Working Papers
2007
December 1, 2007
How Has The Globalization of Labor Affected the Labor Income Share in Advanced Countries?
Description: Labor markets around the world have become increasingly integrated over the last two decades, with the entry of China, India and the former Eastern bloc into the world trading system, the removal of restrictions on trade and capital flows, and rapid technological progress. At the same time, the share of labor in national income decreased in most advanced countries. This paper uses a labor share equation derived from a translog revenue function to estimate the contributions of globalization, technological progress, and labor market policies to the decline in the labor share. The results, obtained for 18 advanced countries over 1982- 2002, suggest that globalization was only one of several factors that have affected the labor share. Technological progress, especially in the information and communications sectors, has had a bigger impact, particularly on the labor share in unskilled sectors.
December 1, 2007
Equilibrium Exchange Rates: Assessment Methodologies
Description: The paper describes six different methodologies that have been used to assess the equilibrium values of exchange rates and discusses their limitations. It applies several of the approaches to data for the United States as of 2006, illustrates that different approaches sometimes provide substantially different assessments, and asks which methodologies deserve the most weight in such situations. It argues that while it is generally desirable to consider the implications of several different approaches, since different approaches provide different types of perspectives, two of the methodologies seem particularly relevant for identifying threats to macroeconomic stability and growth.
December 1, 2007
Modeling Inflation for Mali
Description: This paper investigates how consumer price inflation is determined in Mali for 1979-2006 along three macroeconomic explanations: (1) monetarist theories, emphasizing the impact of excess money supply, (2) the structuralist hypothesis, stressing the impact of supply-side constraints, and (3) external theories, describing the effects of foreign transmission mechanisms on a small open economy. The analysis makes use of cointegration techniques and general-to-specific modeling. Average national rainfall, and to a lesser extent deviations from monetary and external sector equilibrium are found to be the main long-run determinants of inflation. The paper offers policy recommendations for controlling inflation in Mali.
December 1, 2007
Is Brazil Different? Risk, Dollarization, and Interest Rates in Emerging Markets
Description: We investigate the role of financial dollarization in the determination of real interest rates in emerging economies. In a simple analytical model, we show that a strategy of "dedollarizing" the economy, if it fails to address fundamental macroeconomic risks, leads to higher domestic real interest rates. We confirm this prediction in an empirical model, but find that the effect is small after controlling for the risks of dilution and default. Brazil provides a natural case study given its low degree of financial dollarization and very high real interest rates. The estimated model is unable to explain the high interest rate levels in the aftermath of Brazil's 1994 inflation stabilization. However, since the adoption in 1999 of inflation targeting and floating exchange rates, Brazil's real interest rates are gradually converging to the model's predicted values. The estimation also shows that further drops in Brazil's real interest rates could be achieved more effectively through improvements in fundamentals that lead to investment-grade status rather than through financial dollarization.
December 1, 2007
Border and Behind-the-Border Trade Barriers and Country Exports
Description: How do signatures required for exporting and business registration procedures affect the volume and composition of country's exports? To answer this question, I develop a model where a country can export two types of products: differentiated and homogeneous. I show that export signatures and registration procedures reduce overall exports by increasing transaction costs. The impact, however, varies across goods according to the product's degree of differentiation- the lack of price data on differentiated products due to their heterogeneity makes them more sensitive to export signatures. Regressions show that each extra signature exporters have to collect before a shipment can take place reduces aggregate exports by 4.2 percent. The impact is large, equivalent to raising importer's tariff by 5 percentage points. Furthermore, each signature lowers exports of differentiated products by 4-5 percent more than exports of homogeneous goods. I find evidence that business registration procedures affect exports of differentiated products only.
December 1, 2007
Equity and Private Debt Markets in Central America, Panama, and the Dominican Republic
Description: This study focuses on equity, private debt, and asset-backed securities markets in Central America. These markets are generally under-developed throughout the region due to several structural problems, economic and political factors, and weaknesses in regulation and in institutional investor base. The paper identifies key country-specific recommendations to strengthen securities laws, regulatory oversight, market infrastructure, investor base, and new products such as asset-backed securities. Despite these efforts, developing seven viable private capital markets is a difficult goal. The paper thus also explores the benefits and difficulties of creating a single capital market in a region still short of full economic integration.
December 1, 2007
Buoyant Capital Spending and Worries over Real Appreciation: Cold Facts from Algeria
Description: The Government of Algeria has pursed a relatively expansionary fiscal policy in recent years, thanks to rising oil prices and revenues. The paper explores the potential effects of such a stance on real exchange rate and uncovers a relatively small appreciating effect of increased government capital expenditure. This is explained by the fact that a significant share of capital spending falls into tradable imported goods. However, the envisaged increase in capital spending, if well designed and implemented, might in the long-run translate into rising operations and maintenance expenditure-mostly nontradable goods-thereby causing a higher real appreciation. This implies that Algeria should carefully consider the implications of its public investment program on recurrent expenditure.
December 1, 2007
The Monetary Transmission Mechanism in Egypt
Description: This paper examines the monetary transmission mechanism in Egypt against the background of the central bank's intention to shift to inflation targeting. It first describes the changing transmission channels over the last decade. Second, the channels are evaluated in a VAR model. The exchange rate channel plays a strong role in propagating monetary shocks to output and prices. Most other channels (bank lending, asset price) are rather weak. The interest rate channel is underdeveloped but appears to be strengthening since the introduction of the interest corridor in 2005, which bodes well for adopting inflation targeting over the medium term.
December 1, 2007
International Diversification Gains and Home Bias in Banking
Description: This paper assembles a bank-level dataset covering the operations of 38 international banks from eight industrial countries and their subsidiaries overseas during 1995-2004, and studies the extent of diversification gains from their local operations abroad. The paper finds that international banks with a larger share of assets allocated to foreign subsidiaries, particularly to those located in emerging market countries, are able to attain higher risk-adjusted returns. These gains are somewhat reduced- but by no means depleted-when international banks concentrate their subsidiaries in specific geographical regions. The paper also finds a substantial home bias in the international allocation of bank assets, relative to the results of a mean-variance portfolio optimization model. Overall, international diversification gains in banking appear to be substantial, albeit largely unexploited by current bank expansion strategies. These results suggest that international diversification gains could usefully be considered in the second pillar of Basel II as the first pillar is based only on the idiosyncratic risk of recipient countries.
December 1, 2007
High Growth and Low Consumption in East Asia: How to Improve Welfare While Avoiding Financial Failures
Description: This paper analyzes certain policies that are typical of a number of rapidly growing East Asian countries in which a fixed exchange rate, combined with a surplus labor market, has made domestic assets relatively inexpensive, generating high rates of FDI as well as domestic capital formation. This "investment hunger" can lead to unanticipated declines in the returns to investment, and resulting financial insolvencies. Private consumption remains low and there are concerns that high savings rates cannot be sustained. We construct a dynamic general equilibrium model and apply it to a stylized Asian economy, loosely based upon China. We calibrate a benchmark equilibrium, and carry out various counterfactual simulations to analyze alternative policies, in particular tax cuts and exchange rate revaluations, as instruments in increasing private consumption while avoiding bank failures.