Working Papers
2002
March 1, 2002
Energy Sector Quasi-Fiscal Activities in the Countries of the Former Soviet Union
Description: A decade into the transition, many of the successor states of the former Soviet Union (FSU) continue to use energy sector quasi-fiscal activities (QFAs), especially low energy prices and the toleration of payment arrears, to provide large implicit and untargeted subsidies. These activities disguise the overall size of the government, cause overconsumption and waste, and contribute to macroeconomic imbalances. This paper analyses such activities in FSU countries, with particular emphasis on two case studies (Azerbaijan and Ukraine). The paper's policy conclusions point to the need to increase energy prices, combined with a strengthening of safety nets to protect the poor, better enforcement of payment discipline, and more efforts to achieve fiscal transparency.
March 1, 2002
The Role of Corporate, Legal and Macroeconomic Balance Sheet Indicators in Crisis Detection and Prevention
Description: This study tests the recent balance sheet explanations of external crises in emerging market countries and the role of standards in these crises. Using several unique data sets, it finds that corporate sector balance sheets have a very significant impact on both the likelihood and depth of external crises. The indicators supplement, rather than substitute for traditional macroeconomic variables with standards playing potentially an important role. The results have implications for strategies to limit external vulnerability: they suggest that policymakers need to promote sound private sector financial structures, support sound shareholder rights, in addition to employing prudent macroeconomic policies to reduce exposure to crises. In sample predictions point to potentially large improvements in the predictive power of models that include these indicators.
March 1, 2002
How Do Treasury Systems Operate in Sub-Saharan Francophone Africa?
Description: Treasury systems in sub-Saharan francophone African countries share many features with the French public expenditure management system of the sixties on which they were modeled. However, in a different economic and institutional environment, key elements of this framework have evolved in unexpected, unwelcome directions. This paper critically examines two main features of the French system in the sub-Saharan francophone African context: the strict separation between the person ordering payment and the one disbursing funds, and the centralization of funds in the treasury. This examination calls attention to—and suggests remedies for—the specific flaws that have evolved from the traditional framework.
March 1, 2002
Early Ideas on Sovereign Bankruptcy Reorganization: A Survey
Description: This paper surveys early intellectual antecedents of the Krueger (2001) proposal for creating bankruptcy reorganization procedures at the international level. We focus on actual proposals for new procedures made from the late 1970s up to an influential lecture by Sachs (1995), with brief reference to the formal economics literature on sovereign debt. Beginning with a paper by Oechsli (1981), several key contributions are made during this period, including the analogy with domestic bankruptcy procedures, an understanding of the inefficiencies in international lending that might justify such procedures, and specific institutional and legal suggestions that continue to play a role in the current debate.
March 1, 2002
External Wealth, the Trade Balance, and the Real Exchange Rate
Description: This paper examines the link between the net foreign asset position, the trade balance and the real exchange rate. In particular, it decomposes the impact of a country's net foreign asset position ("external wealth") on its long-run real exchange rate into two mechanisms: the relation between external wealth and the trade balance; and, holding other determinants fixed, a relation between the trade balance and the real exchange rate. It also provides additional evidence that the relative price of nontradables is an important channel linking the trade balance and the real exchange rate.
March 1, 2002
Primeron Reforms in a Second-Best Ambiguous Environment: A Case for Gradualism
Description: Ambiguity, as opposed to uncertainty, reflects lack of sufficient information about distribution and payoffs of infrequent events. Reforms are infrequent events, undertaken in ambiguous second-best environments where bad reform outcomes are feasible. A general case for the gradualist reform strategy is that it may pay to defer some reforms until relevant information about possible reform outcomes and associated probabilities is revealed, and ambiguity is reduced over time. Gradualism may dominate the big bang strategy, if some of the reforms in a reform sequence are not sure bets and waiting costs do not dominate reversal costs under some information sets forthcoming over time. The relation to Ellsberg's Paradox is discussed. Some cases for and against gradualism are reviewed.
March 1, 2002
The Rule of Law and the Pattern of Environment Protection
Description: We develop and test a theory of the rule of law and environmental policy formation. In our model an increase in the degree of rule of law has two opposing partial effects on environmental policy: first, a greater share of policy decisions are implemented according to law; second, industry bribery efforts increase because more is at stake. Moreover, we find that an increase in corruptibility of policymakers lowers the stringency of environmental policy. The empirical findings suggest that a greater degree of rule of law raises environmental policy stringency, but the effect is lower where corruptibility is high.
March 1, 2002
Foreign Direct Investment in Emerging Markets: Income, Repatriations and Financial Vulnerabillities
Description: Based on U.S. data, the returns on foreign direct investment in emerging markets are shown to be substantially higher than would be suggested by official balance of payments statistics. This paper identifies the determinants of FDI profitability in 43 industrialized and developing countries. After financial leverage and the effect of tax minimizing income transfers are controlled for, host country risk and market openness are found to raise affiliate returns on equity and returns on sales. In the context of a number of financial crises during the 1990s, income repatriations are shown to be pro-cyclical, though the effect of host country recessions is mitigated through continued spending on fixed capital and a re-direction of affiliate sales towards export markets.
March 1, 2002
Regulatory and Supervisory Independence and Financial Stability
Description: Despite its importance, the issue of financial sector regulatory and supervisory independence (RSI) has received only marginal attention in literature and practice. However, experience has demonstrated that improper supervisory arrangements have contributed significantly to the deepening of several recent systemic banking crises. In this paper we argue that RSI is important for financial stability for the same reasons that central bank independence is important for monetary stability. The paper lays out four key dimensions of RSI-regulatory, supervisory, institutional and budgetary-and discusses ways to achieve them. We also discuss institutional arrangements needed to make independence work in practice. The key issue in this respect is that agency independence and accountability need to go hand in hand. The paper discusses a number of accountability arrangements.
March 1, 2002
Optimal Central Bank Conservatism and Monopoly Trade Unions
Description: The "conservative central banker" has come under attack recently. On the basis of models in which there is explicit interaction between trade union behavior and monetary policy, it has been argued that if 'trade unions' are averse to inflation, welfare will be lower with a conservative than with a liberal central bank. We reframe this discussion in a standard trade union model. We show that the case against the conservative central banker rests exclusively on the assumption of a strictly nominal outside option (for instance, unemployment benefits) for the union. There is no welfare gain associated with making the central bank less conservative than society, however, if the outside option is in real terms. As the nominal components of the trade union's outside option are mainly public transfers, we also show that the conservative central banker is always optimal if the government can choose the level of nominal unemployment benefits as well as the degree of central bank conservatism.