Working Papers
2006
September 1, 2006
Distance-to-Default in Banking: A Bridge Too Far?
Description: In contrast to corporate defaults, regulators typically take a number of statutory actions to avoid the large fiscal costs associated with bank defaults. The distance-to-default, a widely used market-based measure of corporate default risk, ignores such regulatory actions. To overcome this limitation, this paper introduces the concept of distance-to-capital that accounts for pre-default regulatory actions such as those in a prompt-corrective-actions framework. We show that both risk measures can be analyzed using the same theoretical framework but differ depending on the level of capital adequacy thresholds and asset volatility. We also use the framework to illustrate pre-default regulatory actions in Japan in 2001-03.
September 1, 2006
Growth and Reforms in Latin America: A Survey of Facts and Arguments
Description: This paper presents a number of facts about growth in Latin America, and shows how critical correlates of growth have evolved over time. In comparison with other regions, Latin America has consistently exhibited higher macroeconomic volatility, lower openness, and higher income inequality, though openness and macroeconomic stability have improved since the early 1990s. The paper then discusses three views of why reforms have not led to higher growth in Latin America: that reforms have gone too far; that reforms have not gone far enough; and that reforms have missed the point.
September 1, 2006
Do Some Forms of Financial Flows Help Protect From Sudden Stops?
Description: There is a debate on whether some forms of financial flows offer better crisis protection than others. Using a large panel of advanced, emerging, and developing countries during 1970-2003, this paper analyzes the behavior of various types of flows: foreign direct investment (FDI), portfolio equity investment, portfolio debt investment, other flows to the official sector, other flows to banks, and other flows to the non-bank private sector. Differences across types of flows are limited with respect to volatility, persistence, cross-country comovement, and correlation with growth at home or in the world economy. However, consistent with conventional wisdom, FDI is found to be the least volatile form of financial flows when taking into account the average size of net or gross flows. The differences are striking during "sudden stops" in financial flows (defined as drops in total net financial inflows by more than 5 percentage points of GDP compared with the previous year): in such episodes, FDI is remarkably stable; portfolio equity also seems to play a limited role; portfolio debt experiences a reversal, though it recovers relatively quickly; and other flows (including bank loans and trade credit) experience severe drops and remain depressed for a few years.
September 1, 2006
Asset Market Participation, Monetary Policy Rules, and the Great Inflation
Description: This paper argues that limited asset market participation is crucial in explaining U.S. macroeconomic performance and monetary policy before the 1980s, and their changes thereafter. We develop an otherwise standard sticky-price dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, which implies that at low asset-market participation rates, the interest rate elasticity of output (the slope of the IS curve) becomes positive - that is, "non-Keynesian." Remarkably, in that case, a passive monetary policy rule ensures equilibrium determinacy and maximizes welfare. Consequently, we argue that the policy of the Federal Reserve System in the pre-Volcker era, often associated with a passive monetary policy rule, was closer to optimal than conventional wisdom suggests and may thus have remained unchanged at a fundamental level thereafter. We provide institutional and empirical evidence for our hypothesis, in the latter case using Bayesian estimation techniques, and show that our model is able to explain most features of the "Great Inflation."
August 1, 2006
Insuring Public Finances Against Natural Disasters: A Survey of Options and Recent Initiatives
Description: Natural disasters can put severe strain on public finances, in particular in developing and small countries. But catastrophe insurance markets increasingly offer opportunities for the transfer of such risks. Thus far, developing countries have only tepidly begun to tap these opportunities. More frequent and intensive use of insurance markets may be desirable because it could help introduce an important element of predictability in the post-disaster public finances of disaster-prone developing countries. Against this background, the paper surveys the various available insurance modalities and reviews recent initiatives in developing and emerging market countries. It also identifies some key challenges for the insurance community, donors, and international financial institutions (IFIs).
August 1, 2006
Corruption and Technology-Induced Private Sector Development
Description: This paper asks whether corruption might be the outcome of a lack of outside options for public officials or civil servants. We propose an occupational choice model embedded in an agency framework to address the issue. We show that technology-induced private sector expansion leads to a decline in publicly supplied corruption as it provides outside options to public officials who might otherwise engage in corruption. We provide empirical evidence that strongly shows that technology-induced private sector development is associated with a decline in aggregate corruption. This suggests that the decline in publicly supplied corruption outweighs the potential increase in privately supplied corruption that could result from private sector expansion.
August 1, 2006
Measures of Underlying Inflation in the Euro Area: Assessment and Role for Informing Monetary Policy
Description: The paper evaluates the 24-month ahead inflation forecasting performance of various indicators of underlying inflation and structural models. The inflation forecast errors resulting from model misspecification are larger than the errors resulting from forecasting of exogenous variables. Also, measures derived using the generalized dynamic factor model (GDFM) overperform other measures over the monetary policy horizon and are leading indicators of headline inflation. Trimmed means, although weaker than GDFM indicators, have good forecasting performance, while indicators by permanent exclusion underperform but provide useful information about short-term dynamics. The forecasting performance of theoretically-founded models that relate monetary aggregates, the output gap, and inflation improves with the time horizon but generally falls short of that of the GDFM. A composite measure of underlying inflation, derived by averaging the statistical indicators and the model-based estimates, improves forecast accuracy by eliminating bias and offers valuable insight about the distribution of risks.
August 1, 2006
Financial Integration in Asia: Recent Developments and Next Steps
Description: This Working Paper brings together three papers prepared as background for discussions at the Second High-Level Conference on Asian Integration cohosted by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the IMF on May 25, 2006. The first documents recent trends in the intraregional flow of goods and capital and explores linkages between real and financial integration. The second focuses on the institutional and regulatory reforms needed to reap the benefits-and contain the risks-of financial integration in Asia. The third considers the implications of economic integration for the choice of the exchange rate regime and the conduct of macroeconomic policies.
August 1, 2006
A Primer for Risk Measurement of Bonded Debt from the Perspective of a Sovereign Debt Manager
Description: This paper presents some conventional and new measures of market, credit, and liquidity risks for government bonds. These measures are analyzed from the perspective of a sovereign's debt manager. In particular, it examines duration, convexity, M-square, skewness, kurtosis, and VaR statistics as measures of interest rate exposure; a VaR statistic as the prominent measure of exchange rate exposure; the balance sheet approach (or contingent claims approach), and its consequent probability of default as the most promising measure of credit risk exposure; and an elasticity approach and a VaR statistic to measure liquidity risk. Along with the formulas for the various statistics proposed, we provide simple examples of their application to some common risk valuation cases. Finally, we present an integrated approach for the simultaneous estimation of a portfolio's interest rate and exchange rate risk using the VaR methodology. The integrated approach is then extended to also include N risk factors. This approach allows us to measure the total risk of a portfolio, provided that the volatilities and correlations among the risk factors can be estimated.
August 1, 2006
The Level and Composition of Public Sector Debt in Emerging Market Crises
Description: The paper examines the evolution of public sector debt levels and structures in 12 emerging market countries around the time of financial crises. In particular, it focuses on whether the debt situation of sovereign borrowers became more vulnerable in the aftermath of crises. The principal findings are that (i) debt levels tend to increase significantly post-crisis, and (ii) countries often experience more rigid debt structures following such events, with an increase in the share of external public debt to multilateral creditors and a greater exposure of the domestic banking system to sovereign debt.