Working Papers
2008
February 1, 2008
Central Bank Financial Strength, Policy Constraints and Inflation
Description: Central bank financial strength is positively associated with good policy performance. Financially weak central banks generate losses which undermine macroeconomic stability and call into question the credibility of their policies. In assessing central bank financial strength a careful examination of the policy regime and the volatility of the economic environment is necessary. Conventional measures of private enterprise financial strength- profitability and capital-can be very misleading when applied to central banks. The way in which a central bank balance sheet is strengthened matters. Providing the central bank with marketable government debt that can be used to develop a money market that in turn may become the locus of central bank monetary operations serves both to directly strengthen the institution and improve the quality of the environment in which it operates, thereby facilitating the attainment of its ultimate performance objectives.
February 1, 2008
A Bayesian-Estimated Model of Inflation Targeting in South Africa
Description: This paper estimates a small dynamic macroeconomic model for the South African economy with Bayesian methods. The model is tailored to assessing the impact of domestic as well as external shocks on inflation within an inflation targeting framework, by incorporating forward-looking behavior of private agents and of the monetary authority. The model is able to display important empirical features of the monetary transmission mechanism that have been found in other studies. It helps to integrate the short-term inflation outlook into a consistent medium-term framework and to design the policy response for various shocks that affect inflation.
February 1, 2008
Helping Hand or Grabbing Hand? Supervisory Architecture, Financial Structure and Market View
Description: The literature stresses the importance of financial market characteristics in determining the supervisory architectures. In the real world it is not always clear to what extent market features are taken into account. We present two complementary approaches to gain insights in the above relationship. First, an empirical test of two theories-the helping and the grabbing hand view of government-seems more consistent with the latter, presuming the market demonstrates a preference for consolidation of supervisory powers. Second, a survey among financial CEOs in Italy confirms a preference for a consolidated supervisory regime and reveals only weak consistency between the views of the policymakers and the market operators.
February 1, 2008
Aggregate Investment Expenditures on Tradable and Nontradable Goods
Description: This paper shows that aggregate investment expenditure shares on tradable and nontradable goods are very similar across countries and regions. Furthermore, the two expenditure shares have remained close to constant over time, with the average expenditure share on nontradables varying between 0.54-0.62 over the 1960-2004 period. These empirical findings offer a new restriction for two-sector models of the aggregate economy. Combined with the fact that the relative price of nontradables correlates positively with income and exhibits large differences across space and time, our findings suggest that tradable and nontradable goods in investment can be modeled using the Cobb-Douglas aggregator.
February 1, 2008
Regional Wage Differentiation and Wage Bargaining Systems in the EU
Description: The theoretical literature has argued that a centralized wage bargaining system may result in low regional wage differentiation and high regional unemployment differentials. The empirical literature has found that centralized wage bargaining leads to lower wage inequality for different skills, industries and population groups, but has not investigated its impact on regional wage differentiation. Empirical evidence in this paper for EU regions for the period 1980-2000 suggests that countries with more coordinated wage bargaining systems have lower regional wage differentials, after controlling for regional productivity and unemployment differentials.
February 1, 2008
A Risk-Based Debt Sustainability Framework: Incorporating Balance Sheets and Uncertainty
Description: This paper proposes a new framework for the analysis of public sector debt sustainability. The framework uses concepts and methods from modern practice of contingent claims to develop a quantitative risk-based model of sovereign credit risk. The motivation in developing this framework is to provide a clear and workable complement to traditional debt sustainability analysis which-although it has many useful applications-suffers from the inability to measure risk exposures, default probabilities and credit spreads. Importantly, this new framework can be adapted for policy analysis, including debt and reserve management.
February 1, 2008
Big Government, High Debt, and Fiscal Adjustment in Small States
Description: Using a new fiscal dataset for small states, this paper analyzes the link between country size, government size, debt, and economic performance. It finds that on average small states have larger governments and higher public debt. Although there are intrinsic factors that explain why governments are bigger in small states, those with smaller governments and lower public debt tend to grow faster and are less vulnerable. Large fiscal adjustments, primarily through expenditure restraint, can underpin growth, although sometimes other elements can also impact. Since better governance is associated with lower debt, fiscal adjustment should be supported by governance improvements.
February 1, 2008
“Beneficial” Delays in Debt Restructuring Negotiations
Description: Delays in debt restructuring negotiations are widely regarded as inefficient. This paper argues that delays can allow the economy to recover from a crisis, make more resources available for debt settlement, and enable the negotiating parties to enjoy a larger "cake". Within this context, therefore, delays may be "beneficial". This paper explores this idea by constructing a dynamic model of sovereign default in which debt renegotiation is modeled as a stochastic bargaining game based on Merlo and Wilson's (1995) framework. Quantitative analysis shows that this model can generate an average delay length comparable to that experienced by Argentina in its most recent debt restructuring.
February 1, 2008
Issues in Central Bank Finance and Independence
Description: Conventional economic policy models focus only on selected elements of the central bank balance sheet, in particular monetary liabilities and sometimes foreign reserves. The canonical model of an "independent" central bank assumes that it chooses money (or an interest rate), unconstrained by a need to generate seignorage for itself or government. While a long line of literature has emphasized the dangers of fiscal dominance influencing the conduct of monetary policy the idea that an independent central bank could be constrained in achieving its policy objectives by its own balance sheet situation is a relatively novel idea considered in this paper. If one accepts this potential constraint as a valid concern, the financial strength of the central bank as a stand alone entity becomes highly relevant for ascertaining monetary policy credibility. We consider several strands of evidence that clearly indicate fiscal backing for central banks cannot be assumed and hence financial independence is relevant to operational independence. First we examine 135 central bank laws to illustrate the variety of legal approaches adopted with respect to central bank financial independence. Second, we examine the same data set with regard to central bank recapitalization provisions to show that even in cases where the treasury is nominally responsible for maintaining the central bank financially strong, it may do so in purely a cosmetic fashion. Third, we show that, in actual practice, treasuries have frequently not provided central banks with genuine financial support on a timely basis leaving them excessively reliant on seignorage to finance their operations and/or forcing them to abandon policy objectives.
February 1, 2008
The Effects of Early Retirement on Youth Unemployment: The Case of Belgium
Description: In this paper, we describe the changes of (early) retirement programs over time and study the link between trends in elderly labor force participation and youth unemployment. From a theoretical point of view, there is no convincing argument that the idea of a lump-of-labor should hold. Our empirical results comfort this finding, and indicate a very weak link, if any, between elderly retirement and activity among the young and the prime-age populations.