Working Papers
2000
October 1, 2000
Smuggling, Currency Substitution and Unofficial Dollarization: A Crime-Theoretic Approach
Description: Large stocks of U.S. dollars and other hard currencies circulate in the transition economies, in Latin America, and in other countries that have experienced macroeconomic mismanagement. Using a monetary model that combines the legal restrictions and crime-theoretic traditions, this paper demonstrates how leaky exchange controls lead to currency substitution and progressive dollarization. The paper also analyzes the impact of dollarization on the ability of governments to earn seigniorage, the dynamics of dollarization in a growing economy, and the central role of expectations—specifically, confidence in the domestic currency—in determining the extent of dollarization and, potentially, in reversing it.
October 1, 2000
Trade and Domestic Financial Market Reform Under Political Uncertainty: Implications for Investment, Savings, and the Real Exchange Rate
Description: This paper presents a model that incorporates uncertainty about trade reform and analyzes the effects of trade and financial liberalization on domestic investment and savings, the current account balance and the real exchange rate, both when the capital account is open and when it is closed. Under certain assumptions financial liberalization leads to a movement of resources in the opposite direction to that implied by trade liberalization and to real exchange rate appreciation, thus defeating one of the objectives of tariff reform, when the capital account is open. When political economy linkages are taken into account, however, the indirect effects of financial liberalization may offset the direct effects, encouraging a movement of resources in the desired direction. With a closed capital account these results should still hold unless there are strong negative income effects from trade reform.
October 1, 2000
Votingon the "Optimal" Size of Government
Description: Viewing fiscal policies as the outcome of democratically resolved conflicts of households over public goods and taxes, the “economic model of politics” proposes a public choice approach, which does not rely on social welfare functions. With it, a country’s overall budget can be derived endogenously, electoral fluctuations explained on the basis of changes to the individuals’ income and wealth, and political behavior described in terms of the individuals’ decisions regarding votes, abstentions, and party membership. The model suggests that a country’s wealth distribution is a crucial variable affecting its economic stability and the government’s size relative to output.
October 1, 2000
The Disappearing Tax Base: Is Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Eroding Corporate Income Taxes?
Description: This paper analyzes the link between FDI, corporate taxation, and corporate tax revenues. We find strong evidence that FDI in (out) flows are affected by tax regimes in the host (home) countries and FDI flows in turn affect the corporate tax base. Simulations of European Union (EU) harmonization (isolating the revenue effect of FDI on the tax base from direct effects through the rate harmonization) suggest that high (low) tax countries would gain (lose) revenue from harmonization; these effects may be substantial. Our results also suggest that EU tax harmonization would significantly affect the net FDI position of some countries.
October 1, 2000
Does IMF Financing Result in Moral Hazard?
Description: The view that the IMF’s financial support gives rise to moral hazard has become increasingly prominent in policy discussions, particularly following the 1995 Mexican crisis. This paper seeks to clarify a number of conceptual issues and bring some basic empirical evidence to bear on this hypothesis. While some element of moral hazard is a logical consequence of the IMF’s financial support, such moral hazard is difficult to detect in market reactions to various IMF policy announcements and there is no evidence that such moral hazard has recently been on the rise.
October 1, 2000
The Impact of Tax and Welfare Policieson Employment and Unemployment in OECD Countries
Description: The paper provides a selective survey of methods and findings concerning the impact of tax and welfare policies on employment, unemployment, and economic growth in OECD countries. The paper examines a number of facets of tax and welfare policy and concludes that cross-country macroeconomic studies shed only limited light on the issue. Analyses of household behavior using microeconometric methods are much more fruitful but the question remains of how to aggregate these results to assess the overall impact of policy.
October 1, 2000
Banks’ Reserve Management, Transaction Costs, and the Timing of Federal Reserve Intervention
Description: We use daily data on bank reserves and overnight interest rates to document a striking pattern in the high-frequency behavior of the U.S. market for federal funds: depository institutions tend to hold more reserves during the last few days of each “reserve maintenance period,” when the opportunity cost of holding reserves is typically highest. We then propose and analyze a model of the federal funds market where uncertain liquidity flows and transaction costs induce banks to delay trading and to bid up interest rates at the end of each maintenance period.
October 1, 2000
The Russian Default and the Contagion to Brazil
Description: This paper investigates the contagion from Russia to Brazil in late 1998 under two dimensions— players involved and the timing of events. The data does not seem to reflect a compensatory liquidation of assets story by international institutional investors. It does contribute, however, to the suspicion that the contagion was triggered by foreign investors panicking from the Russian crisis, and joining local residents on their speculation against the Brazilian real. Adjusted correlations in the Brady market increase significantly during the crisis, which lends support to the view that if there was a contagion from Russia to Brazil, the most likely place of the transmission was the off-shore Brady market. Finally, the paper does not support the hypothesis that it was the liquidity crisis in mature markets, and not the Russian crisis, that timed the crisis in Brazil.
October 1, 2000
An Interest Rate Defense of a Fixed Exchange Rate?
Description: Defending a government’s exchange-rate commitment with active interest rate policy is not an option in the Krugman-Flood-Garber (KFG) model of speculative attacks. In that model, the interest rate is the passive reflection of currency-depreciation expectations. In this paper we show how to adapt the KFG model to allow for an interest rate defense. It is shown that increasing the domestic-currency interest rate makes domestic assets more attractive according to an asset substitution effect, but weakens the domestic currency by increasing the government’s fiscal liabilities. As a result, raising the interest rate hastens the speculative attack when speculation is motivated by underlying fiscal fragility.
October 1, 2000
What Caused the 1991 Currency Crisis in India?
Description: Did real overvaluation contribute to the 1991 currency crisis in India? This paper seeks an answer by constructing the equilibrium real exchange rate, using an error correction model and a technique developed by Gonzalo and Granger (1995). The results are affirmative and the evidence indicates that current account deficits and investor confidence also played significant roles in the sharp exchange rate depreciation. The ECM model is supported by superior out-of-sample forecast performance versus a random walk model.