Working Papers
2006
January 1, 2006
Does Economic Diversification Lead to Financial Development? Evidence From topography
Description: An influential theoretical literature has observed that economic diversification can reduce risk and increase financial development. But causality operates in both directions, as a well functioning financial system can enable a society to invest in more productive but risky projects, thereby determining the degree of economic diversification. Thus, ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates of the impact of economic diversification on financial development are likely to be biased. Motivated by the economic geography literature, this paper uses instruments derived from topographical characteristics to estimate the impact of economic diversification on the development of finance. The fourth estimates suggest a large and robust role for diversification in shaping financial development. And these results imply that, by impeding financial sector development, the concentration of economic activity common in developing countries can adversely affect financial and economic development.
January 1, 2006
Financial Sector Projections and Stress Testing in Financial Programming: A New Framework
Description: This paper proposes a framework to check for consistency between the IMF's standard country surveillance tool, namely medium-term projections of the macroeconomic framework (including the real, fiscal, external, and monetary sectors), and the financial sector. Consistency here entails that the financial sector remain solvent in the medium term under the assumptions of the macroeconomic framework and that the macroeconomic framework is fine-tuned should threats to financial sector solvency arise as a result of assumptions underlying the medium-term macroeconomic framework projections. The proposed framework can also be used to conduct sensitivity analysis of the aggregated financial sector to various types of risks, including foreign exchange, interest rate, and credit risk. For surveillance purposes, this framework can easily be integrated into one of the standard sectoral files so that any update to the macroeconomic framework automatically feeds into the financial sector medium-term projections. We anticipate the proposed framework to be of interest to IMF economists as well as outside analysts.
January 1, 2006
Emigration and Brain Drain: Evidence From the Caribbean
Description: This paper quantifies the magnitude and nature of migration flows from the Caribbean and estimates their costs and benefits. The Caribbean countries have lost 10-40 percent of their labor force due to emigration to OECD member countries. The migration rates are particularly striking for the highskilled. Many countries have lost more than 70 percent of their labor force with more than 12 years of completed schooling-among the highest emigration rates in the world. The region is also the world's largest recipient of remittances as a percent of GDP. Remittances constituted about 13 percent of the region's GDP in 2002. Simple welfare calculations suggest that the losses due to high-skill migration (ceteris paribus) outweigh the official remittances to the Caribbean region. The results suggest that there is indeed some evidence for brain drain from the Caribbean.
January 1, 2006
Implications of Quasi-Fiscal Activities in Ghana
Description: This paper assesses the scope and coverage of quasi-fiscal activities (QFAs) in Ghana. We find that while QFAs have been reduced recently, they remain significant. The extensive nature of these activities has several macroeconomic and structural policy implications. An extended measure of public sector operations, including QFAs, presents a clearer picture of Ghana's fiscal stance and fiscal adjustment from one for the central government alone; QFAs have led to serious distortions in energy and water consumption; and they have distorted the investment decisions of both public enterprises and the private sector.
January 1, 2006
Equilibrium Wage Dispersion: An Example
Description: Search models with posting and match-specific heterogeneity generate wage dispersion. Given K values for the match-specific variable, it is known that there are K reservation wages that could be posted, but generically never more than two actually are posted in equilibrium. What is unknown is when we get two wages, and which wages are actually posted. For an example with K = 3, we show equilibrium is unique; may have one wage or two; and when there are two, the equilibrium can display any combination of posted reservation wages, depending on parameters. We also show how wages, profits, and unemployment depend on productivity.
January 1, 2006
Foreign Banks in Poor Countries: Theory and Evidence
Description: We study how foreign bank penetration affects financial sector development in poor countries. A theoretical model shows that when foreign banks are better at monitoring highend customers than domestic banks, their entry benefits those customers but may hurt other customers and worsen welfare. The model also predicts that credit to the private sector should be lower in countries with more foreign bank penetration. In the empirical section, we show that, in poor countries, a stronger foreign bank presence is robustly associated with less credit to the private sector both in cross-sectional and panel tests. In addition, in countries with more foreign bank penetration, credit growth is slower and there is less access to credit. We find no adverse effects of foreign bank presence in more advanced countries.
January 1, 2006
Suppressed Inflation and Money Demand in Zimbabwe
Description: The paper investigates the divergence between inflation and monetary expansion in Zimbabwe since late 2003. The substantial decline in velocity and increasing levels of real money balances during 2004 are at odds with a record of inflation closely tracking the growth rates of monetary aggregates in the past. Possible explanations for the divergence include an unstable demand for money, a sudden shift in the underlying demand for real balances due to a sharp change in an explanatory variable, and a structural break or aberration in a normally stable money demand relation reflecting some unexplained factor such as repressed inflation (given administered prices) or measurement errors in the consumer price index. The results of the study point to the last possibility as the most likely explanation.
January 1, 2006
Seasonalities in China's Stock Markets: Cultural or Structural?
Description: In this paper, we examine returns in the Chinese A and B stock markets for evidence of calendar anomalies. We find that both cultural and structural (segmentation) factors play an important role in influencing the pricing of both A- and B-shares in China. There is some evidence of a February turn-of-the-year effect, partly owing to the timing of the Chinese Lunar New Year (CNY); and the holiday effect around the CNY period is stronger and more persistent compared with the other public holidays. The segmentation between the two markets is apparent in the day-of-the-week effect, where B stock markets tend to post significant negative returns on Tuesdays, corresponding with overnight developments in the United States, while significant negative returns are observed on Mondays in the A stock markets. Investment strategies based on some of these calendar anomalies, and allowing for transaction costs, suggest that the A stock markets tend to offer more economically significant returns.
January 1, 2006
How Does Trade Openness Influence Budget Deficits in Developing Countries?
Description: This paper analyzes the effects of trade openness on budget balances by distinguishing the effects of natural openness from those of trade-policy induced openness. Using the GMMsystem estimator, the econometric analysis focuses on 66 developing countries during 1974-98. The results show that trade openness increases a country's exposure to external shocks regardless of its underlying causes. This reinforces the adverse effects of terms of trade instability on budget balances. However, trade openness also influences budget balances through several other channels: corruption, income inequalities, etc. The paper shows that these additional effects of natural openness and trade-policy induced openness on budget balances go in opposite directions: the former deteriorates budget balances whereas the latter improves them.
January 1, 2006
Are Donor Countries Giving More or Less Aid?
Description: The volume of foreign aid has increased during the last four decades, albeit with interruptions in certain years. Over time, the major recipients have changed: while the share of aid to Asia has diminished since the 1980s, that destined for sub-Saharan Africa has grown. There is some evidence that, since the late 1990s, debt relief has assumed a larger share of the increased aid flows to sub-Saharan Africa. The share of technical cooperation-a component of aid that is viewed as being driven by donors-has risen. More recently, there has been an increased emphasis on providing budget support to recipient governments, especially in the form of debt relief. Donor harmonization, national ownership of development plans, and sound policies on the part of the recipients are crucial for the aid to be effective in reducing poverty.