Working Papers
2023
May 12, 2023
Climate Mitigation Policy in Türkiye
Description: This paper discusses potential elements of a comprehensive strategy for making headway on Türkiye’s net zero emissions pedge for 2053. These elements include: (i) aligning 2030 emissions commitments with long term neutrality; (ii) implementing a carbon price rising to an ilustrative $75 per tonne by 2030; (iii) enhancing acceptability through using carbon pricing revenues efficiently and equitably and including competitveness measures; (iv) introducing various feebate schemes (the fiscal analogue of regulations) to reinforce mitigation incentives in the power, industry, transport, building, forestry, and agricultural sectors. According to modelling results a phased revenue-neutral $75 carbon price reduces CO2 emisisons 21 percent below baseline levels in 2030, raises revenues of 1.7 percent of GDP, avoids 11,000 air pollution deaths over the decade, while imposing an average burden on households of 3 percent of their consumption (before revenue-recycling). With revenues used for targeted transfers and labor tax reductions the overall policy is pro-poor and pro-equity (average household is better off by 0.4 percent).
May 12, 2023
Measuring the Stances of Monetary and Fiscal Policy
Description: We derive measures of the stances of monetary and fiscal policy within the framework of an empirically plausible extension of the basic New Keynesian model, and jointly estimate them for the United States using a closed form multivariate linear filter. Our theoretical analysis reveals that the neutral stance of monetary policy — as measured by the real natural rate of interest — depends on the stance of fiscal policy, which in turn depends on the composition and expected timing of structural changes in the fiscal instruments. Our empirical application finds that accounting for fiscal policy significantly alters the estimated stance of monetary policy, and that the so-called fiscal impulse is a poor proxy for the stance of fiscal policy.
May 12, 2023
The Extent and Composition of Automatic Stabilization in EU Countries
Description: This paper analyses the magnitude of automatic income and demand stabilization in EU Member States between 2011 to 2019. Our analysis finds that automatic income stabilization in 2019 averaged 41.3 percent at the EU level, with considerable variation among Member States. While the extent of stabilization is similar across income groups within countries, the source of stabilization differs, with income taxation (transfers) being more important for high-income (low-income) households. Income stabilization proved stable over time, with a few exceptions driven by major reforms. EU-level demand stabilization averaged 84.7 percent, increasing with household income and reflecting the greater ability of richer households to smooth consumption.
May 12, 2023
How We Missed the Inflation Surge: An Anatomy of Post-2020 Inflation Forecast Errors
Description: This paper analyzes the inflation forecast errors over the period 2021Q1-2022Q3 using forecasts of core and headline inflation from the International Monetary Fund World Economic Outlook for a large group of advanced and emerging market economies. The findings reveal evidence of forecast bias that worsened initially then subsided towards the end of the sample. There is also evidence of forecast oversmoothing indicating rigidity in forecast revision in the face of incoming information. Focusing on core inflation forecast errors in 2021, four factors provide a potential ex post explanation: a stronger-than-anticipated demand recovery; demand-induced pressures on supply chains; the demand shift from services to goods at the onset of the pandemic; and labor market tightness. Ex ante, we find that the size of the COVID-19 fiscal stimulus packages announced by different governments in 2020 correlates positively with core inflation forecast errors in advanced economies. This result hints at potential forecast inefficiency, but we caution that it hinges on the outcomes of a few, albeit large, economies.
May 12, 2023
Benchmarking Infrastructure Using Public Investment Efficiency Frontiers
Description: With limited financing options, increasing investment efficiency will be a critical avenue to building infrastructure for many countries, particularly in the context of post-pandemic recovery and rising debt emanating from higher energy costs and other pressures. Estimating investment efficiency, however, presents many methodological pitfalls. Using various methods—–stochastic frontier analysis, data envelopment analysis (DEA), and bootstrapped DEA—this paper estimates efficiency scores for a wide range of countries employing metrics of infrastructure quantity and utilization. We find that efficiency scores are relatively robust across methodologies and data used. A considerable efficiency gap exists: Removing all inefficiencies could increase infrastructure output by 55 percent overall, when averaging across 12 estimation approaches—in particular, by 45 percent for advanced economies, 54 percent for emerging countries, and 65 percent for low income countries. Infrastructure output would increase by a still-sizeable 30 percent if instead of eliminating all efficiency, countries achieved the efficiency level of their income group’s 90th percentile.
