Working Papers
2012
May 1, 2012
Tariff-Tax Reforms in Large Economies
Description: This paper studies tariff-tax reforms in a calibrated two-region global New Keynesian model composed of a developing and an advanced region. In our baseline calibration, a revenue-neutral reform that lowers tariffs in developing countries can reduce domestic welfare. The reason is that the increase in developing countries welfare due to higher output is dominated by the welfare losses stemming from the deterioration of the terms of trade. On the other hand, the reform increases output and welfare in the advanced countries and in the world as a whole. The effects that we highlight have not been studied in previous contributions to the literature, which typically looks at tariff-tax reforms using a small open economy framework. Nominal rigidities have important implications for adjustment dynamics in our model. In the case of a "point-for-point" reform, for example, price stickiness implies that the international dynamics of output is reversed compared to a revenue neutral reform.
May 1, 2012
Productivity Growth and Structural Reform in Bulgaria: Restarting the Convergence Engine
Description: Labor productivity levels in Bulgaria lag well behind that in the EU, weighing on the convergence process. Stronger productivity growth would allow Bulgaria to close the income gap with the EU average more quickly and to alleviate the structural problems in its labor market, reflected in its high long–term and youth unemployment. Our analysis of the drivers of labor productivity suggest that for Bulgaria closing the gap with EU standards in the areas of institutional and infrastructure quality, goods market efficiency, higher education, and innovation would permanently boost productivity growth by a total of 1 percentage point a year. This would be enough to close the income gap with the EU average by 2040, compared to the status quo where it would take an additional 10 years.
May 1, 2012
Quantifying Structural Subsidy Values for Systemically Important Financial Institutions
Description: Claimants to SIFIs receive transfers when governments are forced into bailouts. Ex ante, the bailout expectation lowers daily funding costs. This funding cost differential reflects both the structural level of the government support and the time-varying market valuation for such a support. With large worldwide sample of banks, we estimate the structural subsidy values by exploiting expectations of state support embedded in credit ratings and by using long-run average value of rating bonus. It was already sizable, 60 basis points, as of the end-2007, before the crisis. It increased to 80 basis points by the end-2009.
May 1, 2012
Do Dynamic Provisions Enhance Bank Solvency and Reduce Credit Procyclicality? a Study of the Chilean Banking System
Description: Dynamic provisions could help to enhance the solvency of individual banks and reduce procyclicality. Accomplishing these objectives depends on country-specific features of the banking system, business practices, and the calibration of the dynamic provisions scheme. In the case of Chile, a simulation analysis suggests Spanish dynamic provisions would improve banks' resilience to adverse shocks but would not reduce procyclicality. To address the latter, other countercyclical measures should be considered.
May 1, 2012
Determinants of Credit Growth and Interest Margins in the Philippines and Asia
Description: Despite robust deposit growth, credit growth has been sluggish in the Philippines. We attribute this to legacy weaknesses in bank balance sheets, consumption-led economic growth, and relatively high net interest margins. Bank-level analysis suggests that interest margins in the Philippines rise with bank size, bank capitalization, foreign ownership, overhead costs and tax rates. Using bank-level data for a number of Asian economies, we find that higher growth, lower inflation, higher reserve requirements, greater banking sector development, smaller stock market development and lower government deficits reduce net interest margins, informing the policy debate on strengthening financial intermediation in the Philippines.
May 1, 2012
Interest Rate Rules, Endogenous Cycles, and Chaotic Dynamics in Open Economies
Description: We present an extensive analysis of the consequences for global equilibrium determinacy in flexible-price open economies of implementing active interest rate rules, i.e., monetary rules where the nominal interest rate responds more than proportionally to inflation. We show that conditions under which these rules generate aggregate instability by inducing liquidity traps, endogenous cycles, and chaotic dynamics depend on specific characteristics of open economies. In particular, rules that respond to expected future inflation are more prone to induce endogenous cyclical and chaotic dynamics the more open the economy to trade.
May 1, 2012
Alternative Monetary Policy Rules for India
Description: This paper empirically evaluates the operational performance of the McCallum rule, the Taylor rule and hybrid rules in India over the period 1996-2011 using quarterly data, with a view to analytically informing the conduct of monetary policy. The results show that forward-looking formulations of both rules and their hybrid version - setting a nominal output growth objective for monetary policy with an interest rate instrument - outperform contemporaneous and backward-looking specifications, especially when targeting core components of GDP and inflation, and combine the best parts of efficiency and discretion.
May 1, 2012
China's Impacton World Commodity Markets
Description: Shocks to aggregate activity in China have a significant and persistent short-run impact on the price of oil and some base metals. In contrast, shocks to apparent commodity-specific consumption (in part reflecting inventory demand) have no effect on commodity prices. China’s impact on world commodity markets is rising but, perhaps surprisingly, remains smaller than that of the United States. This is mainly due to the dynamics of real activity growth shocks in the U.S, which tend to be more persistent and have larger effects on the rest of the world.
May 1, 2012
Bank Capitalization As a Signal
Description: The level of a bank‘s capitalization can effectively transmit information about its riskiness and therefore support market discipline, but asymmetry information may induce exaggerated or distortionary behavior: banks may vie with one another to signal confidence in their prospects by keeping capitalization low, and banks‘ creditors often cannot distinguish among them - tendencies that can be seen across banks and across time. Prudential policy is warranted to help offset these tendencies.
May 1, 2012
Natural Resources, Volatility, and Inclusive Growth: Perspectives From the Middle East and North Africa
Description: This paper takes stock of the economic performance of resource rich countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) over the past forty years. While those countries have maintained high levels of income per capita, they have performed poorly when going beyond the assessment based on standard income level measures. Resource rich countries in MENA have experienced relatively low and non inclusive economic growth as well as high levels of macroeconomic volatility. Important improvements in health and education have taken place but the quality of the provision of public goods and services remains an important source of concerns. Looking forward we argue that the success of economic reforms in MENA rests on the ability of those countries to invest boldly in building inclusive institutions as well as high levels of human capacity in public administrations.