Working Papers
2005
January 1, 2005
Increasing Public Sector Revenue in the Philippines: Equity and Efficiency Considerations
Description: Public sector revenue has declined markedly in the Philippines over the past seven years. Most observers of the Philippine economy agree that rebuilding public sector revenue will be critical to reducing deficits and ensuring public sector debt sustainability. This paper reviews several of the main possibilities for raising public sector revenue, including increases in excise, VAT, and electricity rates. It argues that most of these proposals would raise revenue in a relatively efficient manner. Using household-level expenditure data, it also finds that most of these measures would be progressive, especially if they allow the government to avoid cuts in pro-poor spending.
January 1, 2005
Trade Liberalization and Wage Inequality: Evidence From India
Description: We evaluate empirically the impact of the dramatic 1991 trade liberalization in India on the industry wage structure. The empirical strategy uses variation in industry wage premiums and trade policy across industries and over time. In contrast to earlier studies on developing countries, we find a strong, negative, and robust relationship between changes in trade policy and changes in industry wage premiums over time. The results are consistent with liberalization-induced productivity increases at the firm level, which get passed on to industry wages. Since tariff reductions were proportionately larger in sectors that employ a larger share of unskilled workers, the increase in wage premiums in these sectors implies that unskilled workers experienced an increase in their relative incomes. Thus, our findings suggest that trade liberalization has led to decreased wage inequality in India.
January 1, 2005
Growth Empirics Under Model Uncertainty: Is Africa Different?
Description: This paper attempts to identify robust patterns of cross-country growth behavior in the world as a whole and Africa. It employs a novel methodology that incorporates a dynamic panel estimator, and Bayesian Model Averaging to explicitly account for model uncertainty. The findings indicate that: (i) in addition to initial conditions, various economic factors such as higher investment, lower inflation, lower government consumption, better fiscal stance, improved political environment, exogenous terms-of-trade shocks, and fixed geographical factors are robustly correlated with growth; (ii) what is good for growth around the world is, in principle, also good for growth in Africa; and (iii) political and institutional variables are particularly important in explaining African growth.
January 1, 2005
Competition and Efficiency in Banking: Behavioral Evidence from Ghana
Description: This paper assesses the degree of bank competition and discusses efficiency with regard to banks' financial intermediation in Ghana. By applying panel data to variables derived from a theoretical model, we find evidence for a noncompetitive market structure in the Ghanaian banking system, which may be hampering financial intermediation. We argue that the structure, as well as the other market characteristics, constitutes an indirect barrier to entry thereby shielding the large profits in the Ghanaian banking system.
January 1, 2005
Capitalizing Central Banks: A Net Worth Approach
Description: This paper provides a simple, quantitative, net worth-based, approach to assessing the need for central bank capital. It derives a concept of "core capital" (a function of the central bank's operating expenditures and the carrying cost of its international reserves) as the minimum capital needed by a central bank to ensure the credibility of its inflation target. The approach is illustrated with the published accounts of three loss-making central banks and selected accounting entries for a broader sample of central banks. Policy implications are explored. In particular, the paper argues that central bank capitalizations cannot be automatic and require instead a broad policy debate.
January 1, 2005
Growth, Expansion of Markets, and Income Elasticities in World Trade
Description: The Houthakker-Magee effect implies that a country facing unfavorable income elasticities in trade must either grow at a slower rate than its trading partners or experience a trend worsening of its current account and/or depreciation of its real exchange rate. Krugman (1989) first documented the existence of a “45-degree rule” under which relative income elasticities are systematically related to relative growth rates. In this paper, we develop and test an intertemporal current account model in which Krugman’s original 45-degree rule is a special case. The result suggests that secular trends in current accounts and/or real exchange rates are much smaller than one would have projected based on conventional income elasticities.
January 1, 2005
Implicit Transfers in IMF Lending, 1973–2003
Description: We compute realized transfers implicit in IMF lending from 1973-2003, based on 2003 IMF repayment projections and promised debt relief. IMF lending rates to high-and middleincome countries fell short of industrial country borrowing rates by 30-150 basis points over the period as a whole, but exhibited a small premium after 1987. The subsidy received by low-income and HIPC countries was much higher (400-600 basis points, respectively). In 2002 NPV terms, cumulative transfers were 12-15 percent of 2002 GDP for the HIPCs, 2-3 percent for low income countries, and less than ¾ percent for the emerging market countries.
January 1, 2005
Asymmetric Effects of Government Spending: Does the Level of Real Interest Rates Matter?
Description: This paper empirically explores how fiscal policy (represented by increases in government spending) has asymmetric effects on economic activity at different levels of real interest rates. It suggests that the effect of fiscal policy depends on the level of real rates, since the Ricardian effect is smaller at lower financing costs of fiscal policy. Using threshold regression models on U.S. data, the paper provides new evidence that expansionary government spending is more conducive to short-run growth when real rates are low. It also finds asymmetric effects on interest rates and inflation, and threshold effects associated with substitution between financing methods.
January 1, 2005
Stock Market Liquidity and the Macroeconomy: Evidence from Japan
Description: In a liquid financial market, investors are able to sell large blocks of assets without substantially changing the price. We document a steep drop in the liquidity of the Japanese stock market in the post-bubble period and a steep rise in liquidity risk. We find that, during Japan's deflationary period, firms with more liquid balance sheets were less exposed to stock market liquidity risk, while slowly growing firms were highly exposed to liquidity shocks. Also, aggregate liquidity had macroeconomic effects on aggregate demand through its effect on money demand.
January 1, 2005
Financial Globalization and Exchange Rates
Description: The founders of the Bretton Woods System 60 years ago were primarily concerned with orderly exchange rate adjustment in a world economy that was characterized by widespread restrictions on international capital mobility. In contrast, the rapid pace of financial globalization during recent years poses new challenges for the international monetary system. In particular, large gross cross-holdings of foreign assets and liabilities mean that the valuation channel of exchange rate adjustment has grown in importance, relative to the traditional trade balance channel. Accordingly, this paper empirically explores some of the interconnections between financial globalization and exchange rate adjustment and discusses the policy implications.