Working Papers
2010
April 1, 2010
Power Laws in Firm Size and Openness to Trade: Measurement and Implications
Description: Existing estimates of power laws in firm size typically ignore the impact of international trade. Using a simple theoretical framework, we show that international trade systematically affects the distribution of firm size: the power law exponent among exporting firms should be strictly lower in absolute value than the power law exponent among non-exporting rms. We use a dataset of French firms to demonstrate that this prediction is strongly supported by the data. While estimates of power law exponents have been used to pin down parameters in theoretical and quantitative models, our analysis implies that the existing estimates are systematically lower than the true values. We propose two simple ways of estimating power law parameters that take explicit account of exporting behavior.
April 1, 2010
The Global Financial Crisis and its Impact on the Chilean Banking System
Description: This paper explores how the global turmoil affected the risk of banks operating in Chile, and provides evidence that could help strengthen work on vulnerability indicators and off-site supervision. The analysis is based on the study of default risk codependence, or CoRisk, between Chilean banks and global financial institutions. The results suggest that the impact of the global financial crisis was limited, inducing at most a one-rating downgrade to banks operating in Chile. The paper concludes by assessing government measures aimed at reducing systemic risk in the domestic banking sector and the recommendations to allocate SWF assets to domestic banks.
April 1, 2010
Balance Sheet Network Analysis of Too-Connected-to-Fail Risk in Global and Domestic Banking Systems
Description: The 2008/9 financial crisis highlighted the importance of evaluating vulnerabilities owing to interconnectedness, or Too-Connected-to-Fail risk, among financial institutions for country monitoring, financial surveillance, investment analysis and risk management purposes. This paper illustrates the use of balance sheet-based network analysis to evaluate interconnectedness risk, under extreme adverse scenarios, in banking systems in mature and emerging market countries, and between individual banks in Chile, an advanced emerging market economy.
April 1, 2010
House Price Determinants in Selected Countries of the Former Soviet Union
Description: This paper analyses the recent boom-bust cycle in the housing markets of selected Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries. The analysis is based on a newly constructed database on house prices in the FSU countries. Our estimations suggest that house price developments can largely be explained by the dynamics of fundamentals, such as GDP, remittances, and external financing. Overall, we find that deviations of house prices from their fundamentals have not been pronounced, suggesting that house price bubbles have not been formed in the FSU countries.
April 1, 2010
The Global Credit Crunch and Foreign Banks’ Lending to Emerging Markets: Why Did Latin America Fare Better?
Description: The recent global financial turmoil raised questions about the stability of foreign banks' financing to emerging market countries. While foreign banks' lending growth to most emerging market regions contracted sharply, lending to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) was significantly more resilient. Analyzing detailed BIS data on global banks' lending to LAC countries-whether extended directly by their headquarters abroad or by their local affiliates in host countries-we show that the propagation of the global credit crunch was significantly more muted in countries where most of foreign banks' lending was channeled in domestic currency. We also show that foreign banks' involvement in LAC has differed in fundamental ways from that in other regions, with most of their lending to LAC conducted by their local subsidiaries, denominated in domestic currency and funded from a domestic deposit base. These characteristics help explain why LAC has not been struck as hard as other emerging markets by the global deleveraging and pullback in foreign banks' lending.
April 1, 2010
Growth Convergence and Spillovers among Indian States: What Matters? What Does Not?
Description: Convergence and spillovers across countries and within countries are old, but recurrent policy concerns, and India is no exception to this rule. This paper examines convergence and spillovers across Indian states using non-stationary panel data techniques. Results on convergence among Indian states are generally found to be similar, but more nuanced, than previous studies. Generally speaking, there is evidence of divergence over the entire sample period, convergence during sub-periods corresponding to structural breaks, and club convergence. There is strong evidence of club convergence among the high- and low-income states; the evidence for middle-income states is mixed. Dynamic spillover effects among states are small.
April 1, 2010
Boom-Bust Cycle, Asymmetrical Fiscal Response and the Dutch Disease
Description: We examine the behavior of expenditure policy during boom-bust in commodity price cycles, and its implication for real exchange rate movements. To do so, we introduce a Dutch disease model with downward rigidities in government spending to revenue shock. This model leads to a decoupling between real exchange rate and commodity price movement during busts. We test our model's theoretical predictions and underlying assumptions using panel data for 32 oil-producing countries over the period 1992 to 2009. Results are threefold. First, we find that change in current spending have a stronger impact on the change in real exchange rate compared to capital spending. Second, we find that current spending is downwardly sticky, but increases in boom time, and conversely for capital spending. Third, we find limited evidence that fiscal rules have helped reduce the degree of responsiveness of current spending during booms. In contrast, we find evidence that fiscal rules are associated with a significant reduction in capital expenditure during busts while responsiveness to boosts is more muted. This raises concerns about potential adverse consequences of this asymmetry on economic performance in oil-producing countries.
April 1, 2010
Transparency and Monetary Policy with Imperfect Common Knowledge
Description: Is it desirable that central banks be more transparent in the communication of sensible information when agents have diverse private information? In practice, there exists some consensus about the benefits of acting in this way. However, other studies warn that increasing the precision of public information may raise the volatility of some aggregate variables - in particular, the price level - due to the disproportionate influence that it exerts on agents' decisions, and that this, in turn, will have negative effects on welfare. This paper studies the welfare effects of varying levels of transparency in a model of price-setting under monopolistic competition and imperfect common knowledge. Our results indicate that more precise public information never leads to a reduction of welfare in this framework. We find that the beneficial effects of decreased imperfect common knowledge due to a more precise common signal always compensates the potential rise in aggregate volatility. Moreover, we show that, in contrast to what has previously been assumed, the variability of the aggregate price level has no detrimental welfare effects in this model.
April 1, 2010
The GCC Banking Sector: Topography and Analysis
Description: In this paper, we analyze the evolution of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) banking sectors in the six member countries including ownership, concentration, cross-border linkages, balance sheet exposures and risks, recent trends in credit growth, and financial soundness. We identify risks to the banking sector's financial stability in the context of the current global crisis and their mitigating factors.
April 1, 2010
Monetary Policy Committees, Learning and Communication
Description: This paper considers optimal communication by monetary policy committees in a model of imperfect knowledge and learning. The main policy implications are that there may be costs to central bank communication if the public is perpetually learning about the committee's decision-making process and policy preferences. When committee members have heterogeneous policy preferences, welfare is greater under majority voting than under consensus decision-making. Furthermore, central bank communication under majority voting is more likely to be beneficial in this case. It is also shown that a chairman with stable policy preferences who carries significant weight in the monetary policy decision-making process is welfare enhancing.