Working Papers
2007
April 1, 2007
The Dynamics of Product Quality and International Competitiveness
Description: Despite the appreciation of the exchange rate, the eight Central and Eastern European countries (the CEE-8) that entered the European Union in May 2004 have achieved a decade of impressive export growth, expanding significantly their shares of world markets. Does this mean that the real exchange rate is irrelevant? If not, what other factors compensated for the appreciation to explain the apparently strong competitiveness of these economies? And will these favorable factors continue to power export growth? This paper places in international context the achievements of the CEE-8 and helps more broadly to identify the determinants of international competitiveness. Building from data at the six-digit level of disaggregation, it shows that the CEE-8 made an impressive shift in product quality and in the technological intensity of exports, and that these shifts associated with the structural transformation were also associated with increased market share. The analysis strongly suggests that, when trading in international markets, countries benefit from higher product quality. However, while the structural transformation achieved was valuable in raising market shares, the easy gains from this process may be over.
April 1, 2007
Implications of More Precise Information for Technological Development and Welfare
Description: This paper analyzes the dynamic interactions between the precision of information, technological development, and welfare within an overlapping generations model. More precise information about idiosyncratic production shocks has ambiguous effects on technological progress and welfare, which depend critically on the risk sharing capacity of the economy's financial system. For example, we show that with efficient risk sharing more precise information adversely affects the equilibrium risk allocation and creates a negative uncertainty-related welfare effect, at the same time as it accelerates technological progress and increases R&D investment.
April 1, 2007
Government Size and Intersectoral Income Fluctuation: An International Panel Analysis
Description: Using the between-sector variation in income as a new measure of economic uncertainty, this paper proposes simple models and supportive empirical evidence for the causal relations between economic uncertainty and government size in the open economy setting. Key empirical findings include: (1) a larger government reduces economic uncertainty, and, at the same time, (2) an economy facing higher uncertainty has a larger government. However, (3) the government tends to resort to redistributive policies to reduce the uncertainty, while (4) government direct spending is also an effective option for the purpose. The study also finds that (5) cross-sectional measure of economic uncertainty tends to rise when a country becomes more open to international trade.
April 1, 2007
Trade Policy with Heterogeneous Traders: Do Quotas Get a Bum Rap?
Description: This paper considers the effects of trade policy-tariffs and quotas-when importing is done by competitive traders who are identical ex ante but differ ex post. We show that the standard equivalence results no longer hold and the conventional ranking of tariffs and quotas is turned on its head: quotas are not as bad for welfare as previously believed, while tariffs may restrict trade by more than originally intended. Furthermore, the allocation of property rights (quota licenses) has real effects beyond the distribution of rents; this, in turn, has implications for the effects of corruption on welfare.
April 1, 2007
In Search of Equilibrium: Estimating Equilibrium Real Exchange Rates in Sub-Saharan African Countries
Description: This paper presents a methodology to estimate equilibrium real exchange rates (ERER) for Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries using both single-country and panel estimation techniques. The limited data set hinders single-country estimation for most countries in the sample, but panel estimates are statistically and economically significant, and generally robust to different estimation techniques. The results replicate well the historical experience for a number of countries in the sample. Panel techniques can also be used to derive out of sample estimates for countries with a more limited data set.
April 1, 2007
Guyana: Why Has Growth Stopped? An Empirical Study on the Stagnation of Economic Growth
Description: After a period of exceptionally strong economic performance, Guyana's growth has stagnated since 1998. The paper tries to identify the factors that can explain this dramatic deterioration in economic performance. The paper first attempts to explain the decline of growth with a growth accounting exercise which shows that there was a significant swing in total factor productivity, and than uses a panel regression framework to analyze the growth impact of changes in various factors. Finally, through a series of cross-country exercises, the paper shows that the primary reasons for the divergence between the economic performance of Guyana and other Caribbean, HIPC, and PRGF-eligible countries in 1998-2004 are a substantial decline in share of net foreign and private domestic investment in GDP, a decline in the labor force, and a less favorable political and institutional environment.
April 1, 2007
Banking Supervision: Quality and Governance
Description: This paper examines the relationship between the quality of banking supervision and governance of the supervisory agency, based on assessments of the Basel Core Principles and the IMF Code on Transparency in Financial Policies, covering 116 and 53 countries, respectively, with 51 common to both. We find a positive correlation between the transparency of the supervisor and the effectiveness of banking supervision; moreover, better accountability and integrity practices of the banking supervisors are associated with higher independence, which in turn is associated with better compliance with the Basel Core Principles. These results are largely robust to different stages of financial development.
April 1, 2007
The Effect of Capital Controlson Foreign Direct Investment Decisions Under Country Risk with Intangible Assets
Description: This paper examines how capital controls affect FDI decisions and how the impact of these restrictive measures varies with different levels of country risk. We construct a model of firms' FDI decisions, broadly in Dunning's "eclectic theory" framework, using "real options" to emphasize economic uncertainty and country risk. Numerical results of the model take the form of "quality statistics" that uncover the underlying dynamics hidden in the aggregate data that is responsible for the low performance of recent empirical studies. We find that increasing levels of capital controls reduce the life-span of FDI investments at each level of country risk and foreign investors' willingness towards risk sharing increases. We reveal a significant interaction between capital control and country risk, resulting in a nonlinear relationship between these and the volatility and volume statistics. We estimate a standard cross-sectional model that provides strong support for our theoretical findings.
April 1, 2007
British Influences on Commonwealth Budget Systems: The Case of the United Republic of Tanzania
Description: Several features of Tanzania's budget system find their roots in the arrangements inherited from the United Kingdom. These include a legal framework that emphasizes accountability; a cabinet of ministers with strong budget decision-making powers; a parliament with very limited budget powers; and a similar external audit organization. In both countries, budget execution is decentralized to individual ministries, with accounting officers responsible to a parliamentary accounts committee. These similarities are blended with contrasts, including in Tanzania: a presidential system of government, one dominant political party, a written constitution, and some fragmentation in central budget decision-making within the executive.
April 1, 2007
Interpreting EU Funds Data for Macroeconomic Analysis in the New Member States
Description: Drawing on a dataset suitable for macroeconomic analysis, the paper provides an overview of the magnitudes, purpose and institutional implications of EU-related transfers to and from the new member states. A rough analysis of accounting identities and first-round effects shows that EU funds may have led to a fiscal drag of up to 1 percent of GDP and an additional aggregate demand stimulus of up to 1 percent of GDP during the first years of membership. These effects are likely to increase as additional funding become available under the new financial perspective, pointing to the need to consider policy tradeoffs.