Working Papers
1999
October 1, 1999
Sources of Contagion: Finance or Trade?
Description: This paper presents evidence that spillovers through bank lending, as opposed to trade linkages and country characteristics, can help explain contagion. We construct a measure of competition for bank funds and find evidence in favor of a common lender effect in the Mexican, Thai, and Russian crises, after controlling for macroeconomic fundamentals. The results are quite robust to the definition of the finance indicator. In the case of the Asian crisis, results are not always robust to the inclusion of trade competition, reflecting the high correlation between competition for funds and trade.
October 1, 1999
Trade and Industrialization in Developing Agricultural Economies
Description: This paper examines the impact of international trade on industrialization in developing agricultural economies. The findings show that developing agricultural economies that increased their openness during 1970-95 experienced an increase in their share of industrial production at the expense of agricultural production. This is in contrast to what many policymakers in these economies have often argued when trying to promote industrialization by restricting trade. The paper presents an infant industry model with learning effects from imports of manufacturing products that is consistent with the supporting empirical results.
October 1, 1999
Can a Shorter Workweek Induce Higher Employment? Mandatory Reductions in the Workweek and Employment Subsidies
Description: A reduction in the legal workweek may induce a degree of downward wage flexibility, while an employment subsidy to firms accommodates downward wage rigidity. It may be possible, therefore, to increase employment with a policy that combines a reduction in the workweek with an employment subsidy. In general, however, the long-run employment outcome is ambiguous, and a decline in output cannot be ruled out. More direct policy measures whose impact can be assessed with greater certainty—in particular, removing structural rigidities in the labor market—should be given priority to decrease long term unemployment.
October 1, 1999
Corporate Leverage, Bankruptcy, and Output Adjustment in Post-Crisis East Asia
Description: Different levels of corporate leverage are used in this paper to help explain the wide range of post-crisis output adjustment across East Asia. In the model developed here, highly leveraged firms facing a cutoff of capital inflows are threatened by bankruptcy. These firms respond by eliminating investment and selling their capital goods-at a discount-to try to stay afloat. Lower investment and wasteful capital sales shrink the aggregate capital stock, trigger deflationary pressures, and contract overall output. The available data are broadly consistent with the assumptions and predictions of the model.
October 1, 1999
From Toronto Terms to the HIPC Initiative: A Brief History of Debt Relief for Low-Income Countries
Description: The low-income country debt crisis had its origins in weak macroeconomic policies, and official creditors’ willingness to take risks unacceptable to private lenders. Payments problems were initially addressed through nonconcessional reschedulings and new lending that maximized financing while containing the budgetary costs for creditors. This led to an unsustainable buildup in debt stocks. More recently, debt ratios have improved, reflecting both adjustment and substantial debt relief. The paper estimates debt relief initiatives since 1988 have cost creditors at least $30 billion, and possibly much more. This compares with the estimated costs of about $27 billion under the enhanced HIPC Initiative.
October 1, 1999
Central Bank Participation in Currency Options Markets
Description: This paper analyzes whether and how central banks can use currency options to lower exchange rate volatility and maintain (implicit) target zones in foreign exchange markets. It argues that selling rather than buying options will result in market makers dynamically hedging their long option exposure in a stabilizing manner, consistent with the first objective. Selling a “strangle” allows a central bank to increase the credibility of its commitment to a target zone, and could have a lower expected cost than spot market interventions. However, this strategy also exposes the central bank to an unlimited loss potential.
October 1, 1999
The Asia Crisis: Causes, Policy Responses, and Outcomes
Description: This paper tells the story of the Asian financial crisis by addressing four questions: What were the causes of the crisis, how did the crisis unfold, what were the policy responses, and what have been the outcomes? The paper takes the view that none of these questions can be understood without appreciating the fundamental vulnerabilities that left authorities without effective tools to counter sudden capital outflows. The pattern of output decline suggests that these vulnerabilities, particularly weaknesses in domestic financial systems, played a larger role than tight monetary policy in determining outcomes.
October 1, 1999
A Peek Inside the Black Box: The Monetary Transmission Mechanism in Japan
Description: This paper uses vector autoregressions to examine the monetary transmission mechanism in Japan. The empirical results indicate that both monetary policy and banks’ balance sheets are important sources of shocks, that banks play a crucial role in transmitting monetary shocks to economic activity, that corporations and households have not been able to substitute borrowing from other sources for a shortfall in bank borrowing, and that business investment is especially sensitive to monetary shocks. We conclude that policy measures to strengthen banks are probably a prerequisite for restoring the effectiveness of the monetary transmission mechanism.
October 1, 1999
Corporate Insolvency Procedures and Bank Behavior: A Study of Selected Asian Economies
Description: This paper explores insolvency and debt recovery procedures, and political, legal, and institutional factors influencing financial decisions of corporations and banks during pre-crisis years in six Asian economies. It also examines whether these factors may have contributed to the depth and duration of the 1997 crisis. There are two key findings: First, bank behavior and other institutional factors, and not the nature of stakeholder orientation, seem to explain variations in capital structures and the depth of recessions across economies. Second, aspects of insolvency procedures favoring rehabilitation of “financially distressed” firms seem to explain well the expected duration of the crisis.
October 1, 1999
Exchange-Rate-Based Stabilization: A Critical Look at the Stylized Facts
Description: Do exchange-rate-based stabilizations generate distinctive economic dynamics? To address this question, this paper identifies stabilization episodes using criteria that differ from those in previous empirical studies of exchange-rate-based stabilizations. We find that, while some differences can be detected between exchange-rate-based stabilizations and stabilizations where the exchange rate is not the anchor, the behavior of important variables does not appear to differ—especially output growth, which is good in both cases. There is also no evidence that fiscal discipline is enhanced by adopting an exchange-rate anchor, or that there are any systematic differences in the success records of stabilizations that use the exchange rate as a nominal anchor and those that do not.