Working Papers
2007
March 1, 2007
Monetary Policy in an Equilibrium Portfolio Balance Model
Description: Standard theory shows that sterilized foreign exchange interventions do not affect equilibrium prices and quantities, and that domestic and foreign currency denominated bonds are perfect substitutes. This paper shows that when fiscal policy is not sufficiently flexible in response to spending shocks, perfect substitutability breaks down and uncovered interest rate parity no longer holds. Government balance sheet operations can be used as an independent policy instrument to target interest rates. Sterilized foreign exchange interventions should be most effective in developing countries, where fiscal volatility is large and where the fraction of domestic currency denominated government liabilities is small.
March 1, 2007
Egypt—Searching for Binding Constraints on Growth
Description: Since 2004 Egypt's growth has been accelerating in step with the launching of a series of ambitious reforms, reversing a trend during the preceding half-decade when Egypt's growth rate fell below that of most regional peers and well below that of the average developing country. This paper seeks to identify factors that held back Egypt's growth in the recent past, and explores whether recent reforms have removed the most binding constraints to allow at least a temporary growth spurt. Overall, the Egyptian reforms launched in 2004 appear to have focused well on the most critical constraints-reducing red tape and tax rates, and improving access to foreign exchange-thereby getting a strong growth response out of a limited set of reforms. However, inefficient bureaucracy remains an important obstacle to higher growth and reforms in this area should continue to have high payoffs. Ongoing reforms are also addressing constraints that are likely to become binding soon (or have become so already), such as inefficient financial intermediation and high public debt. Improvements in education may rapidly become a critical factor for sustaining higher growth.
March 1, 2007
On The Welfare Benefits of an International Currency
Description: Is it beneficial for a country's currency to be used internationally? And, if so, can we quantify the benefit? Since the emergence of the euro, there has been great interest in the consequences of a transfer of the US dollar's premier international role to the euro. Building on recent advancements in the literature on search models of money, this paper presents a novel model-based approach towards assessing the welfare benefits associated with the international use of a country's currency. The welfare gain for the Euro area in having the euro internationally used ranges from 1.7% to 2.1% of consumption.
February 1, 2007
External Linkages and Contagion Risk in Irish Banks
Description: The large and growing international linkages of big Irish banks expose them to idiosyncratic shocks arising in other countries. We analyze international interdependencies of Irish banks-during both normal times and in periods of large shocks or extreme events-using an existing methodology with distance to default (DD) data constructed from the banks' equity prices. The data covers daily observations from January 1994 to November 2005. We first construct rolling correlations between DDs of Irish banks and those of banks from other European countries and the U.S. to analyze trends in cross-country interdependencies. We then use a multinomial logit model to estimate the number of banks in Ireland that experience a large shock on the same day as banks in other countries ("coexceedances"), controlling for Ireland-specific and global factors. We find evidence of increasing cross-border interdependencies over time; differing interlinkage patterns in the pre-Euro, post-Euro, and the post-September 11th periods; and significant cross-border contagion risk from the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Netherlands. This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate.
February 1, 2007
Do South-South Trade Agreements Increase Trade? Commodity-Level Evidence from COMESA
Description: South-South trade agreements are proliferating: Developing countries signed 70 new agreements between 1990 and 2003. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown. This paper focuses on the static effects of South-South preferential trade agreements stemming from changes in trade patterns. Specifically, it estimates the impact of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) on Uganda's imports between 1994 and 2003. Detailed import and tariff data at the 6-digit harmonized system level are used for more than 1,000 commodities. Based on a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, the paper finds that-in contrast to evidence from aggregate statistics-COMESA's preferential tariff liberalization has not considerably increased Uganda's trade with member countries, on average across sectors. The effect, however, is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, the paper finds no evidence of trade-diversion effects.
February 1, 2007
Remittances in the Pacific Region
Description: Remittances are large and have grown substantially over the past decade in the Pacific region. This primarily reflects the impact of emigration due to low growth and limited employment prospects at home. Many Pacific emigrants settle abroad with their families for long periods, but maintain close links with their relatives, villages and churches. The paper finds that the altruistic motive for remittances remains much stronger in the Pacific region than in the rest of Asia, where investment considerations increasingly appear to predominate, especially for the large share of single citizens working abroad for limited periods.
February 1, 2007
Fixed Exchange Rates and the Autonomy of Monetary Policy: The Franc Zone Case
Description: This paper compares monetary policy of currency boards with that of the franc zone during the period 1956-2005. It concludes that monetary policy in the zone was more autonomous than under a currency board, even though both systems faced the same exchange rate constraint. So far, the contingency line provided by the French treasury and capital controls have allowed the zone to combine a fixed exchange rate and a relatively autonomous monetary policy. Financial development and zone enlargement would challenge this relative autonomy for two reasons: (1) the potential cost to the French treasury would increase; and (2) residents would potentially be able to avoid capital controls. For the zone to maintain its fixed exchange rate, close targeting of foreign reserves would become important.
February 1, 2007
Sources of Inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Description: This paper explores the sources of inflation in Sub-Saharan Africa by examining the relationship between inflation, the output gap, and the real money gap. Using heterogeneous panel cointegration estimation techniques, we estimate cointegrating vectors for the production function and the real money demand function to recover the structural output and money gaps for seventeen African countries. The central finding is that both gaps contain significant information regarding the evolution of inflation, albeit with a larger role played by the money gap. There is no significant evidence of asymmetry in the relationship.
February 1, 2007
Aging, Asset Allocation, and Costs: Evidence for the Pension Fund Industry in Switzerland
Description: This paper focuses on the nexus between pension funds' balance sheet liabilities, reflecting their age profile and payments obligations, and the investment behavior and costs of these funds. The context of the analysis is the stringent regulatory framework and the highly fragmented and heterogeneous pension fund landscape in Switzerland. Detailed data from the Swiss Pension Statistic are analyzed using multivariate OLS-regressions. The evidence shows that a younger age structure and lower short-term benefits payouts are related to a higher share of equities and lower real estate holdings. Legal form, pension plan type, and size are important for administrative costs. The findings support the view that aging may lead to increased risk aversion and thus to a lower engagement of institutional investors in equities.
February 1, 2007
Are Workers' Remittances a Hedge Against Macroeconomic Shocks? the Case of Sri Lanka
Description: We estimate a vector error correction (VEC) model for Sri Lanka to determine the response of remittance receipts to macroeconomic shocks. This is the first attempt of its kind in the literature. We find that remittance receipts are procyclical and decline when the island's currency weakens, undermining their usefulness as shock absorber. On the other hand, remittances increase in response to oil price shocks, reflecting the fact that most overseas. Sri Lankan are employed in the Gulf states. The procyclicality of remittances calls into question the notion that remittances are largely motivated by altruism.