Working Papers
2006
October 1, 2006
Fuel Price Subsidies in Gabon: Fiscal Cost and Distributional Impact
Description: This paper looks at the fiscal cost and distributional impact of implicit fuel price subsidies in Gabon, where fuel prices have remained largely unchanged since 2002. Using estimated implicit import parity prices, we evaluate the total fiscal cost of the subsidies at 3.2 percent of non-oil GDP in 2005-more than total public health expenditures. We also analyze the distribution of the subsidies using household survey data and find that the bulk of the subsidies benefit higher-income households. Finally, we suggest use of a number of existing programs to provide a more targeted and cost-effective means of protecting the real incomes of lower-income households from the effects of energy price increases.
October 1, 2006
Banking on the Principles: Compliance with Basel Core Principles and Bank Soundness
Description: This paper studies whether compliance with the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCPs) improves bank soundness. The authors find a significant and positive relationship between bank soundness (measured with Moody's financial strength ratings) and compliance with principles related to information provision2. Specifically, countries that require banks to regularly and accurately report their financial data to regulators and market participants have sounder banks. This relationship is robust to controlling for broad indexes of institutional quality, macroeconomic variables, sovereign ratings, and reverse causality. Measuring soundness through Z-scores yields similar results. These findings emphasize the importance of transparency in making supervisory processes effective and strengthening market discipline. Countries aiming to upgrade banking regulation and supervision should consider giving priority to information provision over other elements of the core principles.
October 1, 2006
How Does the Global Economic Environment Influence the Demand for IMF Resources?
Description: The main objective of this paper is to quantify the relationship between the global economic environment and the number of Stand-By Arrangements (SBAs). The results suggest that oil prices, world interest rates, and the global business cycle are the most influential indicators that affect the number of SBAs being requested. In addition, the empirical model seems to have reasonable accuracy when predicting SBAs. Furthermore, when oil prices, interest rates, and the global business cycle are adversely shocked by one standard deviation, the conditional probability of a SBA nearly doubles, implying an increase from about six to 12 SBAs. More critically, the model suggests that even a steady deterioration of the global economic climate would imply increasingly harsher conditions for developing and emerging market countries which may in turn significantly increase the demand for IMF resources.
October 1, 2006
Bond Markets As Conduits for Capital Flows: How Does Asia Compare?
Description: We use data on the extent to which residents of one country hold the bonds of issuers resident in another as a measure of financial integration or interrelatedness, asking how Asia compares with Europe and Latin America and with the base case in which the purchaser and issuer of the bonds reside in different regions. Not surprisingly, we find that Europe is more financially integrated than other regions. Asia, more interestingly, already seems to have made more progress on this front than Latin America and other parts of the world. The contrast with Latin America is largely explained by stronger creditor and investor rights, better contract enforcement, and greater transparency, all of which are conducive to foreign participation in local markets and to intraregional cross holdings of Asian bonds generally. Further results based on a limited sample suggest that one factor holding back investment in foreign bonds in East Asia may be limited geographical diversification by mutual funds, in turn reflecting a dearth of appropriate assets. Asian Bond Fund 2, by creating a passively managed portfolio of local currency bonds potentially attractive to mutual fund managers and investors, may help to relax this constraint.
October 1, 2006
Pacific Island Countries: Possible Common Currency Arrangement
Description: This paper examines the potential advantages and disadvantages of adopting a common currency arrangement among the six IMF member Pacific island countries that have their own national currency. These countries are Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Vanuatu. The study explains that the present exchange rate regimes-comprising pegging to a basket of currencies for five countries and the floating arrangement for Papua New Guinea-have generally succeeded in avoiding inflationary, balance of payments, external debt, and financial system problems. The study concludes that adopting a common currency in the Pacific would require greater convergence of domestic policies and substantial strengthening of regional policies, which would take time to achieve.
October 1, 2006
Gender and its Relevance to Macroeconomic Policy: A Survey
Description: This survey examines the implications of gender differences in economic behavior for macroeconomic policy. It finds that reducing gender inequality and improving the status of women may contribute to higher rates of economic growth and greater macroeconomic stability. Women's relative lack of opportunities in developing countries inhibits economic growth, while, at the same time, economic growth leads to a reduction in their disadvantaged condition. Equality of opportunity in labor and financial markets is critical to enabling women to take full advantage of improved macroeconomic conditions. Macroeconomic policies should take into account the benefits of reducing gender inequalities, especially in the lowest-income countries where these differences are most pronounced, and should consider the potentially harsher short-term effects of economic austerity measures on women to avoid exacerbating gender inequalities.
October 1, 2006
Productivity Growth, Technological Convergence, RandD, Trade, and Labor Markets: Evidence From the French Manufacturing Sector
Description: Total factor productivity (TFP) of 14 manufacturing sectors in France has kept up with that of the United States during 1980-2002 and remained well above that of the United Kingdom. Estimates using a dynamic panel equilibrium correction model indicate that sectors further behind the technological frontier experience faster productivity growth and that spending on research and development and trade with technologically advanced economies positively influences TFP growth, but not the speed of convergence. Conversely, TFP growth is negatively related to some key labor market variables, namely the replacement ratio and the ratio of the minimum wage to the median wage.
October 1, 2006
Beauty Queens and Wallflowers: Currency Unions in the Middle East and Central Asia
Description: Against the background of the theory of optimum currency areas, the paper analyzes possible sequences for establishing a currency union (CU) in the Middle East and Central Asia region. Between the corner solutions of independent currencies for all countries in the region and a CU comprising all countries, a large number of combinations of member countries in the CU is possible. The analysis aims to determine the composition of potential CUs as a function of the country initiating the CU, an exogenously determined number of currencies in the region, and the weight attached to the particular selection criteria. Within this framework, the study seeks to establish whether some countries are consistently selected at early stages of the process, while others join only at later stages.
October 1, 2006
Economic and Political Determinants of Tax Amnesties in the U.S. States
Description: This paper revisits earlier studies on the determinants of tax amnesties. The novel findings are (i) amnesties are more likely to be declared during fiscal stress periods, and (ii) political factors significantly affect the introduction and timing of amnesties. In particular, the paper empirically disentangles opposite theoretical effects to show that governors perceive amnesties as another revenue source (rather than a tax increase alternative). Finally, supporting evidence shows that by breaking horizontal equity, amnesties might be perceived as unfair: a significant correlation exists between governors who lost their reelection bids and the introduction of a tax amnesty during their election years.
October 1, 2006
The "Flat Tax(es)": Principles and Evidence
Description: One of the most striking tax developments in recent years, and one that continues to attract considerable attention, is the adoption by several countries of a form of "flat tax." Discussion of these quite radical reforms has been marked, however, more by assertion and rhetoric than by analysis and evidence. This paper reviews experience with the flat tax, seeking to redress the balance. It stresses that the flat taxes that have been adopted differ fundamentally, and that empirical evidence on their effects is very limited. This precludes simple generalization, but several lessons emerge: there is no sign of Laffer-type behavioral responses generating revenue increases from the tax cut elements of these reforms; their impact on compliance is theoretically ambiguous, but there is evidence for Russia that compliance did improve; the distributional effects of the flat taxes are not unambiguously regressive, and in some cases they may have increased progressivity, including through the impact on compliance; adoption of the flat tax has not resolved common challenges in taxing capital income; and it may have strengthened, not weakened, the automatic stabilizers. Looking forward, the question is not so much whether more countries will adopt a flat tax as whether those that have will move away from it.