Working Papers
2011
December 1, 2011
Do Loan-To-Value and Debt-To-Income Limits Work? Evidence From Korea
Description: With another real estate boom-bust bringing woes to the world economy, a quest for a better policy toolkit to deal with these boom-busts has begun. Macroprudential measures could be in such a toolkit. Yet, we know very little about their impact. This paper takes a step to fill this gap by analyzing the Korean experience with these measures. We find that loan-to-value and debt-to-income limits are associated with a decline in house price appreciation and transaction activity. Furthermore, the limits alter expectations, which play a key role in bubble dynamics.
December 1, 2011
Who's Going Green and Why? Trends and Determinants of Green Investment
Description: This paper fills a gap in the macroeconomic literature on renewable sources of energy. It offers a definition of green investment and analyzes the trends and determinants of this investment over the last decade for 35 advanced and emerging countries. We use a new multi-country historical dataset and find that green investment has become a key driver of the energy sector and that its rapid growth is now mostly driven by China. Our econometric results suggest that green investment is boosted by economic growth, a sound financial system conducive to low interest rates, and high fuel prices. We also find that some policy interventions, such as the introduction of carbon pricing schemes, or "feed-in-tariffs," which require use of "green" energy, have a positive and significant impact on green investment. Other interventions, such as biofuel support, do not appear to be associated with higher green investment.
December 1, 2011
Inflation Differentials in the GCC: Does the Oil Cycle Matter?
Description: This paper uses a pairwise approach to investigate the main factors that have been driving inflation differentials in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region for the past two decades. The results suggest that inflation differentials in the GCC are largely influenced by the oil cycle, mainly through the credit and fiscal channels. This implies that closer coordination of fiscal policies will be key for facilitating the closer integration of the GCC economies and ahead of the move to a monetary union. The results also indicate that after controlling for cyclical factors, convergence increased even during the recent oil boom.
December 1, 2011
Employment Protection and Business Cycles in Emerging Economies
Description: We build a small open economy, real business cycle model with labor market frictions to evaluate the role of employment protection in shaping business cycles in emerging economies. The model features matching frictions and an endogenous selection effect by which inefficient jobs are destroyed in recessions. In a quantitative version of the model calibrated to the Mexican economy we find that reducing separation costs to a level consistent with developed economies would reduce output volatility by 15 percent. We also use the model to analyze the Mexican crisis episode of 2008 and conclude that an economy with lower separation costs would have experienced a smaller drop in output and in measured total factor productivity with no significant change in aggregate employment.
December 1, 2011
Assessing the Risks to the Japanese Government Bond (JGB) Market
Description: Despite the rise in public debt, Japanese Government Bond (JGB) yields have remained low and stable, supported by steady inflows from the household and corporate sectors, high domestic ownership of JGBs, and safe-haven flows from heightened sovereign risks in Europe. Over time, however, the market's capacity to absorb new debt will likely shrink as population ages and risk appetite recovers. In the short term, a decline in fund supply from the corporate sector, where financial surpluses are abnormally high, and spillovers from global financial distress could push up JGB yields. Fiscal reforms to reduce public debt more quickly and lengthen the maturity of government bonds will help limit these risks.
December 1, 2011
Are there Spillover Effects From Munis?
Description: This paper studies the spillover effects both within the bond markets for individual U.S. states and between the latter and the market for U.S. Treasury securities. We perform the Forbes and Rigobon (2002) spillover test using daily bond yield data over the period 2005 to 2011. Results are twofold. First, we find that between most markets for individual U.S. state bonds there are negative spillovers. In other words, an increase in borrowing costs in one U.S. state results in better borrowing conditions for other states. Second, we find no substantial spillover effect between shocks originating from state securities and from federal markets, except for a few large issuers. Using causality tests in the frequency domain, we find that the Treasury bond market directly causes changes in the markets for municipal bonds in both the short and long run. There is also some evidence of causality from the municipal to the Treasury bond market, but only of a long-run nature. Our results shed some light on the policy debate on the nature of spillover effects within fiscal unions.
December 1, 2011
Inflation Dynamics in FYR Macedonia
Description: In this paper we study the dynamics of inflation in Macedonia, provide three forecasting tools and draw some policy conclusions from the quantitative results. We explore three forecasting methods for inflation. We use a Dynamic Factor Model (DFM) for short-term, monthly forecasting. We also develop two quarterly models: A Vector Error Correction Model (VECM), and a New Keynesian Phillips Curve (NKPC) for a more structural model of inflation. The NKPC shows a significant effect of output gap and inflation expectations on current inflation, confirming that the expectations channel of monetary transmission mechanism is strong. In terms of forecast-error variance, we show that all three models do very well in one-period ahead forecasting.
December 1, 2011
Effectiveness of Capital Controls in Selected Emerging Markets in the 2000's
Description: This paper estimates the effectiveness of capital controls in response to inflow surges in Brazil, Colombia, Korea, and Thailand in the 2000s. Controls are generally associated with a decrease in inflows and a lengthening of maturities, but the relationship is not statistically significant in all cases, and the effects are temporary. Controls are more successful in providing room for monetary policy than dampening currency appreciation pressures. We argue that the macroeconomic impact of capital controls depends on the extensiveness of the policy, the level of capital market development, the support provided by other policies, and the persistence of capital flows.
December 1, 2011
How Costly Are Debt Crises?
Description: The aim of this paper is to assess the short- and medium-term impact of debt crises on GDP. Using an unbalanced panel of 154 countries from 1970 to 2008, the paper shows that debt crises produce significant and long-lasting output losses, reducing output by about 10 percent after eight years. The results also suggest that debt crises tend to be more detrimental than banking and currency crises. The significance of the results is robust to different specifications, identification and endogeneity checks, and datasets.
December 1, 2011
The Relative Volatility of Commodity Prices: A Reappraisal
Description: This paper studies the volatility of commodity prices on the basis of a large dataset of monthly prices observed in international trade data from the United States over the period 2002 to 2011. The conventional wisdom in academia and policy circles is that primary commodity prices are more volatile than those of manufactured products, even though most of the existing evidence does not actually attempt to measure the volatility of prices of individual goods or commodities. Rather the literature tends to focus on trends in the evolution and volatility of ratios of price indexes composed of multiple commodities and products. This approach can be misleading. Indeed, the evidence presented in this paper suggests that on average prices of individual primary commodities may be less volatile than those of individual manufactured goods.