A public investment program that coordinates new investment in low-cost hydroelectric, coal or gas-fired power with a phased contraction of the oil-based sector raises the total supply of energy by 70 percent, increases real wages and real GDP, stimulates private investment, and significantly reduces the fiscal deficit in the medium long term. More aggressive investment programs borrow against future fiscal gains to combine new energy investments with either delayed or frontloaded investments in non-energy infrastructure. These programs lead to much higher real wages and real GDP while keeping public debt sustainable and the fiscal deficit low in the medium and long term.
March 12, 2014
Quality, Trade, and Exchange Rate Pass-Through
Description: This paper investigates theoretically and empirically the heterogeneous response of exporters to real exchange rate fluctuations due to product quality. Our model shows that the elasticity of demand perceived by exporters decreases with a real depreciation and with quality, leading to more pricing-to-market and to a smaller response of export volumes to a real depreciation for higher quality goods. We test the proposed theory using a highly disaggregated Argentinean firm-level wine export dataset between 2002 and 2009 combined with experts wine rankings as a measure of quality. The model predictions find strong support in the data and the results are robust to different measures of quality, samples, specifications, and to the potential endogeneity of quality.
March 11, 2014
Managing Income Tax Compliance through Self-Assessment
Description: Modern tax administrations seek to optimize tax collections while minimizing administration costs and taxpayer compliance costs. Experience shows that voluntary compliance is best achieved through a system of self-assessment. Many tax administrations have introduced self-assessment principles in the income tax law but the legal authority is not being consistently applied. They continue to rely heavily on “desk” auditing a majority of tax returns, while risk management practices remain largely underdeveloped and/or underutilized. There is also plenty of opportunity in many countries to enhance the design and delivery of client-focused taxpayer service programs, and better engage with the private sector and other stakeholders.
March 11, 2014
Estimating Sri Lanka’s Potential Output
Description: In this paper we present various techniques to estimate Sri Lanka’s potential output and output gap, including statistical and model-based approaches. Compared to conventional statistical filters that rely exclusively on information in a single series, the model-based approaches allow potential output estimates to incorporate information contained in observable data series including inflation, actual output, unemployment and capacity utilization. The estimation results suggest that Sri Lanka’s potential output has risen slightly in the last few years.
March 5, 2014
Tracking Global Demand for Emerging Market Sovereign Debt
Description: This paper proposes an approach to track US$1 trillion of emerging market government debt held by foreign investors in local and hard currency, based on a similar approach that was used for advanced economies (Arslanalp and Tsuda, 2012). The estimates are constructed on a quarterly basis from 2004 to mid-2013 and are available along with the paper in an online dataset. We estimate that about half a trillion dollars of foreign flows went into emerging market government debt during 2010–12, mostly coming from foreign asset managers. Foreign central bank holdings have risen as well, but remain concentrated in a few countries: Brazil, China, Indonesia, Poland, Malaysia, Mexico, and South Africa. We also find that foreign investor flows to emerging markets were less differentiated during 2010–12 against the background of near-zero interest rates in advanced economies. The paper extends some of the indicators proposed in our earlier paper to show how the investor base data can be used to assess countries’ sensitivity to external funding shocks and to track foreign investors’ exposures to different markets within a global benchmark portfolio.
February 26, 2014
Why Was Asia Resilient? Lessons from the Past and for the Future
Description: Asia proved to be remarkably resilient in the face of the global financial crisis, but why was its output performance stronger than that of other regions? The paper shows that better initial conditions—in the form of lower external and financial vulnerabilities—contributed significantly to Asia’s resilience. Key pre-crisis factors included moderate credit expansion, reliance on deposit funding, enhanced bank asset quality, reduced external financing, and improved current accounts. These improvements reflected the lessons from the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, which helped reshape both public policies and private sector behavior. For example, several countries stepped up their use of macroprudential policies, well before they were recognized as an essential component of the financial stability toolkit. They also overhauled financial regulations and strengthened oversight of financial institutions, which helped reduce risk-taking by households and firms before the global financial crisis. Looking ahead, Asia is in the process of adjusting to more volatile external conditions and higher risk premiums. By drawing the right lessons from its pre-crisis experiences, Asia’s economies will be better equipped to address new risks associated with increased cross-border capital flows and greater integration with the rest of the world.
February 26, 2014
Asia’s Stock Markets: Are There Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragons?
Description: Stock markets play a key role in corporate financing in Asia. However, despite their increasing importance in terms of size and cross-border investment activity, the region’s markets are reputed to be more “idiosyncratic” and less reliant on economic and corporate fundamentals in their pricing. Using a model that draws on international asset pricing and economic theory, as well as accounting literature, we find evidence of greater idiosyncratic influences in the pricing of Asia’s stock markets, compared to their G-7 counterparts, beyond the identified systematic factors and local fundamentals. We also show proof of a significant relationship between the strength of implementation of securities regulations and the “noise” in stock pricing, which suggests that improvements in the regulation of securities markets in Asia could enhance the role of stock markets as stable and reliable sources of financing into the future.
February 21, 2014
Assessing Countries’ Financial Inclusion Standing - A New Composite Index
Description: This paper leverages the IMF’s Financial Access Survey (FAS) database to construct a new composite index of financial inclusion. The topic of financial inclusion has gathered significant attention in recent years. Various initiatives have been undertaken by central banks both in advanced and developing countries to promote financial inclusion. The issue has also attracted increasing interest from the international community with the G-20, IMF, and World Bank Group assuming an active role in developing and collecting financial inclusion data and promoting best practices to improve financial inclusion. There is general recognition among policy makers that financial inclusion plays a significant role in sustaining employment, economic growth, and financial stability. Nonetheless, the issue of its robust measurement is still outstanding. The new composite index uses factor analysis to derive a weighting methodology whose absence has been the most persistent of the criticisms of previous indices. Countries are then ranked based on the new composite index, providing an additional analytical tool which could be used for surveillance and policy purposes on a regular basis.
February 14, 2014
Rising BRICs and Changes in Sub-Saharan Africa’s Business Cycle Patterns
Description: This paper assesses the extent to which Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)’s business cycle is synchronized with that of the rest of the world (RoW). Findings suggest that SSA’s business cycle has not only moved in the same direction as that of the RoW, but has also gradually drifted away from the G7 in favour of the BRICs. Trade with the BRICs turns out to be the strongest driver of this shift. Much of this impact unfolds through aggregate demand impulse from trade. As fiscal policy stances in SSA and the BRICs are not synchronized, they have not caused cyclical output correlation between these two groups of countries. Also, financial openness, which is at a very early stage across most SSA countries, has acted as a neutral force.