Working Papers
January 1, 0001
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January 1, 0001
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2000
December 1, 2000
The New Economy and Global Stock Returns
Description: This paper revisits the relative importance of global versus country-specific factors underlying stock returns. It constructs a new firm level data set covering emerging and developed markets and estimates a simple factor model, which breaks down stock returns into a global business cycle factor, global industry factors, country-specific factors and firm-level effects. The results indicate that the share of variation in stock returns explained by global industry factors has grown sharply since the mid-1990s, at the expense of country-specific factors. Foremost among the global factors is a “new economy” factor, which has become a key determinant of global stock returns.
December 1, 2000
The Role of Subordinated Debt in Market Discipline: The Case of Emerging Markets
Description: This paper evaluates the potential role of mandatory subordinated debt (MSD) in enhancing market discipline in emerging markets. The conceptual merits and key preconditions of MSD are first reviewed. Then, the extent to which emerging markets satisfy these preconditions—among them the monitorability of bank assets, the presence of nonbank financial investors, and liquid and “clean” capital markets—are evaluated. We find that emerging markets do not satisfy the preconditions for the successful implementation of a MSD policy. Therefore, efforts to enhance market discipline should first focus on satisfying these preconditions and improving the overall incentive environment and market infrastructure.
December 1, 2000
Government Spending, Rights, and Civil Liberties
Description: Government spending plays a critical role in protecting and enforcing rights and civil liberties. Empirical evidence for a sample of industrial and developing countries shows that government expenditures on defense, law and order, social security, education, and health care are associated with three rights indicators—property rights, equality of citizens before the law, and economic freedom. In particular, an increase in spending on law and order seems to improve the indicators of rights and civil liberties, and lower budget deficits seem to improve property rights and equality before the law. Of great importance is the finding that corruption is associated with worse rights indicators.
December 1, 2000
El Nino and World Primary Commodity Prices: Warm Water or Hot Air?
Description: This paper examines the historical effects of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle on world prices and economic activity. The analysis indicates that ENSO has economically-important and statistically-significant effects on world real commodity prices. A one-standard-deviation positive surprise in ENSO, for example, raises real commodity price inflation about 3-1/2 to 4 percentage points. Moreover, ENSO appears to account for almost 20 percent of commodity price inflation movements over the past several years. ENSO also has some explanatory power for world consumer price inflation and world economic activity, accounting for about 10 to 20 percent of movements in those variables.
December 1, 2000
What Happened to Asian Exports During the Crisis?
Description: After the large exchange rate depreciations following the 1997 East Asian crisis, export volumes from East Asian countries responded with a notable lag. Two main explanations for this lag have been proposed: that the policy of high interest rates limited access to domestic credit and hence limited the supply of exports; and that “competitive depreciation” neutralized the effects on demand for exports. This paper considers the plausibility of these two mechanisms using a new monthly database on exports of selected industries. We find evidence that “competitive depreciation” did play a fundamental role in the propagation of the East Asian crisis through the trade channel, even at a monthly frequency.