Working Papers
2001
August 1, 2001
Czech Koruna and Polish Zloty: Spot and Currency Option Volatility Patterns
Description: Exchange rate flexibility has facilitated an impressively fast insertion of the Czech koruna and the Polish zloty into the global currency market. However, exchange rate volatility patterns differ: Lower volatility is observed for the koruna against the euro relative to the U.S. dollar, while the opposite is true for the zloty, apparently related to earlier financial integration of the Czech Republic with Europe and early dollarization in Poland as a result of initial higher inflation rates. By contrast, the currency options market shows enhanced information content of both currencies against the euro reflected in the behavior of their implied volatility.
August 1, 2001
The Impact of U.S. Economic Growthon the Rest of the World: How Much Does it Matter?
Description: This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the impact of economic growth in the United States on growth in other countries. Using panel data estimation, the paper finds a significant positive impact of U.S. growth on growth in the rest of the world, especially developing countries, during the past few decades. The evidence suggests that the impact of U.S. growth on other countries can be explained by the significance of the United States as a global trading partner. The paper provides estimates of the direct impact of trade with the United States on growth in several individual countries.
August 1, 2001
Financial Liberalization, Money Demand, and Inflation in Uganda
Description: This paper uses cointegration analysis to investigate the empirical relationship among money, prices, income, and a vector of interest rates in Uganda from 1982 to 1998. Despite the substantial financial market liberalization that has taken place in the early 1990s, quarterly time-series data confirm that a stable relationship prevailed among real broad money, income, and domestic and foreign interest rates. The empirical results indicate income homogeneity, a strong own-rate-of-return effect, a high degree of international capital mobility and asset substitutability, and demonstrate that both domestic and foreign factors are important determinants of inflation in Uganda.
August 1, 2001
Multiple Avenues of Intermediation, Corporate Finance and Financial Stability
Description: Using data from the US, UK, Japan and Canada, this paper provides evidence on the benefits to an economy from "multiple avenues of intermediation". The overall conclusion is that the existence of active securities markets alongside banks is indeed beneficial to the stability of corporate financing, both during cyclical downturns and during banking and securities market crises. The benefit from multiple avenues are greater, the more comparable the size of securities market and intermediated financing, as well as the larger the proportion of companies able to access both loan and securities markets. The analysis raises a number of policy issues and research topics for further investigation.
August 1, 2001
Transitional Growth with Increasing Inequality and Financial Deepening
Description: We study models that display growth with financial deepening and increasing inequality along the way to perpetual steady state growth. A benchmark model is essentially a complete markets model but with transaction costs of financial intermediation. New proofs are required and thus provided for stochastic dynamic programming for the case of unbounded return functions and perpetual growth with a non-convex transaction technology. We calibrate the model and report quantitative predictions for Thailand during 1976-96. We find a discrepancy between the model and the data, suspect barriers to financial deepening as a cause, and evaluate the associated welfare loss.
August 1, 2001
Long-Term Capital Movements
Description: International financial integration allows countries to become net creditors or net debtors with respect to the rest of the world. In this paper, we show that a small set of fundamentals-shifts in relative output levels, the stock of public debt and demographic factors-can do much to explain the evolution of net foreign asset positions. In addition, we highlight the role that "external wealth" plays in determining the behaviour of the trade balance, and we provide some evidence that a portfolio balance effect exists: real interest rate differentials are inversely related to net foreign asset positions.
August 1, 2001
A Statistical Analysis of Banking Performance in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union in the 1990s
Description: Private foreign banks dominate the banking system although their market share declined in the 1990s while that of private indigenous banks increased. The banking system was not concentrated either within or across countries. Stigler’s survivor test indicated that large banks tended to reduce their scale over time. Private foreign and private indigenous banks exhibited similar distributions with respect to operating expenses but private foreign banks were most profitable. High interest rate spreads appeared attributable to higher average costs related to market size and geographic peculiarities.
August 1, 2001
“Big Bang” Versus Gradualism in Economic Reforms: An Intertemporal Analysis with an Application to China
Description: This paper reviews briefly the controversy in the literature concerning the speed of adjustment and sequencing of reforms, and presents a model parameterized with Chinese data. The model is used to generate different policy simulations to illustrate some of the key issues in the debate on the speed and sequencing of reforms, and not to provide a basis for policy recommendations for China. The simulations highlight the importance of the criteria being used for determining speed and sequencing. The paper also underscores the limitations involved in attempting to derive conclusions from the model, given the complexity of the issues.
August 1, 2001
Globalization and Firms' Financing Choices: Evidence From Emerging Economies
Description: This paper studies the relation between firm's financing choices and financial globalization. Using an East Asian and Latin American firm-level panel for the 1980s and 1990s, we study how leverage ratios, debt maturity structure, and sources of financing change when economies are liberalized and when firms access international capital markets. We find that debt-equity ratios do not increase after financial liberalization. Debt maturity shortens for the average firm when countries undertake financial liberalization. However, domestic firms that actually participate in international capital markets extend their debt maturity. Financial liberalization has less effects on firms from countries with more developed domestic financial systems. Leverage ratios increase during crises.
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