Working Papers
1998
November 1, 1998
The Quality of Governance: “Second-Generation” Civil Service Reform in Africa
Description: This paper argues that the development of human capital in the public sector should be an important ingredient in any proposed set of “second-generation” reforms for Africa. In the post-colonial era the quality of governance has seriously declined, and the stock of human capital in the public sector has been eroded by a flight of human capital from many countries in response to compression of wages. The paper develops a simple theoretical framework to discuss these issues and the continent’s experience with foreign technical assistance in supplementing the low level of domestic human capital.
November 1, 1998
Inflation, Uncertainty, and Growth in Colombia
Description: It has been argued that higher levels of inflation lead to greater uncertainty about future inflation and to greater dispersion of relative prices. In either case, inflation could reduce the efficiency of market prices in coordinating economic activities. This paper shows that the rise of inflation in Colombia, from low levels in the 1950s to average rates of 18–22 percent since the 1970s, has been accompanied by increased uncertainty and relative price dispersion; and that inflation has had a negative and persistent effect on real GDP growth.
November 1, 1998
Capital Flows with Debt- and Equity-Financed Investment-Equilibrium Structure and Efficiency Implications
Description: This paper distinguishes between debt and equity flows in the presence of information asymmetry between the firm’s “insiders” and “outsiders” in a small open economy. It shows the inadequacy of capital investment because its scope is too narrow and the investment each firm makes is too little. An unconventional policy tool is proposed to correct the market failure: lump-sum subsidies to firms that choose to equity-finance their investments.
November 1, 1998
Soft Exchange Rate Bands and Speculative Attacks: Theory, and Evidence from the ERM since August 1993
Description: We present a model of a “soft” exchange rate target zone and interpret it as a stylized description of the post-August 1993 ERM. Our central bank targets a moving average of the current and past exchange rates, rather than the exchange rate’s current level, thus allowing the rate to move within wide margins in the short run, but within narrow margins in the long run. For realistic parameters, soft target zones are significantly less vulnerable to speculative attacks than “hard” target zones. These predictions are consistent with the ERM’s experience and the abatement of speculative pressure in European markets since the bands’ widening in 1993.
November 1, 1998
Financial Market Contagion in the Asian Crisis
Description: This paper tests for evidence of contagion between the financial markets of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, and the Philippines. Cross-country correlations among currencies and sovereign spreads are found to increase significantly during the crisis period, whereas the equity market correlations offer mixed evidence. A set of dummy variables using daily news is constructed to capture the impact of own-country and cross-border news on the markets. After controlling for own-country news and other fundamentals, the paper shows evidence of cross-border contagion in the currency and equity markets.
November 1, 1998
Are Currency Crises Predictable? A Test
Description: This paper evaluates three models for predicting currency crises that were proposed before 1997. The idea is to answer the question: if we had been using these models in late 1996, how well armed would we have been to predict the Asian crisis? The results are mixed but somewhat encouraging. One model, and our modifications to it, provide useful forecasts, at least compared with a naive benchmark. The head-to-head comparison also sheds light on the economics of currency crises, the nature of the Asian crisis, and issues in the empirical modeling of currency crises.
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1998
October 1, 1998
Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy with Credit Goods Production
Description: The paper analyzes the effects of monetary policy in a dynamic model of a small open economy with cash and credit goods production, where government consumption is financed by seignorage. It shows that the interrelationships between the growth rate of the monetary aggregate and the technological properties of the economy have an important bearing on the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium, the optimal inflation rate, and the occurrence of explosive hyperinflations. In consequence, the paper concludes that monetary policy does matter in the long run.
October 1, 1998
Time Series Analysis of Export Demand Equations: A Cross-Country Analysis
Description: The paper estimates export demand elasticities for a large number of developing and developed countries, using time-series techniques that account for the nonstationarity in the data. The average long-run price and income elasticities are found to be approximately -1 and 1.5, respectively. Thus, exports do react to both the trade partners’ income and to relative prices. Africa faces the lowest income elasticities for its exports, while Asia has both the highest income and price elasticities. The price and income elasticity estimates have good statistical properties.