Working Papers
2000
October 1, 2000
International Debt and the Price of Domestic Assets
Description: This paper examines the behavior of indebtedness, consumption, and asset prices in a small open economy in which the foreign real interest rate depends not only on an exogenous world interest rate and on indebtedness, but also on the value of the capital stock, viewed as an implicit “collateral,” and hence on the price of capital. The paper finds that the collateral effect magnifies the intensity of shocks to the economy and the duration of their impact. The collateral effect also generates additional distortions that could lead to overborrowing. The paper discusses the policy responses to these distortions.
October 1, 2000
Pension Reform, Private Saving, and the Current Account in a Small Open Economy
Description: The macroeconomic implications of a pension reform that substitutes a high-return fully-funded system for a low-return pay-as-you-go system are discussed in an overlapping generations, neoclassical growth model. With forward-looking individuals, a debt-financed reform worsens the current account, while a tax-financed reform leaves the current account unchanged. With myopic individuals, a debt-financed reform leaves the current account unchanged, while a tax-financed reform improves the current account. Hence, tax-financing, which is equivalent to pre-funding, should be the preferred reform strategy in a small open economy with a weak current account position.
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2000
August 1, 2000
Inside the Crisis: An Empirical Analysis of Banking Systems in Distress
Description: Using aggregate and bank level data for several countries, the paper studies what happens to the banking system in the aftermath of a banking crisis. Contemporary crises are not accompanied by declines in aggregate bank deposits, and credit does not fall relative to output, although the growth of both deposits and credit slows down substantially. Output recovery begins in the second year after the crisis and is not led by a resumption in credit growth. Banks, including the stronger ones, reallocate their asset portfolio away from loans.
August 1, 2000
Determinants of Barter in Russia: An Empirical Analysis
Description: This paper analyzes the causes and consequences of non-monetary transactions in Russia, drawing on a large enterprise survey. We show that barter and offsets are linked to liquidity problems at the level of the firm and to arrears in particular. We find evidence that the state has channeled implicit subsidies to enterprises in the form of tax and utility offsets. The findings help explain the rise of non-monetary transactions during much of the 1990s. We show that non-monetary transactions inhibit enterprise restructuring. Our findings suggest that a policy solution to the non-cash problem would require the state and public utilities to phase out arrears and offsets.
August 1, 2000
Capital Markets and External Current Accounts: What to Expect From the Euro
Description: The paper compares the degree of capital market integration across euro-area countries with that across regions in Italy and provinces in Canada. Analyzing saving-investment correlations, and developing as well as fitting to the data a model of capital flows, reveal no compelling differences between the integration across countries before monetary union and that across the regions or provinces. The evidence does not suggest that EMU will prompt a major reallocation of net capital flows within the euro area that would entail sizable shifts in countries’ equilibrium current accounts.
August 1, 2000
Determinants of Dollarization: The Banking Side
Description: Dollarization in financial intermediation has exhibited a widely diverse pattern across countries. Empirical work relating it to macroeconomic variables has had only limited success in explaining the phenomenon. This paper presents a two-currency banking model to show that deposit and loan dollarization are determined by a broader set of factors. These include interest rates and exchange rate risk, as well as structural factors related to costly banking, credit market imperfections, and availability of tradable collateral. The direction in which dollarization tends to move with macroeconomic shocks is shown to depend on those factors as well as on initial dollarization levels.