Working Papers
January 1, 0001
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January 1, 0001
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1998
August 1, 1998
Central Banking in Transition Countries
Description: In the 1990s, the issues of central banking and central bank independence have gained increasing attention, in part owing to the role of the future European central bank, but also owing to the emergence of transition countries and the role of central banks in these countries. The main focus of the paper is on the preconditions of disinflation and successful stability policy in transition countries, paying special attention to the institutional requirements and to the choice of nominal anchors.
August 1, 1998
Fixed Investment and Capital Flows: A Real Options Approach
Description: This paper draws a link between international capital flows and the real options approach to investment by extending a model of real estate investment. It explains gradual investment, investment booms, and investment during recessions and emphasizes sunk costs, uncertainty, and the value of waiting. The optimal waiting time increases as foreign borrowing becomes more expensive because higher returns are required to cover the sunk costs of investing. The lower the initial level of profitability, the more likely investment will be sequential; conversely, a relatively high initial rate of return will be associated with simultaneous investment.
August 1, 1998
Self-Fulfilling Risk Predictions: An Application to Speculative Attacks
Description: The paper shows that changing market beliefs about currency risk can generate a self-fulfilling speculative attack on a fixed exchange rate. The attack does not require a later change in policies to make it profitable. This is illustrated by introducing an endogenous risk premium into a “first-generation model” of a speculative attack. The model is further modified to take account of sterilization, debt-financed fiscal deficits, and anticipatory price-setting behavior. The model is used to interpret the 1994 Mexican peso crisis.
August 1, 1998
Search Unemployment with Advance Notice
Description: This paper proposes and solves a search model in which job separation requires mandatory notice. When jobs are subject to idiosyncratic uncertainty, firms would issue advance notice even with good business conditions. We show that such precautionary policy is not pursued if it entails sufficiently high productivity losses. If workers can search on the job, an increase in advance notice increases job to job movements, reduces unemployment flows, and has ambiguous effects on unemployment. Results are consistent with the fact that North American and European labor markets, despite their differences in job security provisions, experience similar turnover rates and dissimilar unemployment flows.
August 1, 1998
The Transmission of Monetary Policy in Israel
Description: This paper investigates the transmission of Israeli monetary policy since 1990. Two issues are addressed: the extent to which monetary policy exerts real effects, and the relative importance of different transmission channels. The impact of monetary restraints on aggregate industrial production is found to be small, although industrial sectors open to trade appear to suffer to a larger extent than closed sectors. Three transmission channels are analyzed by comparing the empirical evidence to that predicted by theory. While the credit and exchange rate channels may be important mechanisms of transmission, the interest rate channel finds weak support in the data.
August 1, 1998
Liability-Creating Versus Non-Liability-Creating Fiscal Stabilization Policies: Ricardian Equivalence, Fiscal Stabilization, and EMU
Description: This paper looks at theoretical and empirical issues associated with the operation of fiscal stabilizers within an economy. It argues that such stabilizers operate most effectively at a national, rather than local, level. As differing cycles across regions tend to offset each other for the country as a whole, national fiscal stabilizers are not associated with the same increase in future tax liabilities for the region as local ones. Accordingly, the negative impact from the Ricardian effects associated with these tax liabilities is smaller. Empirical work on data across Canadian provinces indicates that local stabilizers are only 1/3 to ½ as effective as national stabilizers that create no future tax liability.
August 1, 1998
Structural Reforms in Government Bond Markets
Description: The paper documents institutional reforms that have taken place in the government debt markets of many industrial countries since the early 1980s, and investigates the impact of three key changes: (i) the move from relationship financing to market funding; (ii) the introduction of options; and (iii) the introduction of futures. Variance ratio tests on bond data for 14 industrial countries indicate that the move to market funding increased the volatility of bond yields and improved the informational efficiency of the secondary markets. The introduction of options and futures increased the informational efficiency of the underlying market, but did not have a stabilizing effect.
August 1, 1998
Disinflation in Spain: The Recent Experience
Description: This paper investigates the causes of the recent disinflation in Spain. A standard Phillips curve model is used to disentangle the contributions of three possible shocks: an adverse demand shock that raises unemployment, a positive supply shock resulting from relative price adjustments or structural improvements in the labor market, and a credibility shock that lowers inflationary expectations. The main element underlying Spain’s recent disinflation appears to be a fall in inflation expectations, thanks to the country’s commitment to participate in Economic and Monetary Union from the start, and policy actions geared to that end.