Working Papers
2006
February 1, 2006
The Dynamics of Provincial Growth in China: A Nonparametric Approach
Description: China's growth record since the start of its economic reforms in 1978 has been extraordinary. Yet, this impressive performance has been associated with an increasing regional income disparity. We use a recently developed nonparametric approach to analyze the variation in labor productivity growth across China's provinces. This approach imposes less structure on the data than the standard growth accounting framework and allows for a breakdown of labor productivity into capital deepening, efficiency gains, and technological progress. Like other studies before us, we do not find strong evidence of convergence in labor productivity across China's provinces during 1978-98. However, our results show that provinces converged in efficiency levels, while they diverged in capital deepening and technological progress.
February 1, 2006
The Implications of Trade Barriers for Sectoral Diversification and Macroeconomic Stability in Developing Economies
Description: The paper examines the implications of lower trade barriers for sectoral diversification and macroeconomic stability in developing economies with a large primary goods sector. It shows that lower trade barriers can have ambiguous effects on macroeconomic stability. It shows also that diversification, in the form of equal distribution of resources between nonprimary sectors, may be counterproductive. In fact, investment in the nonprimary sector with lower trade barriers unambiguously enhances macroeconomic stability in a developing economy that is subject to substantial primary shocks.
February 1, 2006
Common Factors in Latin America's Business Cycles
Description: This paper constructs new business cycle indices for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico based on common dynamic factors extracted from a comprehensive set of sectoral output, external data, and fiscal and financial variables spanning over a century. The constructed indices are used to derive a business cycle chronology for these countries and characterize a set of new stylized facts. In particular, we show that all four countries have historically displayed a striking combination of high business cycle and persistence relative to benchmark countries, and that such volatility has been time-varying, with important differences across policy regimes. We also uncover a sizeable common factor across the four economies which has greatly limited scope for regional risk sharing.
February 1, 2006
Domestic Taxes and International Trade: Some Evidence
Description: The effects on trade performance of corporate taxes and the value-added tax (VAT) continue to excite controversy but have received little empirical attention. This paper uses panel data for OECD countries from 1967 to 2003 to examine the effects of these taxes on export performance, paying particular attention to the potentially complex dynamic effects to which theory points. It finds that increased reliance on VAT revenue tends to be associated with a sharp reduction in net exports, which quickly fades. This may reflect unrelated movements in consumption, and our preferred specifications point to no trade effects of the VAT in either the short or the long run. Our results also point, however, to powerful and complex effects from the corporate tax, the pattern of which is as theory would predict from a source-based tax of this kind. Increases in corporate taxation-whether measured by revenues or the statutory rate-are associated with sharp short-run increases in net exports (consistent with induced capital flows abroad); these are then subsequently and quickly reversed (consistent with increased income from investments abroad), leaving an increase in net exports that converges to zero.
February 1, 2006
A New-Open-Economy Macro Model for Fiscal Policy Evaluation
Description: We develop a New-Open-Economy-Macro model in which Ricardian equivalence does not hold because of (i) distortionary labor and corporate income taxation; (ii) limited asset market participation; and (iii) because the overlapping-generations structure results in a disconnect between current and future generations. We consider a permanent increase in government debt following a cut in labor or corporate income taxes in a small and large open economy. We analyze the sensitivity of the results to the key structural parameters of the model and argue that under plausible assumptions there will be significant crowding-out effects associated with permanent increases in government debt.
February 1, 2006
Does NGO Aid Go to the Poor? Empirical Evidence from Europe
Description: This paper studies the aid allocation of European nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Once population is controlled for, poverty consistently appears as the main worldwide determinant of NGO aid allocation. NGOs do not respond to strategic considerations. Their funding source does not seem to exert a great influence on their aid allocation decision. We also find differences across regions. Militarization and the political nature of the regime of the recipient country affect aid allocation in the Middle East. Life expectancy influences aid allocation in countries in the Western Hemisphere and the Middle East.
February 1, 2006
The Impact of Foreign Interest Rateson the Economy: The Role of the Exchange Rate Regime
Description: This paper explores the connection between interest rates in major industrial countries and annual real output growth in other countries. The results show that high large-country interest rates have a contractionary effect on annual real GDP growth in the domestic economy, but that this effect is centered on countries with fixed exchange rates. The paper then examines the potential channels through which large-country interest rates affect small economies. The direct monetary policy channel is the most likely channel when compared with other possibilities, such as a general capital market effect or a trade effect.
February 1, 2006
Does Inflation in China Affect the United States and Japan?
Description: With China's share in global trade increasing rapidly, some argued in 2002-03 that China was exporting deflation to other countries as it was dumping cheap goods in mature markets. Later, others argued that China was sucking in commodities and thus causing sharp increases in global prices. The theoretical literature so far has provided mixed conclusions regarding the strength of international transmission of inflation. This paper uses a number of econometric techniques to assess the extent of the link between inflation rates between China and the United States and Japan. It finds only limited empirical evidence at the aggregate level for consumer price inflation in China leading to price changes in the United States and Japan. However, it finds some evidence that inflation in the United States has an impact on Chinese inflation, consistent with the literature that argues that inflation is propagated from the reserve currency economy to other economies. In either case, the impact is short lived. At a more disaggregate level, there appears to be stronger sector-specific linkages between prices in China and in the United States and Japan, both for food and at the household level for manufactured goods.
January 1, 2006
Toward An Effective Supervision of Partially Dollarized Banking Systems
Description: The paper presents a supervisory framework that addresses the vulnerabilities of partially dollarized banking systems. The tendency to underprice systemic liquidity risk and currency-induced credit risk creates vulnerabilities that need supervisory responses. The framework seeks to induce agents to better internalize risks by implementing a risk based approach to supervision, following the risk management guidelines of the Basel Committee, and by establishing buffers to cover higher liquidity and solvency risks. The paper also shows that most dollarized countries have addressed their liquidity vulnerabilities, but few have addressed those arising from currency-induced credit risks.
January 1, 2006
Corruption, Competition, and Contracts: A Model of Vote Buying
Description: In the presence of competing interest groups, this paper examines how the form of votebuying contracts affects policy outcomes. We study contracts contingent upon individual votes, policy outcomes, and/or vote shares. Voters either care about their individual votes, or about the policy outcome. We find that vote buying is cheaper when what can be contracted upon coincides with what voters care about. Vote buying becomes extremely costly, or even impossible, when there is no such coincidence. Finally, vote buying is extremely cheap, or even free, when contracts can be contingent upon both individual votes and vote shares.