Working Papers
2012
July 1, 2012
Measuring Systemic Liquidity Risk and the Cost of Liquidity Insurance
Description: I construct a systemic liquidity risk index (SLRI) from data on violations of arbitrage relationships across several asset classes between 2004 and 2010. Then I test whether the equity returns of 53 global banks were exposed to this liquidity risk factor. Results show that the level of bank returns is not directly affected by the SLRI, but their volatility increases when liquidity conditions deteriorate. I do not find a strong association between bank size and exposure to the SLRI - measured as the sensitivity of volatility to the index. Surprisingly, exposure to systemic liquidity risk is positively associated with the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR). The link between equity volatility and the SLRI allows me to calculate the cost that would be borne by public authorities for providing liquidity support to the financial sector. I use this information to estimate a liquidity insurance premium that could be paid by individual banks in order to cover for that social cost.
July 1, 2012
Accelerating And Sustaining Growth: Economic and Political Lessons
Description: The paper reviews and draws lessons from the experience of fast growing economies including a sub-set of these termed High Growth Economies (HGEs) with a decadal rate of over 7 per cent. It then reviews the history of the Indian growth acceleration following the reforms of the 1990s and its future prospects given the recent slowdown. It analysis the potential dangers and reasons for India’s growth slowdown and proposes policy reforms for sustaining fast growth.
July 1, 2012
Building Blocks for Effective Macroprudential Policies in Latin America: Institutional Considerations
Description: An increasing number of countries - including in Latin America - are reforming their financial stability frameworks in the aftermath of the financial crisis, in order to establish a stronger macroprudential policy function. This paper analyzes existing arrangements for financial stability in Latin America and examines key issues to consider when designing the institutional foundations for effective macroprudential policies. The paper focuses primarily on eight Latin American countries, where the institutional arrangements for monetary and financial policies can be classified in two distinct groups: the "Pacific" model that includes Chile, Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica, and Mexico, and the "Atlantic" model, comprising Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.
July 1, 2012
Quality of Government and Living Standards: Adjusting for the Efficiency of Public Spending
Description: It is generally acknowledged that the government’s output is difficult to define and its value is hard to measure. The practical solution, adopted by national accounts systems, is to equate output to input costs. However, several studies estimate significant inefficiencies in government activities (i.e., same output could be achieved with less inputs), implying that inputs are not a good approximation for outputs. If taken seriously, the next logical step is to purge from GDP the fraction of government inputs that is wasted. As differences in the quality of the public sector have a direct impact on citizens’ effective consumption of public and private goods and services, we must take them into account when computing a measure of living standards. We illustrate such a correction computing corrected per capita GDPs on the basis of two studies that estimate efficiency scores for several dimensions of government activities. We show that the correction could be significant, and rankings of living standards could be re-ordered as a result.
July 1, 2012
Macro-prudential Policy in a Fisherian Model of Financial Innovation
Description: The interaction between credit frictions, financial innovation, and a switch from optimistic to pessimistic beliefs played a central role in the 2008 financial crisis. This paper develops a quantitative general equilibrium framework in which this interaction drives the financial amplification mechanism to study the effects of macro-prudential policy. Financial innovation enhances the ability of agents to collateralize assets into debt, but the riskiness of this new regime can only be learned over time. Beliefs about transition probabilities across states with high and low ability to borrow change as agents learn from observed realizations of financial conditions. At the same time, the collateral constraint introduces a pecuniary externality, because agents fail to internalize the effect of their borrowing decisions on asset prices. Quantitative analysis shows that the effectiveness of macro-prudential policy in this environment depends on the government's information set, the tightness of credit constraints and the pace at which optimism surges in the early stages of financial innovation. The policy is least effective when the government is as uninformed as private agents, credit constraints are tight, and optimism builds quickly.
July 1, 2012
The (Other) Deleveraging
Description: Deleveraging has two components--shrinking of balance sheets due to increased haircuts/shedding of assets, and the reduction in the interconnectedness of the financial system. We focus on the second aspect and show that post-Lehman there has been a significant decline in the interconnectedness in the pledged collateral market between banks and nonbanks. We find that both the collateral and its associated velocity are not rebounding as of end-2011 and still about $4-5 trillion lower than the peak of $10 trillion as of end-2007. This paper updates Singh (2011) and we use this data to compare with the monetary aggregates (largely due to QE efforts in US, Euro area and UK), and discuss the overall financial lubrication that likely impacts the conduct of global monetary policy.
July 1, 2012
International Capital Flows and Debt Dynamics
Description: This paper presents a new model for studying international capital flows and debt dynamics that emphasizes the role played by expectations concerning future trade flows and returns. I use the model to estimate the drivers of the U.S. external position and capital flows between 1973 and 2008. The estimates show that most of the secular rise in U.S. international indebtedness is attributable to growing optimism about future returns on U.S. holdings of foreign equity and FDI assets. They also show that the transformation of world savings into risky assets by the U.S. had little effect on its external position, but the expected future real depreciation of the dollar allowed the U.S. to sustain a higher level of international debt after the 1990s.
July 1, 2012
Equity Returns in the Banking Sector in the Wake of the Great Recession and the European Sovereign Debt Crisis
Description: This study finds that equity returns in the banking sector in the wake of the Great Recession and the European sovereign debt crisis have been driven mainly by weak growth prospects and heightened sovereign risk and to a lesser extent, by deteriorating funding conditions and investor sentiment. While the equity return performance in the banking sector has been dismal in general, better capitalized and less leveraged banks have outperformed their peers, a finding that supports policymakers’ efforts to strengthen bank capitalization.
July 1, 2012
Public Expenditure in the Slovak Republic: Composition and Technical Efficiency
Description: Good practice suggests that budget allocations should reflect spending priorities and that spending should provide cost-effective delivery of public goods and services. This paper analyzes the composition of public expenditure in the Slovak Republic. It also assesses the relative efficiency of spending in education and health. The Slovak Republic spends more on social benefits and less on wages compared to the EU and OECD average. While it manages to translate the low expenditures into outcomes in an efficient manner in the education sector, this is not true for health. Moreover, the recent increases in expenditure levels have not improved outcomes, suggesting that significant budgetary savings could be achieved through increases in efficiency.
July 1, 2012
Paths to Eurobonds
Description: This paper discusses proposals for common euro area sovereign securities. Such instruments can potentially serve two functions: in the short-term, stabilize financial markets and banks and, in the medium-term, help improve the euro area economic governance framework through enhanced fiscal discipline and risk-sharing. Many questions remain on whether financial instruments can ever accomplish such goals without bold institutional and political decisions, and, whether, in the absence of such decisions, they can create new distortions. The proposals discussed are also not necessarily competing substitutes; rather, they can be complements to be sequenced along alternative paths that possibly culminate in a fully-fledged Eurobond. The specific path chosen by policymakers should allow for learning and secure the necessary evolution of institutional infrastructures and political safeguards.