Working Papers
2012
August 1, 2012
Global Housing Cycles
Description: Housing cycles and their impact on the financial system and the macroeconomy have become the center of attention following the global financial crisis. This paper documents the characteristics of housing cycles in a large set of countries, and examines the determinants of house price movements. Empirical analysis shows that house price dynamics are mostly driven by income and demographics but fluctuations in these fundamentals and credit conditions can create deviations from the implied equilibrium path. We conclude with a discussion of the macroeconomic implications of house price corrections.
August 1, 2012
What Drives the POLONIA Spread in Poland?
Description: Since the start of the 2008 - 09 financial crisis, the Polish Overnight Index Average (POLONIA) has persistently been below the policy rate, suggesting a limited influence of the NBP’s open market operations on the short-term interbank rate. In this regard, this paper analyzes the behavior of the POLONIA spread and explore several potential factors that could influence the spread. An empirical analysis confirms that the negative POLONIA spread is related to a few factors, which include the existence of the structural liquidity in the banking system; bank’s unwillingness to lock up liquidity in the NBP bills; the frontloading of banks’ fulfillment of the reserve requirements; and external market sentiment. The analysis also shows the effectiveness of the NBP’s responses to the financial crisis and structural liquidity surplus.
August 1, 2012
Effects of Culture on Firm Risk-Taking: A Cross-Country and Cross-Industry Analysis
Description: This paper investigates the effects of national culture on firm risk-taking, using a comprehensive dataset covering 50,000 firms in 400 industries in 51 countries. Risk-taking is found to be higher for domestic firms in countries with low uncertainty aversion, low tolerance for hierarchical relationships, and high individualism. Domestic firms in such countries tend to take substantially more risk in industries which are more informationally opaque (e.g. finance, mining, IT). Risk-taking by foreign firms is best explained by the cultural norms of their country of origin. These cultural norms do not proxy for legal constraints, insurance safety nets, or economic development.
August 1, 2012
Household Production, Services and Monetary Policy
Description: A distinctive feature of market-provided services is that some of them have close substitutes at home. Households may therefore switch between consuming home and market services in response to changes in the real wage - the opportunity cost of working at home - and changes in the price of market services. In order to analyze and quantify the implications of this trade-off for monetary policy, I embed a household sector into an otherwise standard sticky price DSGE model, which I calibrate to the U.S. economy. The results of the model are twofold. At the sectoral level, household production augments the service sector's New Keynesian Phillips curve with a sizable extra component that co-moves negatively with the output gap term, lowering the incentive of service sector firms to change their prices. This mechanism endogenously amplifies the real effects of a monetary shock in that sector, unlike in the nondurable goods sector for which households cannot manufacture substitutes at home. At the aggregate level, household production also implies more sluggish prices and a stronger response of real macroeconomic variables to a monetary shock. Some empirical support for this theory is provided.
August 1, 2012
How much should I hold? Reserve Adequacy in Emerging Markets and Small Islands
Description: This paper investigates the drivers of reserves in emerging markets (EMs) and small island (SIs) and develops an operational metric for estimating reserves in SIs taking into account their unique characteristics. It uses quantile regression techniques to allow the estimated factors driving reserves holdings to vary along the reserves’ holding distribution and tests for equality among the slope coefficients of the various quantile regressions and the overall models. F-tests comparing the inter-quantile differences could not reject the that the models for the different quantiles of SIs reserve distribution were similar but this was rejected for EMs distribution suggesting that models explaining drivers of reserve holdings should take into account the country’s reserve holdings. Empirical analysis suggests that the metric performs better than existing metrics in reducing crisis probabilities in SIs.
August 1, 2012
Sovereign Debt Restructurings 1950-2010: Literature Survey, Data, and Stylized Facts
Description: This paper provides a comprehensive survey of pertinent issues on sovereign debt restructurings, based on a newly constructed database. This is the first complete dataset of sovereign restructuring cases, covering the six decades from 1950–2010; it includes 186 debt exchanges with foreign banks and bondholders, and 447 bilateral debt agreements with the Paris Club. We present new stylized facts on the outcome and process of debt restructurings, including on the size of haircuts, creditor participation, and legal aspects. In addition, the paper summarizes the relevant empirical literature, analyzes recent restructuring episodes, and discusses ongoing debates on crisis resolution mechanisms, credit default swaps, and the role of collective action clauses.
August 1, 2012
Reforming the Public Pension System in the Russian Federation
Description: Pension reform is a key policy challenge in Russia. This paper examines how pension spending could increase in Russia in the absence of reforms, quantifies the impact of some recent proposals, and suggests some alternatives that would ensure public pension benefits - relative to wages - not fall from current levels while containing spending.
August 1, 2012
Bond Yields in Emerging Economies: It Matters What State You Are In
Description: While many studies have looked into the determinants of yields on externally issued sovereign bonds of emerging economies, analysis of domestically issued bonds has hitherto been limited, despite their growing relevance. This paper finds that the extent to which fiscal variables affect domestic bond yields in emerging economies depends on the level of global risk aversion. During tranquil times in global markets, fiscal variables do not seem to be a significant determinant of domestic bond yields in emerging economies. However, when market participants are on edge, they pay greater attention to country-specific fiscal fundamentals, revealing greater alertness about default risk.
August 1, 2012
Intergenerational Implications of Fiscal Consolidation in Japan
Description: In Japan, intergenerational inequality in lifetime resources is substantial, with a heavier fiscal burden on the young than the old. Moreover, given the need for fiscal consolidation, the inequality is even worse than existing policy would suggest. However, this does not mean that fiscal consolidation would make the young worse off. Lack of fiscal consolidation would eventually increase interest rates, which would reduce output and hit young generations harder. Simulations using an overlapping generations model indicate that, from the perspective of intergenerational fairness, it would be desirable to include both social security spending reforms and revenue measures in a fiscal consolidation package. The simulations also show that delaying fiscal consolidation could be costly and worsen intergenerational resource inequality.
August 1, 2012
A Financial Conditions Index for South Africa
Description: The main purpose of this paper is to construct a financial conditions index (FCI) for South Africa. The analysis extracts the index by applying two alternative approaches (principal component analysis and Kalman filter), which identify an unobservable common factor from a group of external and domestic financial indicators. The alternative estimated FCIs, which share a similar trajectory over time, seem to have a powerful predictive information for the near-term GDP growth (up to four quarters), and they outperform the South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB) leading indicator as well as individual financial variables. Their recent dynamics suggest that following a strong recovery in late-2009 and 2010, reflecting in part domestic factors such as systematic reductions in the policy rate, the rebound in real economic activity, and a benign inflationary environment, the financial conditions have deteriorated in recent months, though not as sharply as in end-2008. Given their relatively high predictive power regarding GDP growth, a further deterioration may imply that economic activity is likely to slow in the period ahead.