Working Papers
2006
August 1, 2006
Currency Risk Premia in Global Stock Markets
Description: Large fundamental imbalances persist in the global economy, with potential exchange rate implications. This paper assesses whether exchange rate risk is priced across G-7 stock markets. Given the multitude of hedging instruments available, theory suggests that stock market investors should not be compensated for currency risk. However, data covering 33 industry portfolios across seven major stock markets suggest that not only is exchange rate risk priced in many markets, but that it is time-varying and sensitive to currency-specific shocks. With stock market investors typically exhibiting "home bias," this suggests that investors are using equity asset proxies to hedge the exchange rate risks to consumption.
August 1, 2006
Natural-Resource Depletion, Habit Formation, and Sustainable Fiscal Policy: Lessons from Gabon
Description: While models based on Friedman's (1957) permanent-income hypothesis can provide oilproducing countries with long-run fiscal targets, they usually abstract from short-run costs associated with consolidation. This paper proposes a model that takes such adjustment costs (or "habits") into account. Further operational realism is added by permitting differential interest rates on sovereign debt and financial assets. The approach is applied to Gabon, where oil reserves are expected to be exhausted in 30 years. The results suggest that Gabon's current fiscal-policy stance cannot be maintained, while the presence of habits justifies smoothing the bulk of the adjustment toward the sustainable level over three to five years.
August 1, 2006
Money Isn’t Everything: The Challenge of Scaling Up Aid to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals in Ethiopia
Description: This paper outlines the challenge of developing an operational macroeconomic framework in Ethiopia consistent with the large envisaged scaling up of aid to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This paper describes an MDG scenario that addresses both microeconomic and macroeconomic constraints, such as the need to boost sustainable growth, limit Dutch disease, formulate an exit strategy from aid dependency, enhance public financial management (PFM), and expand the supply of skilled labor. The paper will argue that a carefully sequenced MDG strategy is essential so that the scaled-up aid and public spending will remain in line with Ethiopia's absorptive capacity.
August 1, 2006
What Explains Private Saving in Mexico?
Description: This paper examines the factors influencing Mexico's private saving rate. Cross-country analysis finds that Mexico's private saving is somewhat higher than could be explained by its fundamentals, but lower than in the average country in the sample. This analysis suggests that Mexico's greater reliance on external saving, its relatively high population dependency ratio, and its less developed financial system have been the main factors holding back private saving. Time-series analysis finds that movements in private saving have not been associated with similar shifts in investment, as changes in public saving and external saving have tended to offset movements in private saving. This is consistent with the direction of causality being from investment to saving and suggests that policy measures should focus on creating conditions favorable to increased investment.
August 1, 2006
What’s Driving Private Investment in Malaysia? Aggregate Trends and Firm-Level Evidence
Description: Private sector investment has been a key source of growth in Malaysia over the last three decades, but after an unprecedented decline in the wake of the Asian crisis it has remained sluggish in recent years. Using aggregate and firm-level data, this paper aims to explain these trends and their implications for Malaysia's investment and growth outlook. Aggregate data point to sustained overinvestment in the years prior to the Asian crisis and the role of shifts in investor perceptions as important determinants of the recent decline in private investment. Meanwhile, firm-level data suggest that low profitability, along with financing constraints affecting smaller firms and those in the services sector, has also been important.
August 1, 2006
Financial Globalization: A Reappraisal
Description: The literature on the benefits and costs of financial globalization for developing countries has exploded in recent years, but along many disparate channels and with a variety of apparently conflicting results. For instance, there is still little robust evidence of the growth benefits of broad capital account liberalization, but a number of recent papers in the finance literature report that equity market liberalizations do significantly boost growth. Similarly, evidence based on microeconomic (firm- or industry-level) data shows some benefits of financial integration and the distortionary effects of capital controls, while the macroeconomic evidence remains inconclusive. We attempt to provide a unified conceptual framework for organizing this vast and growing literature. This framework allows us to provide a fresh synthetic perspective on the macroeconomic effects of financial globalization, in terms of both growth and volatility. Overall, our critical reading of the recent empirical literature is that it lends some qualified support to the view that developing countries can benefit from financial globalization, but with many nuances. On the other hand, there is little systematic evidence to support widely cited claims that financial globalization by itself leads to deeper and more costly developing country growth crises.
August 1, 2006
Capital Flows to Central and Eastern Europe
Description: We examine the evolution of the net external asset positions of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC) countries over the past decade, with a strong emphasis on the composition of their international balance sheets. We assess the extent of their international financial integration, compared with the advanced economies and other emerging markets, and highlight the salient features of their external capital structure in terms of the relative importance of FDI, portfolio equity, and external debt. In addition, we briefly describe the country and currency composition of their external liabilities. Finally, we explore the implications of the accumulated stock of external liabilities for future trade and current account balances.
August 1, 2006
The Jordanian Stock Market—Should You Invest in It for Risk Diversification or Performance?
Description: We analyze the performance of the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) and its integration with other markets. Using cointegration techniques, we find that the ASE and other Arab stock markets are cointegrated, which implies little long-run risk diversification. However, there is no cointegrating relationship between the ASE and other emerging or developed stock markets. Two of the main regional stock markets-Kuwait and Saudi Arabia-Grangercause the Jordanian stock market. The paper finds that there may have been some overvaluation at end-2005, but that the market correction in early 2006 and strong recent earnings growth have reduced overvaluation concerns.
August 1, 2006
Oil and Growth in the Republic of Congo
Description: This paper investigates the linkages between oil and growth in Congo, where there appears to be no evidence of direct spillover effects. The empirical results suggest however that political instability has a negative effect on non-oil growth, and that the presence of oil could have fueled political instability by being associated with weakening institutions. The results also show that fiscal discipline is beneficial for growth. In addition, there are strong linkages between world oil prices and the real effective exchange rate, with movements in the latter having important indirect repercussions for growth.
August 1, 2006
Fiscal and Monetary Nexus in Emerging Market Economies: How Does Debt Matter?
Description: This paper examines two main aspects of the interaction between fiscal and monetary policy in emerging market economies. First, it explores the interest rate-inflation relationship in economies with different levels of external and domestic public debt using panel- and crosssection data. The results show that interest rate-inflation elasticity weakens with debt/GDP and external debt/GDP. Second, it utilizes high-frequency data from Brazil, Turkey, and Poland to examine how market-determined variables react to economic news. The results suggest that when vulnerabilities are high, budget news has the most significant impact on country spreads and interest rates, and the impact of monetary policy is weakened.