Working Papers
2008
March 1, 2008
Breaking the Impediments to Budgetary Reforms: Evidence from Europe
Description: Under what conditions are budget institutions likely to be strengthened? We find that fiscal deficits do not help in focusing policymakers on undertaking reforms. To the contrary, the larger the deficit, the lower is the likelihood of reforms. Large deficits apparently imply strong claims on the budget and, hence, generate unwillingness to impose self-discipline. As such, countries will tend to move either to small fiscal deficits and good institutions or large deficits and weak institutions. Economic shocks (if they are large enough) can help build a constituency for improving budget institutions. However, if forgiving markets accommodate economic shocks, even such pressure may be insufficient. Forwardlooking and credible leadership appears to be an important ingredient of the solution.
March 1, 2008
Does Money Matter for U.S. Inflation? Evidence from Bayesian VARs
Description: We use Bayesian estimation techniques to investigate whether money growth Granger-causes inflation in the United States. We test for Granger-causality out-of-sample and find, perhaps surprisingly given recent theoretical arguments, that including money growth in simple VAR models of inflation does systematically improve out-of-sample forecasting accuracy. This holds for a long forecasting sample 1960-2005, as well for more recent subperiods, including the Volcker and Greenspan eras. However, the contribution of money to inflation forecasting accuracy is quantitatively limited and tends to be smaller in recent subperiods, in particular in models that also include information on real GDP growth and interest rates.
March 1, 2008
The Reform of Italian Cooperative Banks: Discussion of Proposals
Description: This paper argues that the governance framework of cooperative banks may hamper raising capital, particularly at time of distress, complicating the bank resolution process ?specially for large banks?and may not provide adequate incentives to control banks' management. Reforms should preserve the positive characteristics that make cooperative banks a valuable addition to the Italian financial system, while providing enough flexibility and incentives for banks to adopt a suitable governance model. Our empirical analysis suggests that cooperative banks may enjoy a higher degree of monopoly power than commercial banks. Thus, regulations and the enforcement of antitrust policies should ensure a leveled playing field.
March 1, 2008
Political Economy of Multi-Level Tax Assignments in Latin American Countries: Earmarked Revenue Versus Tax Autonomy
Description: A weakness of decentralization and overall tax reforms in Latin America is the lack of attention to adequate taxation at the subnational government. A reliance on shared taxes with extensive earmarking leads to weak subnational accountability and soft budget constraints. The paper explores the options for expanding subnational taxation in Latin America. A range of subnational tax instruments might be considered, but interactions between new tax assignments and the system of transfers is important from a political economy perspective.
March 1, 2008
Business Cycle Accounting For Chile
Description: We investigate sources of economic fluctuations in Chile during 1998-2007 within the framework of a standard neoclassical growth model with time-varying frictions (wedges). We analyze the relative importance of efficiency, labor, investment, and government/trade wedges for business cycles in Chile. The purpose of this exercise is twofold: (i) focus the policy discussion on the most important wedges in the economy; and (ii) identify which broad class of models would present fruitful avenues for further research. We find that different wedges have played different roles during our studied period, but that the efficiency and labor wedges have had the greatest impact. We also compare our results with existing studies on Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.
March 1, 2008
Imperfect Central Bank Communication - Information versus Distraction
Description: Much of the information communicated by central banks is noisy or imperfect. This paper considers the potential benefits and limitations of central bank communications in a model of imperfect knowledge and learning. It is shown that the value of communicating imperfect information is ambiguous. There is a risk that the central bank can distract the public; this means that the central bank may prefer to focus its communication policies on the information it knows most about. Indeed, conveying more certain information may improve the public's understanding to the extent that it "crowds out" a role for communicating imperfect information.
March 1, 2008
Hong Kong SAR as a Financial Center for Asia: Trends and Implications
Description: We document Hong Kong SAR's evolving role as an international financial center in the Asia region, the importance of the growing special link with China as well as supply-side advantages, and outline the scope for future financial services growth. Hong Kong SAR has a long established track record as Asia's premier center for cross-border financial transactions. Further financial opening of China is likely to consolidate Hong Kong SAR's leading position as Asia's international financial center over the medium term. However, preserving Hong Kong SAR's first-mover advantage in the long-term calls for a development strategy that balances reaping the benefits from the special China role with the need to transcend into a truly international center in the long run.
March 1, 2008
Effective Average Tax Rates for Permanent Investment
Description: This paper extends the effective average tax rate (EATR) developed in Devereux and Griffith (2003) by relaxing the assumption of a one-period perturbation in the capital stock. Instead it allows a permanent investment. While this may appear a small change, it has important implications. First, it allows the EATR to be calculated in the presence of tax holidays, which are an important part of tax systems, especially in developing countries. Second, it reveals an interesting feature of the original EATR: despite the assumption of a one-period investment, the original measure is informative about long-term investments, thanks to the assumption of pooled depreciation. Without this assumption-which is justifiable in a few countries only- the EATR based on one-period perturbation in the capital stock would be less useful for analyzing medium and long-term investments.
March 1, 2008
India: Is the Rising Tide Lifting All Boats?
Description: While many have celebrated India's accelerating economic growth, some have expressed concern about the distributional impacts of the growth process. Cognizant of the vulnerability of its large population below poverty, India's authorities have made faster and more inclusive economic growth the primary goal of their development strategy. This paper aims to document how the benefits of economic expansion were shared across the income distribution over the last two decades using disaggregate household level data. Experiences across Indian states suggest an important role for economic policy in shaping the inclusiveness of growth. States with higher financial development, more flexible labor markets, and higher average education experienced greater relative gains for the poor. Improving infrastructure may also lead to a growth process that is more inclusive of the poor.
March 1, 2008
Tax and Welfare Reforms in the Czech Republic—Structural Implications and Challenges
Description: The paper provides an analysis and discussion of key structural implications of the 2007 and 2008 welfare and tax reforms in the Czech Republic. Based on a detailed micro-study of marginal and average effective tax rates for individuals at various points along the earnings curve, it concludes that while incentives to save and invest have improved, work incentives are being severely hampered by high marginal effective tax rates for low- and middle income individuals. The reforms also fail to address the most pressing fiscal concern: to put government finances on a sustainable path.