Working Papers
2011
December 1, 2011
The New Economics of Capital Controls Imposed for Prudential Reasons+L4888
Description: This paper provides an introduction to the new economics of prudential capital controls in emerging economies. This literature is based on the notion that there are externalities associated with financial crises because individual market participants do not internalize their contribution to aggregate financial instability when they make their finacing decisions. As a result they impose externalities in the form of greater financial instability on each other, and the private financing decisions of individuals are distorted towards excessive risk-taking. We discuss how prudential capital controls can induce private agents to internalize these externalities and thereby increase macroeconomic stability and enhance welfare.
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
Bank Competition and Financial Stability: A General Equilibrium Exposition
Description: We study versions of a general equilibrium banking model with moral hazard under either constant or increasing returns to scale of the intermediation technology used by banks to screen and/or monitor borrowers. If the intermediation technology exhibits increasing returns to scale, or it is relatively efficient, then perfect competition is optimal and supports the lowest feasible level of bank risk. Conversely, if the intermediation technology exhibits constant returns to scale, or is relatively inefficient, then imperfect competition and intermediate levels of bank risks are optimal. These results are empirically relevant and carry significant implications for financial policy.
December 1, 2011
The Nonbank-Bank Nexus and the Shadow Banking System
Description: The present way of thinking about financial intermediation does not fully incorporate the rise of asset managers as a major source of funding for banks through the shadow banking system. Asset managers are dominant sources of demand for non-M2 types of money and serve as source collateral ?mines' for the shadow banking system. Banks receive funding through the re-use of pledged collateral ?mined' from asset managers. Accounting for this, the size of the shadow banking system in the U.S. may be up to $25 trillion at year-end 2007 and $18 trillion at year-end 2010, higher than earlier estimates. In terms of policy, regulators will need to consider the re-use of pledged collateral when defining bank leverage ratios. Also, given asset managers' demand for non-M2 types of money, monitoring the shadow banking system will warrant closer attention well beyond the regulatory perimeter.
December 1, 2011
The Determinants of Economic Growth in the Philippines: A New Look
Description: This paper uses a panel of 23 emerging markets for the period 1965?2008 to study the determinants of per capita GDP growth in the Philippines. The Philippines is an outlier in terms of agricultural exports, investment, research and development, population growth, and political uncertainty. Panel regressions reveal that these factors, along with the deficit, inflation, trade openness, the current account balance and the frequency of crisis episodes are siginificant determinants of growth. A growth index confirms that these determinants also capture the absolute and relative performance of each country over time and suggests that the Philippines has lacked a sustained period of relatively strong economic reforms.
December 1, 2011
Using Credit Subsidies to Counteract a Credit Bust: Evidence From Serbia
Description: Emerging markets are particularly vulnerable to boom-bust credit cycles, due to excessive capital flows, shallow equity markets, and companies' high leverage and open FX positions. While the policy debate on how to respond to boom-bust credit cycles remains unsettled, it has been conjectured that credit subsidies may provide a particularly effective policy tool to counter a credit bust. This paper reports on a rare policy experiment where credit subsidies were used to buffer the impact of the global financial crisis on Serbia in 2009. Model simulations suggest that credit subsidies in Serbia helped to mitigate the slump in output.
December 1, 2011
Commodity Price Cycles: The Perils of Mismanaging the Boom
Description: Commodity-exporting countries have significantly benefited from the commodity price boom of recent years. At the current juncture, however, uncertain global economic prospects have raised questions about their vulnerability to a sharp fall in commodity prices and the policies that can shield it from such a shock. To address these questions, this paper takes a long term (4 decade) view at emerging markets' commodity dependence, the history of commodity price busts and the role of policies in mitigating or amplifying their economic impact. The paper highlights the stark difference in trends between Latin America - one of the most vulnerable regions given its high, and rising, commodity dependence - and emerging Asia - which has evolved from being a net exporter to a net importer of commodities in the last 40 years. We find evidence, however, that while commodity dependence is an important ingredient, a country's ultimate degree of vulnerability to commodity price shocks is to a great extent determined by the flexibility and quality of its policy framework. Policies in the run-up of sharp terms-of-trade drops - especially when those are preceded by booms - play a particularly important role. Limited exchange rate flexibility, a weak external position, and loose fiscal policy tend to amplify the negative effects of these shocks on domestic output. Financial dollarization also appears to act as a shock "amplifier."
December 1, 2011
Market Discipline and Conflicts of Interest Between Banks and Pension Funds
Description: We study the behavior of private pension funds as large depositors in a banking system. Using panel data analysis, we examine whether, and if so how, pension funds influence market discipline in Argentina in the period 1998-2001. We find evidence that pension funds exert market discipline and this discipline gets stronger as the share of pension fund deposits in a bank rises. However, conflicts of interest undermine the disciplining role of pension funds. Specifically, pension funds allocate deposits to banks with weak fundamentals that own pension fund management companies. We conclude that forbidding banks' ownership of companies involved in pension fund management can enhance market discipline.
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.