Working Papers
1998
February 1, 1998
Poverty, Income Distribution, and Economic Policy in the Philippines
Description: Income distribution in the Philippines is highly uneven, and poverty rates are higher than in other ASEAN countries. In addition, although the poverty rate has declined over time, the rate of decline has been lower than in other countries, and income inequality has been persistent. These facts are due to historically slow economic growth, owing in part to poor policies, as well as to past failures to reduce structural impediments to a more equal distribution of income. Despite reforms in recent years, it will likely take some time to erase the effects of past policies.
February 1, 1998
Financial Sector Reform and Monetary Policy in the Netherlands
Description: Financial sector liberalization, both domestic and in cross-border transactions, was a major force behind the gradual move to indirect controls and the shift toward full reliance on exchange rate targeting in the Netherlands. This paper analyzes the different steps in this process, discusses the main arguments behind the gradual approach, and draws lessons for other countries involved in this process. The paper argues that reforms in the financial sector, liberalization of the capital account, adjustments in supervision and regulation, and modernization of monetary management are strongly interrelated and should be part of a comprehensive reform strategy.
February 1, 1998
Public Debt Indexation and Denomination: The Case of Brazil
Description: The paper models the optimal debt management strategy of the public sector when issuing nominal, price-level-indexed and foreign-denominated debt securities. The model predicts that the variance of inflation, the size of the public debt, the variance of the real exchange rate, and the correlation of inflation with public expenditures are the main determinants of public debt management. Using this framework, the paper analyzes the Brazilian experience with indexed debt in the last decade. In particular, it explains the large increase of indexed public debt in Brazil prior to the 1994 Real plan and, thereafter, the steady decline in its use.
February 1, 1998
The Macroeconomic Consequences of Wage Indexation Revisited
Description: Since the mid-1970s, there has been considerable research on the macroeconomic consequences of wage indexation. Nonetheless, until recently, this research had not explicitly explored the implications of contracts that index wages to lagged inflation, the usual type of wage indexation observed in practice. Drawing mainly on recent research by the author, this paper examines the consequences of wage indexation to lagged inflation on aggregate wage formation, the cost of disinflation under money- and exchange-rate-based stabilization, the variability of output under alternative shocks and policy regimes, the choice of exchange rate regime, and the level and variability of inflation.
February 1, 1998
Generational Accounting for France
Description: This paper presents the first set of generational accounts prepared for France, illustrating the impact on different generations of current policy settings. It was developed using age profiles of taxes and transfers drawn from a 1990 survey and recent demographic projections. The results reported suggest that if all living generations were protected from future policy changes, current policy rules would imply a net tax burden on future generations more than 1½ times as large as that on current newborn generations. If the assumption that young living generations are protected is relaxed, a large net-tax imbalance in favor of “babyboomers” emerges.
February 1, 1998
Does the Introduction of Futures on Emerging Market Currencies Destabilize the Underlying Currencies?
Description: Recent interest in futures contracts on emerging market currencies has raised concerns among some central bank authorities about their ability to maintain stable currencies. This paper presents empirical results examining the influence of the Mexican peso, the Brazilian real, and the Hungarian forint futures contracts on the respective spot markets. While measures of linear dependence and feedback indicate strong connections between the respective markets, futures volatility does not significantly explain spot market volatility, nor does it increase after futures introductions. To account for the characteristics of the spot and futures returns a SWARCH model has been employed to estimate volatility.
Notes: Also published in Staff Papers, Vol. 45, No. 3, September 1998.
February 1, 1998
Uncertainty, Flexible Exchange Rates, and Agglomeration
Description: This paper shows that exchange rate variability promotes agglomeration of economic activity. Under flexible rates, firms located in large markets have lower variability of sales, reinforcing concentration of firms there. Empirical evidence on OECD countries demonstrates (1) that the negative effect of country size on variability of industrial production is stronger after the 1973 collapse of fixed rates and (2) for small (large) countries, exchange rates variability has a long-run negative (positive) effect on net inward FDI flows. Two implications arise: creating a currency area fosters agglomeration in the area, and a two-stage EMU may exacerbate the current uneven regional development.
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