Working Papers
2013
February 28, 2013
A Framework for Efficient Government Investment
Description: Welfare economics, scope and performance of government, externalities, public goods, cost-benefit analysis, subsidies economize on spending without losing effectiveness by modifying the conceptual framework guiding state expenditures. The familiar framework says that state intervention is justified when the spending provides public goods or when the intervention addresses externalities, provided the social return is above a threshold. This paper argues that another consideration needs to be brought into the mix - whether, in spite of the externalities, the private sector has an incentive to undertake the activity. It is argued that these two considerations together define a more efficient framework under which to justify state intervention. According to this modified framework, even a benign state interested in social welfare would not in fact address every externality nor necessarily select expenditures with the highest social returns. These points are summarized in a graph which is then used to analyze policy rules, subsidies and effective interaction between the state and the private sector. It is hoped that this paper points to the kind of information that needs to be collected and acted upon so that states may achieve their goals more effectively.
February 28, 2013
Targeting, Cascading, and Indirect Tax Design
Description: This paper addresses two fundamental issues in indirect tax design. It first revisits the case for reduced rates on items especially important to the poor, establishing conditions under which even very crudely targeted spending measures better serve their interests. It then explores the welfare costs from cascading taxes, showing that these may actually be lower the wider the set of inputs that are taxed but, more to the point—and contrary to the common notion that “a low rate on a broad base” is always good tax policy—may plausibly be large even at a low nominal tax rate and with few stages of production.
February 27, 2013
Information Rigidities in Economic Growth Forecasts: Evidence from a Large International Panel
Description: We examine the behavior of forecasts for real GDP growth using a large panel of individual forecasts from 30 advanced and emerging economies during 1989–2010. Our main findings are as follows. First, our evidence does not support the validity of the sticky information model (Mankiw and Reis, 2002) for describing the dynamics of professional growth forecasts. Instead, the empirical evidence is more in line with implications of "noisy" information models (Woodford, 2002; Sims, 2003). Second, we find that information rigidities are more pronounced in emerging economies than advanced economies. Third, there is evidence of nonlinearities in forecast smoothing. It is less pronounced in the tails of the distribution of individual forecast revisions than in the central part of the distribution.
February 27, 2013
Getting to Know GIMF: The Simulation Properties of the Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal Model
Description: The Global Integrated Monetary and Fiscal model (GIMF) is a multi-region, forward-looking, DSGE model developed by the Economic Modeling Division of the IMF for policy analysis and international economic research. Using a 5-region version of the GIMF, this paper illustrates the model’s macroeconomic properties by presenting its responses under a wide range of experiments, including fiscal, monetary, financial, demand, supply, and international shocks.
February 27, 2013
Systemic Contingent Claims Analysis: Estimating Market-Implied Systemic Risk
Description: The recent global financial crisis has forced a re-examination of risk transmission in the financial sector and how it affects financial stability. Current macroprudential policy and surveillance (MPS) efforts are aimed establishing a regulatory framework that helps mitigate the risk from systemic linkages with a view towards enhancing the resilience of the financial sector. This paper presents a forward-looking framework ("Systemic CCA") to measure systemic solvency risk based on market-implied expected losses of financial institutions with practical applications for the financial sector risk management and the system-wide capital assessment in top-down stress testing. The suggested approach uses advanced contingent claims analysis (CCA) to generate aggregate estimates of the joint default risk of multiple institutions as a conditional tail expectation using multivariate extreme value theory (EVT). In addition, the framework also helps quantify the individual contributions to systemic risk and contingent liabilities of the financial sector during times of stress.
February 26, 2013
The Quality of the Recent High-Growth Episode in Sub-Saharan Africa
Description: The paper explores the quality of the recent high-growth episode in sub-Saharan Africa by examining the following two questions: (i) what has been the nature and pattern of SSA growth over the past 15 years and how does it compare with previous episodes? (ii) has this growth had an impact on socially desirable outcomes, for example, improvements in health, education and poverty indicators? To do this, the paper first examines various aspects of the fundamentals of growth in SSA—levels, volatility, sources, etc.—according to various country analytical groupings. Second, it explores the extent to which the growth has been accompanied by improvements in social indicators. The paper finds that the quality of growth in SSA over the past 15 years has unambiguously improved, although progress in social indicators has been uneven.
February 26, 2013
Outward Foreign Direct Investment and Domestic Investment: The Case of Developing Countries
Description: Over the past two decades, the growth rate of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from developing and transition economies has increased significantly. Given the role of physical capital accumulation in determining the economic growth rate, it is important to assess how domestic investment responds to such outflows. This study empirically examines the effects of outward FDI on domestic investment in developing countries. Using data from 121 developing and transition economies over the period 1990–2010, the results suggest that FDI outflows negatively impact the rate of domestic investment.
February 26, 2013
Benchmarking Banking Sector Efficiency Across Regional Blocks in Sub-Saharan Africa: What Room for Policy?
Description: This paper examines the determinants of net interest margins in four regional blocks in Sub-Saharan Africa and one comparator block in the Eastern Caribbean. Using bank-level data, we find that countries with a high level of operating costs, a high ratio of equity to total assets and high treasury bill interest rates have higher net interest margins. Moreover, high operating costs are associated with low measures of institutional quality and a small size of bank operations. We find support for the view that market structure is also partly responsible for high net interest margins in Sub-Saharan Africa. If interpreted causally, high operating costs and a high ratio of equity to total assets and, indirectly, institutional factors such as the rule of law, are the most important factors in accounting for high interest margins in the East African Community, relative to other regions.
February 26, 2013
The Endogenous Skill Bias of Technical Change and Inequality in Developing Countries
Description: This paper draws on existing empirical literature and an original theoretical model to argue that globalization and skill supply affect the extent to which technology adoption in developing countries favors skilled workers. Developing countries are experiencing technical change that is skill-biased because skill-biased technologies are becoming relatively cheaper. Increased skill supply further biases technical change in favor of skilled labor. Free trade induces technology that favors skilled workers in skill-abundant developing countries and that favors unskilled workers in skill-scarce developing countries, and therefore amplifies the predicted wage effects of trade liberalization. These features aid our understanding of the observed rises in inequality within developing countries and the absence of a significant downward effect of expanded educational attainment on skill premia. They also help account for the large and differential effects of trade liberalization on inequality. These findings are pertinent for the Middle East and North Africa because of its recent increase in trade openness and remarkable rise in educational attainment.
February 25, 2013
Too Small to Fail? Subnational Spending Pressures in Europe
Description: The purpose of this paper is to assess whether expenditure decentralization has contributed to weakening fiscal performance in Europe. Using a panel of EU15 countries for the period 1995-2011, we estimate three econometric models and ask the following questions: (1) does the form of spending decentralization affect the general government fiscal balance?; (2) is there evidence of spending duplication?; and (3) are soft budget constraints prevalent at the subnational level in Europe? Our results indicate that current decentralization models may have some shortcomings and efforts to achieve fiscal consolidation would require improvements in three areas: better matching subnational spending and revenues; reshaping some expenditure assignments to reduce overlap; and improving the effectiveness of institutional arrangements at the subnational level.