Working Papers
1999
August 1, 1999
Exchange Market Pressure and Monetary Policy: Asia and Latin America in the 1990s
Description: Exchange market pressure (EMP), the sum of exchange rate depreciation and reserve outflows (scaled by base money), summarizes the flow excess supply of money in a managed exchange rate regime. Examining Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand, this paper finds that monetary policy affects EMP as generally expected: contractionary monetary policy helps reduce EMP. The monetary policy stance is best measured by domestic credit growth (since interest rates contain both policy- and market-determined elements). In response to higher EMP, monetary authorities boosted domestic credit growth both in Mexico (confirming previous research) and in the Asian countries.
August 1, 1999
Measuring Financial Development in Sub-Saharan Africa
Description: This study introduces an index for measuring financial development and a set of six indices representing key characteristics of the financial systems in 38 sub-Saharan African countries. The results show that these countries have made good progress in improving and modernizing their financial systems during the last decade, particularly with regard to financial liberalization and the adoption of indirect instruments of monetary policy. In many countries, however, the range of financial products remains extremely limited, interest rate spreads are wide, capital adequacy ratios are insufficient, judicial loan recovery is a problem, and the share of nonperforming loans is large.
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1999
July 1, 1999
Public Debt Management and Bailouts
Description: This paper addresses how public debt should be managed to reduce the cost of private sector bailouts. It uses a tax smoothing model to show that bailouts affect the timing of government deficits and surpluses as well as the composition of public debt. In general, public debt managers will have to monitor the private sector’s leverage and portfolio composition in order to design the tax smoothing policy. This contrasts with Ricardian models where households monitor the government’s debt. The moral hazard aspect of defaults is also shown to be important in determining an optimal government debt strategy.