Working Papers
1999
March 1, 1999
Nonrenewable Resources: A Case for Persistent Fiscal Surpluses
Description: This paper examines whether there is a case for temporary but persistent fiscal surpluses in economies heavily endowed with nonrenewable resources. It finds that there generally is a case. Fiscal surpluses permit replacing nonfinancial wealth with financial assets, the return on which increases public consumption possibilities of future generations for a constant across-generation tax burden. The more biased are a government’s preferences toward present generations, the lower will be the initial surpluses; the larger the finite endowment, the larger the initial surpluses. In a more general framework, including public investment, the proposition could be rephrased by replacing surpluses with stronger initial fiscal positions.
March 1, 1999
Does Monetary Policy Stabilize the Exchange Rate Following a Currency Crisis?
Description: This paper provides evidence on the relationship between monetary policy and the exchange rate in the aftermath of currency crises. It analyzes a large data set of currency crises in 80 countries for the period 1980-98. The main question addressed is: Can monetary policy increase the probability of reversing a postcrisis undervaluation through nominal appreciation rather than higher inflation? We find that tight monetary policy facilitates the reversal of currency undervaluation through nominal appreciation. When the economy also faces a banking crisis, the results are not robust: depending on the specification, tight monetary policies may not have the same effect.
March 1, 1999
East Asia in the Aftermath: Was there a Crunch?
Description: This paper uses a disequilibrium framework to investigate a possible credit crunch in the East Asian crisis countries (Indonesia, Korea, and Thailand) during 1997-98. It defines a credit crunch as a situation in which interest rates do not equilibrate supply and demand for credit and the aggregate amount is supply constrained, i.e. there is quantity rationing. In all three countries, rising real interest rates and weakening economic activity lowered credit demand and (with the exception of Indonesia in late 1997) there is little evidence of quantity rationing at the aggregate level—although individual firms may have lost access to credit.
March 1, 1999
Explaining the Behavior of Financial Intermediation: Evidence from Transition Economies
Description: This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic and structural variables on financial intermediation. To this end, it presents a theoretical foundation for two new measures of intermediation, the money multiplier and the ratio of private sector credit to monetary base. Results from panel estimations covering 19 transition economies indicate that policy makers need to address in particular the problems of bad loans on bank balance sheets and high market concentration while maintaining a stable macroeconomic environment. Further variables, such as minimum reserve requirements and the capital adequacy ratio, are found to possess less explanatory power.
March 1, 1999
How Intensive Is Competition in the Emerging Markets? An Analysis of Corporate Rates of Return from Nine Emerging Markets
Description: This large empirical study of corporate profitability in emerging markets during the 1980s and 1990s measures the intensity of competition. Data on corporate rates of return, profit margins, and output-capital ratios reveal that the recent liberalization has been associated with reduced corporate profit margins and improved capital utilization efficiency. The paper also analyzes persistency in corporate profitability and finds that competitiveness was no less intense in developing countries than in advanced countries. Although the paper is not directly concerned with the Asian crisis, it provides evidence on important structural hypotheses about the crisis.
March 1, 1999
Exchange Rate Movements and Tradable Goods Prices in East Asia: An Analysis Based on Japanese Customs Data, 1988-98
Description: The paper uses a dynamic panel data model to estimate the pass-through coefficients of 20 nine-digit industrial commodities that are traded between Japan and its East Asian trading partners to investigate the response of tradable goods prices to exchange rate movements. By using the monthly series of unit export and import values obtained from the Japanese customs data for the period 1988-98, it shows that price pass-through is much larger for exports from Japan than for imports to Japan.
March 1, 1999
The Length and Cost of Banking Crises
Description: This paper reviews how recent studies of banking crises differ with regard to the dating, length, and costs of the crises. Significant discrepancies in these features suggest the absence of analytical consensus. The data allow an examination of the relation between perceived crisis length, as an index of delay in taking actions to resolve a crisis, and crisis costs. Cross-sectional evidence does not show that the length of a crisis is a significant contributor to its resolution cost. A measure of economic cost, the growth shortfall in the crisis period, shows more evidence of a link.
March 1, 1999
Explaining Foreign Exchange Market Puzzles
Description: The paper develops a flow model of the exchange rate with speculative capital flows integrated in a rigorous manner. The model is consistent with five foreign exchange market puzzles: (1) occasional discontinuous jumps in the exchange rate; (2) periodic short-term regimes of persistent appreciation/depreciation that can develop into a long swing; (3) the forward discount bias; (4) volatility clusters in the foreign exchange market that create conditional heteroskedasticity; and (5) the dual profitability of betting in the short run against any official foreign exchange intervention, and betting with the intervention in the long run.
March 1, 1999
Financial Liberalization, Credit Constraints, and Collateral: Investment in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector
Description: This paper examines the impact of financial liberalization on fixed investment in Mexico, using establishment-level data from the manufacturing sector. It analyzes changes in cash-flow sensitivities and uses an innovative approach to explore the role of real estate as collateral and deal with a potential censoring problem. The results suggest that financial constraints were eased for small firms but not for large ones. However, banks’ reliance on collateral in their lending operations increased the importance of real estate. The results provide microeconomic evidence consistent with the role attributed to “financial accelerator” mechanisms during lending booms and during recessions that stem from financial crises.
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