May 12, 2023
Has the Phillips Curve Become Steeper?
Description: This paper analyzes whether structural changes in the aftermath of the pandemic have steepened the Phillips curves in advanced economies, reversing the flattening observed in recent decades and reducing the sacrifice ratio associated with disinflation. Particularly, analysis of granular price quote data from the UK indicates that increased digitalization may have raised price flexibility, while de-globalization may have made inflation more responsive to domestic economic conditions again. Using sectoral data from 24 advanced economies in Europe, higher digitalization and lower trade intensity are shown to be associated with steeper Phillips curves. Post-pandemic Phillips curve estimates indicate some steepening in the UK, Spain, Italy and the euro area as a whole, but at magnitudes that are too small to explain the entire surge in inflation in 2021–22, suggesting an important role for outward shifts in the Phillips curve.
May 12, 2023
Retaliation through Temporary Trade Barriers
Description: Are Temporary Trade Barriers (TTBs) introduced for strategic reasons? To answer this question, we construct a novel sectoral measure of retaliation using daily bilateral data on TTB responses in 1220 subsectors across a panel of 25 advanced and emerging market economies over 1989-2019. Stylized facts and econometric analysis suggest that within-year responses are more important in terms of intensity and frequency than commonly understood from the existing literature, which has tended to ignore them. We find that retaliation often consists of responses across many sectors and that same-sector retaliation is far from being the norm. In addition, we find that larger countries tend to retaliate more, and that retaliation is larger during periods of higher unemployment and when the trading partner targeted a domestic comparative advantage sector.
May 12, 2023
It’s Never Different: Fiscal Policy Shocks and Inflation
Description: This paper investigates the impact of fiscal shocks on inflation, using a large panel of 139 countries over the period 1970–2021. First, both headline and core measures of inflation increase in response to expansionary shifts in the fiscal policy stance. Second, we split the sample and observe an intriguing pattern that fiscal policy shocks are primarily significant in developing countries. Third, the inflationary impact of fiscal policy shocks is dependent on fiscal space and economic conditions, as well as monetary policy type, exchange rate regimes and fiscal rules, at the time of the shock. We confirm these results by using the narrative approach and forecast errors, as well as cyclically- adjusted data on government revenues and non-interest expenditures, to identify exogenous changes in fiscal policy. The analysis has several important policy implications: (i) fiscal policy is a critical anchor of macroeconomic stability; (ii) fiscal policy should be used with care in aggregate demand management as it has significant effects on inflation, which are highly dependent on fiscal space and economic conditions; and (iii) flexible exchange rates and rule-based policymaking provide greater resilience to inflationary shocks.
May 8, 2023
Economic Consequences of Large Extraction Declines: Lessons for the Green Transition
Description: Limiting climate change requires a 80 percent reduction in fossil fuel extraction until 2050. What are the macroeconomic consequences for fossil fuel producing countries? We identify 35 episodes of persistent, exogenous declines in extraction based on a new data-set for 13 minerals (oil, gas, coal, metals) and 122 countries since 1950. We use local projections to estimate effects on real output as well as the external and the domestic sectors. Declines in extractive activity lead to persistent negative effects on real GDP and the trade balance. The real exchange rate depreciates but not enough to offset the decline in net exports. Effects on low-income countries are significantly larger than on high-income countries. Results suggest that legacy effects of bad institutions could prevent countries from benefiting from lower resource extraction.
May 5, 2023
Remittances and Social Safety Nets During COVID-19: Evidence From Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic
Description: Remittance flows in emerging market and developing economies were surprisingly resilient during the COVID-19 crisis, providing much-needed income support for remittance-receiving households. However, households were impacted differently across income distributions. Using novel high-frequency household panel data for Georgia and the Kyrgyz Republic and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that as household income fell during the pandemic, remittance-receiving households were more affected than non-remittance-receiving households. Importantly, we find that the incomes of poor, remittance-receiving households in the Kyrgyz Republic were more adversely affected than their non-remittance-receiving counterparts. In contrast, in Georgia, affluent remittance-receiving households experienced more significant income declines than poor remittance-receiving households. This heterogeneous impact can largely be explained by variations in the effectiveness of social safety nets in the two countries. Our results have important policy implications. Although remittances remained resilient during the pandemic, they affected households differently. As such, policymakers should prioritize addressing gaps in social safety nets to support the most vulnerable.