Working Papers
2013
July 3, 2013
Financial Depth in the WAEMU: Benchmarking Against Frontier SSA Countries
Description: Financial depth in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has been uneven over the last two decades. The WAEMU countries are lagging behind other regions, particularly the High Growth Non-oil Exporters (HGNOEs) group. We use two complementary methodologies to compare the two groups of countries. In a panel of 16 countries over 1997–2009, we find that the financial gap between the two groups of countries can be explained by institutional factors. In a benchmarking exercise comparing the major economy in the WAEMU (Côte d’Ivoire) with the most structurally similar in the control group (Mozambique), we show that Côte d’Ivoire underperformed relative to Mozambique and to its estimated potential. We then identify policy and institutional asymmetries between the two countries that could explain the gap in performance.
July 3, 2013
Basel Capital Requirements and Credit Crunch in the MENA Region
Description: The 1988 Basel I Accord set the common requirements of bank capital to promote the soundness and stability of the international banking system. The agreement required banks to hold capital in proportion to their perceived credit risks, and this requirement may have caused a “credit crunch,” a significant reduction in the supply of credit. We investigate the direct link between the implementation of the Basel I Accord and lending activities, using a data set spanning annual observations covering 1989–2004 for banks in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia. The results provide clear support for a significant increase in credit growth following the implementation of capital regulations, in general. Despite higher capital adequacy ratios, banks expanded credit and asset growth. Credit growth appears to be driven by demand fluctuations attributed to real growth, cost of borrowing, and exchange rate risk. Overall, the effects of macroeconomic variables, in contrast to capital adequacy, appear to be more dominant in determining credit growth, regardless of the capital adequacy ratio, and regardless of variation across banks by nationality, ownership, and listing.
July 3, 2013
Does Fiscal Policy Affect Interest Rates? Evidence from a Factor-Augmented Panel
Description: This paper reconsiders the effects of fiscal policy on long-term interest rates employing a Factor Augmented Panel (FAP) to control for the presence of common unobservable factors. We construct a real-time dataset of macroeconomic and fiscal variables for a panel of OECD countries for the period 1989-2012. We find that two global factors—the global monetary and fiscal policy stances—explain more than 60 percent of the variance in the long-term interest rates. Compared to the estimates from models which do not account for global factors, we find that the importance of domestic variables in explaining long-term interest rates is weakened. Moreover, the propagation of global fiscal shocks is larger in economies characterized by macroeconomic and institutional weaknesses.
July 3, 2013
Inflation Dynamics and Monetary Policy Transmission in Vietnam and Emerging Asia
Description: This paper provides an overview of inflation developments in Vietnam in the years following the doi moi reforms, and uses empirical analysis to answer two key questions: (i) what are the key drivers of inflation in Vietnam, and what role does monetary policy play? and (ii) why has inflation in Vietnam been persistently higher than in most other emerging market economies in the region? It focuses on understanding the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Vietnam, and in understanding the extent to which monetary policy can explain why inflation in Vietnam has been higher than in other Asian emerging markets over the past decade.
June 26, 2013
Macro-Financial Implications of Corporate (De)Leveraging in the Euro Area Periphery
Description: High corporate indebtedness can pose an important threat to the adjustment processes in some of the Euro area periphery countries, through its drag on investment as well as the possible migration of private sector losses to the sovereign balance sheet. This paper examines the macroeconomic implications of corporate debt overhang in recent years, confirming empirical evidence in the literature on the relationship between a firm’s balance sheet position and its investment choices, especially beyond certain threshold levels. Building on an event study of past crisis experiences with corporate deleveraging, it also discusses the expected macro-financial impact of the ongoing deleveraging processes in these countries, presenting available policy options to facilitate an orderly balance-sheet adjustment and support a return to productivity and growth.
June 26, 2013
Fiscal Policy over the Election Cycle in Low-Income Countries
Description: Focusing on Low-Income Countries, we investigate the behavior of fiscal variables during and after elections. The results indicate that during election years, government consumption significantly increases and leads to higher fiscal deficits. During the two years following elections, the fiscal adjustment takes the form of increased revenue mobilization in trade taxes and cuts to government investment, with no significant cuts in government consumption. Using a new dataset on national fiscal rules and IMF programs, we find that both the presence of fiscal rules and IMF programs help dampen the magnitude of the political budget cycle in LICs. We conclude that elections not only imply a macroeconomic cost when they take place but also trigger a painful fiscal adjustment in which public investment is largely sacrificed.
June 26, 2013
The Elusive Quest for Inclusive Growth: Growth, Poverty, and Inequality in Asia
Description: This paper assesses how pro-poor and inclusive Asia’s recent growth has been, and what factors have been driving these outcomes. It finds that while poverty has fallen across the region over the last two decades, inequality has increased, dampening the impact of growth on poverty reduction. As a result, relative to other emerging and developing regions and to Asia’s own past, the recent period of growth has been both less inclusive and less pro-poor. Our analysis suggests a number of policies that could help redress these trends and broaden the benefits of growth in Asia. These include fiscal policies to increase spending on health, education, and social safetynets; labor market reforms to boost the labor share of total income; and reforms to make financial systems more inclusive.
June 21, 2013
The Distributional Effects of Fiscal Consolidation
Description: This paper examines the distributional effects of fiscal consolidation. Using episodes of fiscal consolidation for a sample of 17 OECD countries over the period 1978–2009, we find that fiscal consolidation has typically had significant distributional effects by raising inequality, decreasing wage income shares and increasing long-term unemployment. The evidence also suggests that spending-based adjustments have had, on average, larger distributional effects than tax-based adjustments.
June 19, 2013
How Do Banking Crises Affect Bilateral Exports?
Description: This paper investigates whether banking crises are associated with declines in bilateral exports. We first develop a simple open economy model in which banking crises translate into negative liquidity shocks, leading to collapses in exports through supply-side and demand-side shocks. We then estimate a gravity model using a sample of developed and developing countries over the period 1988-2010. The results suggest that crisis-hit countries experience lower levels of bilateral exports, particularly in developing countries where supply-side shocks are found to be relatively more important than demand shocks. In developing countries, exports of manufactured goods are disproportionately hurt by banking crises and this negative effect is stronger in industries relying more on external finance. These findings are robust to correcting for potential endogeneity, to changes in the sample, and to alternative estimation methods.
June 19, 2013
The Growth and Stabilization Properties of Fiscal Policy in Malaysia
Description: This paper examines the size of the fiscal multiplier values generated in Malaysia. The results show that a government spending shock leads to broad positive economic effects. Although, the effectiveness of fiscal policy alters across macroeconomic states. The estimates show that since the Asian financial crisis the medium- and long-run effect of fiscal policy spending has declined. Some of this is down to greater credit availability and less investment spending.