Working Papers
2008
March 1, 2008
Exchange Rate Assessment in a Resource-Dependent Economy: The Case of Botswana
Description: The paper combines various methodologies to assessing the level of the exchange rate in Botswana, explicitly taking into account the implications of its dependency on diamond exports. Real exchange rate estimation indicates that, after a period of overvaluation, Botswana's real effective exchange rate is now broadly in line with economic fundamentals. The projected current account path is also consistent with external sustainability, defined to ensure sufficient savings of diamond wealth in order to maintain a stable import and consumption path through 2050. Sustaining consumption over the longer term will however require to address obstacles to non-diamond exports' competitiveness.
March 1, 2008
Are Diamonds Forever? Using the Permanent Income Hypothesis to Analyze Botswana’s Reliance on Diamond Revenue
Description: This study assesses the sustainability of Botswana’s diamond-related fiscal revenue. Diamond reserves are not adequate to generate enough permanent revenue to sustain a high level of expenditure. Under the current fiscal rule that no debt may be accumulated, Botswana will have to save more to avoid an abrupt adjustment in the medium term.
March 1, 2008
Testing for Structural Breaks in Small Samples
Description: In a recent paper, Bai and Perron (2006) demonstrate that their approach for testing for multiple structural breaks in time series works well in large samples, but they found substantial deviations in both the size and power of their tests in smaller samples. We propose modifying their methodology to deal with small samples by using Monte Carlo simulations to determine sample-specific critical values under the each time the test is run. We draw on the results of our simulations to offer practical suggestions on handling serial correlation, model misspecification, and the use of alternative test statistics for sequential testing. We show that, for most types of data generating processes in samples with as low as 50 observations, our proposed modifications perform substantially better.
March 1, 2008
The Monetary Model Strikes Back: Evidence from the World
Description: We revisit the dramatic failure of monetary models in explaining exchange rate movements. Using the information content from 98 countries, we find strong evidence for cointegration between nominal exchange rates and monetary fundamentals. We also find fundamentalsbased models very successful in beating a random walk in out-of-sample prediction.
March 1, 2008
Japan’s Corporate Income Tax—Overview and Challenges
Description: The structure of Japan's corporate income tax system is broadly in line with those of other G7 countries. However, relatively high marginal and average effective tax rates prompt the question of whether adjustments should be considered to meet the objectives of promoting growth, investment and competitiveness in a revenue neutral manner. This paper discusses key issues and trade-off's related to changes in the corporate income tax system. It does not provide recommendations, but raises issues that could hopefully serve as useful inputs to the ongoing discussion and tax debate in Japan.
March 1, 2008
Achieving a Soft Landing: The Role of Fiscal Policy
Description: This paper utilizes an open-economy New Keynesian overlapping generations model to assess the extent to which fiscal policy, along side an inflation-forecast-based monetary policy, could enhance macroeconomic stability in Colombia. The model simulations indicate that, in addition to stabilizing output and inflation, a stronger response of the fiscal balance to excess tax revenue would reduce the burden on the central bank of adjusting interest rates, lessen the associated degree of exchange rate volatility, and contribute to a more stable external current account balance. The analysis also assesses how the success of fiscal policy in enhancing macroeconomic stability depends on the type of shock, the response of monetary policy, and the length of fiscal policy implementation lags.
March 1, 2008
Local Service Provision in Selected OECD Countries: Do Decentralized Operations Work Better?
Description: There is a widespread presumption that decentralization improves public service provision. This has led to policy prescriptions that are assiduously adhered to by countries and international. This paper reviews the recent evidence from OECD countries-which is seen to be inconclusive. This suggests the need for a careful design of programs that take into account the political economy constraints and incentives, as well as more systematic and thorough evaluations of outcomes.
March 1, 2008
Trade Creation and Diversion Revisited: Accounting for Model Uncertainty and Natural Trading Partner Effects
Description: Trade theories covering Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) are as diverse as the literature in search of their empirical support. To account for the model uncertainty that surrounds the validity of the competing PTA theories, we introduce Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to the PTA literature. BMA minimizes the sum of Type I and Type II error, the mean squared error, and generates predictive distributions with optimal predictive performance. Once model uncertainty is addressed as part of the empirical strategy, we report clear evidence of Trade Creation, Trade Diversion, and Open Bloc effects. After controlling for natural trading partner effects, Trade Creation is weaker - except for the EU. To calculate the actual effects of PTAs on trade flows we show that the analysis must be comprehensive: it must control for Trade Creation and Diversion as well as all possible PTAs. Several prominent control variables are also shown to be robustly related to Trade Creation; they relate to factor endowments and economic policy.
March 1, 2008
What Makes Growth Sustained?
Description: We identify structural breaks in economic growth in 140 countries and use these to define "growth spells:" periods of high growth preceded by an upbreak and ending either with a downbreak or with the end of the sample. Growth spells tend to be shorter in African and Latin American countries than elsewhere. We find that growth duration is positively related to: the degree of equality of the income distribution; democratic institutions; export orientation (with higher propensities to export manufactures, greater openness to FDI, and avoidance of exchange rate overvaluation favorable for duration); and macroeconomic stability (with even moderate instability curtailing growth duration).
March 1, 2008
A Stochastic Framework for Public Debt Sustainability Analysis
Description: This paper proposes a framework for public debt sustainability analysis (DSA) that is complementary to that generally used by IFIs. The DSA in this paper has three components: (i) an integrated and consistent accounting framework for the Consolidated Public Sector (CPS); (ii) the estimation of an appropriate, and country-specific debt threshold, following the approach proposed by Reinhart, Rogoff and Savastano (2003); and (iii) a method for the calculation of the CPS primary balance to achieve the desired debt targets, without resorting to ad-hoc assumptions for the values of the macroeconomic variables during the planning horizon, in the spirit of Garcia and Rigobon (2004) and Celasun, Debrun and Ostry (2006). The paper uses this approach to analyze the sustainability of the Dominican Republic's Public Debt.