Working Papers
January 1, 0001
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January 1, 0001
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January 1, 0001
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January 1, 0001
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2004
June 1, 2004
The Quality Effect: Does Financial Liberalization Improve the Allocation of Capital?
Description: The study documents evidence of a "quality effect" of financial liberalization on allocative efficiency, which is measured by the dispersion in Tobin's Q across firms. Based on a simple model, the authors predict that financial liberalization, by equalizing access to credit, reduces the variation in expected marginal returns. They test this prediction using a new financial liberalization index and firm-level data for five emerging markets: India, Jordan, Korea, Malaysia, and Thailand. They find strong evidence that financial liberalization, rather than financial deepening, improves allocative efficiency.
June 1, 2004
Challenging the Empirical Evidence From Present Value Models of the Current Account
Description: Under near-singularity conditions typically generated by persistence in current account data the predictions of present value models become extremely sensitive to small sample estimation error. Moreover, traditional Wald tests will distort the likelihood that the model is true. Using OECD data we find that: (i) the Wald test often leads to the wrong inference compared to a valid test; (ii) in all cases posterior distributions of the predicted series and associated correlation coefficients and variance ratios are very wide. In particular, one cannot draw any firm conclusion regarding excess current account volatility.
June 1, 2004
Trade and Industrial Location with Heterogeneous Labor
Description: We show in the context of a new economic geography model that when labor is heterogenous trade liberalization may lead to industrial agglomeration and interregional trade. Labor heterogeneity gives local monopoly power to firms but also introduces variations in the quality of the job match. Matches are likely to be better when there are more firms and workers in the local market, giving rise to an agglomeration force that can offset the forces against trade costs and the erosion of monopoly power. We derive analytically a robust agglomeration equilibrium and illustrate its properties with numerical simulations.
June 1, 2004
Public Spending Management and Macroeconomic Interdependence
Description: This paper studies, in the context of a New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model, the effects of "public competition policies" aimed at improving the efficiency of public spending. Such measures are modeled as an increase in the price elasticity of public consumption. The paper finds that public competition policies significantly affect macroeconomic interdependence across countries. Following a domestic fiscal expansion, an higher public price elasticity increases the substitutability between goods purchased by the domestic and the foreign governments. The same exchange rate variation can therefore sustain larger shifts in relative demand for goods. The expenditure-switching effect is magnified, implying a larger change in relative output. In welfare terms, countries with a larger government sector have an incentive to promote public competition policies.
June 1, 2004
Can Debt Crises Be Self-Fulfilling?
Description: Several papers argue that debt crises can be the result of self-fulfilling expectations that no one will lend to a country. I show this type of coordination failure can be eliminated by a combination of state-contingent securities and a mechanism that allows investors to promise to lend only if enough other investors do so as well. This suggests that runs on the debt of a single borrower (such as the government) can be eliminated, and that self-fulfilling features are more plausible when articulated in a context in which externalities among many decentralized borrowers allow for economy-wide debt runs to occur.
June 1, 2004
Robust Versus Optimal Rules in Monetary Policy: A Note
Description: We provide a framework for analyzing the choice between optimal and robust monetary policy rules in the presence of paradigm uncertainty. We first discuss the conditions on uncertainty that render a robust rule preferable to an optimal rule. Second, we show how the degree of risk aversion of the policymaker increases the region in which the robust rule is preferred.