Working Papers
January 1, 0001
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2003
June 1, 2003
The Distributional Consequences of Real Exchange Rate Adjustment
Description: The paper focuses on distributional consequences of macroeconomic adjustment. The preferences of economic agents over the level of the real exchange rate derived from standard models are monotonic, with agents favoring either an infinitely appreciated or depreciated rate. To generate less extreme preferences, a model is presented where appreciation would depress economic activity, while a large depreciation would hit the tradable sector by limiting the availability of labor, offsetting the favorable price effect. The model is in the spirit of the dependent economy model, but built on explicit microfoundations. The results can be used to analyze political economy aspects of macroeconomic adjustment.
June 1, 2003
Is Transparency Good for You, and Can the IMF Help?
Description: This paper finds that reforms introduced by the IMF to promote transparency have created more informed markets and reduced borrowing costs for those emerging market countries that volunteered for them. Using a quarterly panel estimation with fixed country effects, we find that sovereign spreads fall following the adoption of three different transparency reforms. The effects are economically important, especially for those countries with low initial transparency. We use two-stage least squares to address any endogeneity in the timing of reforms exploiting internal IMF timetables that are unrelated to country events. Next, using a panel GARCH specification, we show that spreads move more than normal in the days immediately following publication of IMF country documents.
June 1, 2003
Capital Operating Time and total Factor Productivity Growth in France
Description: Data on the weekly operating time of capital improve the measurement of effective capital input in production. The production function of the French business sector is found to be consistent with a Cobb-Douglas technology under constant returns to scale. Total factor productivity growth, estimated as an unobservable variable, has declined steadily since the late 1970s, but more slowly since 1994. During the 1990s, a secular increase in shift work raised the operating time of capital and began to contribute positively to growth, albeit only slightly.
June 1, 2003
Determinants of Inflation in a Transition Economy: The Case of Ukraine
Description: This paper examines determinants of inflation in Ukraine during 1993-2002 in a cointegrating framework. Two basic theoretical models-a markup and a money market model-are tested. While broad money is cointegrated with the CPI for the whole sample and for early subsamples, the cointegration ceases to be statistically significant between 1996-2002, in part because of strong remonetization. The mark-up model offers a more consistent and well-fitting overall framework for 1996-2002 data, pointing inter alia to a greater role of administered prices in the CPI within a fairly mainstream inflation process. The "long-term" monetary transmission mechanism operates through the exchange rate and wages, but broad money clearly enters short-term inflation determinants. Prudent macroeconomic policies, grain harvests, and administrative decisions explain the sharp decline of inflation over 2000-2002.
June 1, 2003
Trade Liberalization and Real Exchange Rate Movement
Description: Although theory suggests that the real exchange rate should depreciate after a credible trade liberalization but could appreciate temporarily with a noncredible one, little empirical evidence exists. Unlike existing studies that use either indirect tests or unreliable openness measures, this paper uses an event study based on carefully documented trade liberalization in 45 countries. The result shows that real exchange rates depreciate after countries open their economies to trade. In countries with multiple liberalization episodes, however, real exchange rates appreciate during early episodes, suggesting that partial or noncredible trade liberalizations are associated with real appreciation.
June 1, 2003
Changes in Inventories in the National Accounts
Description: The principles underlying the recording of changes in inventories are explained in the System of National Accounts, 1993 (1993 SNA), but operational guidelines on their measurement are lacking. This paper elaborates specific statistical techniques and their underlying assumptions for calculating changes in inventories and holding gains when only data on stocks of inventories are available. Several data situations are considered. The authors propose methods for measuring changes in inventories that meet the 1993 SNA principles. The paper also explores possibilities for implementing the proposed improvements and explains the interpretation of data on changes in inventories.
June 1, 2003
Corporate Balance Sheet Restructuring and Investment in the Euro Area
Description: The recent boom-bust cycle in the euro area's equity valuations has left nonfinancial corporations saddled with a legacy of high debt or leverage. Models of corporate investment behavior based on imperfect capital markets predict that highly leveraged balance sheets can act as a brake on investment spending. The paper's empirical analysis suggests that leverage effects on corporate investment can be substantial and persistent, particularly if leverage exceeds threshold values.
June 1, 2003
Bank Risk-Taking and Competition Revisited
Description: This study reinvestigates the theoretical relationship between competition in banking and banks' exposure to risk of failure. There is a large existing literature that concludes that when banks are confronted with increased competition, they rationally choose more risky portfolios. We briefly review this literature and argue that it has had a significant influence on regulators and central bankers, causing them to take a less favorable view of competition and encouraging anti-competitive consolidation as a response to banking instability. We then show that existing theoretical analyses of this topic are fragile, since they do not detect two fundamental risk-incentive mechanisms that operate in exactly the opposite direction, causing banks to aquire more risk per portfolios as their markets become more concentrated. We argue that these mechanisms should be essential ingredients of models of bank competition.
June 1, 2003
Do Brazilian Banks Compete?
Description: More developed financial systems are associated with higher investment and better economic performance. This paper discusses possible factors that may inhibit a deepening of bank intermediation and more efficient banking in Brazil, two aspects that are found to be significantly different than in leading banking systems in other parts of the world. Using panel data, it finds positive evidence of the presence of a noncompetitive market structure in the Brazilian banking system, a factor that could explain why intermediation may be relatively low and costly. When banks behave like local monopolies or oligopolies, incentives to improve efficiency are weak and the interest rate spread is large, discouraging higher lending volumes.