Working Papers
2023
October 17, 2023
China Spillovers: Aggregate and Firm-Level Evidence
Description: We estimate the impact of distinct types of slowdowns in China on countries and firms globally. First, we combine a structural vector autoregression framework with a broad-based measure of domestic economic activity in China to distinguish supply versus demand components of Chinese growth. We then use local projection models to assess the responses to such shocks of GDP growth (revenue) in other countries (firms). We find that: (i) both supply and demand slowdowns are associated with substantial declines in partner GDP and firm revenue; (ii) negative spillovers are larger in countries and firms with stronger trade links with China; and (iii) spillovers from Chinese supply shocks are stronger than spillovers from demand shocks, both at the aggregate- and firm-level.
October 17, 2023
Monetary Policy Transmission Heterogeneity: Cross-Country Evidence
Description: This paper revisits the transmission of monetary policy by constructing a novel dataset of monetary policy shocks for an unbalanced sample of 33 advanced and emerging market economies during the period 1991Q2-2023Q2. Our findings reveal that tightening monetary policy swiftly and negatively impacts economic activity, but the effects on inflation and inflation expectations takes time to fully materialize. Notably, there exist significant heterogeneities in the transmission of monetary policy across countries and time, depending on structural characteristics and cyclical conditions. Across countries, monetary policy is more effective in countries with flexible exchange rate regime, more developed financial systems, and credible monetary policy frameworks. In addition, we find that monetary policy transmission is stronger when uncertainty is low, financial conditions are tight and monetary policy is coordinated with fiscal policy—that is, when the stances move in the same direction.
October 17, 2023
Monitoring Demand and Supply in Asia: An Industry Level Approach
Description: This paper provides a decomposition of GDP and its deflator into demand and supply driven components for 12 Asian countries, the US and Europe, following the forecast error-based methodology of Shapiro (2022). We extend that methodology by (1) considering a wide range of statistical forecasting models, using the optimal model for each country and (2) provide a measure idiosyncratic demand and supply movements. The latter provides, for example, a distinction between aggregate demand driven inflation and, inflation driven by large shocks in only a small number of sectors. We find that lockdowns in 2020 are explained by a mix of demand and supply shocks in Asia, but that idiosyncratic demand shocks played a significant role in some countries. Supply factors played an important role in the post-COVID recovery, primarily in 2021, with demand factors becoming more important in 2022. The mix of shocks during the sharp increase in inflation in 2021-22 differs by country, with large and advanced economies generally experiencing more supply shocks (China, Australia, Korea), while emerging markets saw significant demand pressures pushing up prices (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand). We illustrate the usefulness of the industry level shocks in two applications. Firstly, we consider whether industry supply shocks have created demand-like movements in aggregate prices and quantities, so-called Keynesian supply shocks. We find evidence for this mechanism in a minority of countries in our Asia sample, as well for Europe and the USA, but that these results are driven by the COVID-19 event. Secondly, we use the granularity of the industry shocks to construct country-level GDP shocks, driven by idiosyncratic movements at the industry level, to study cross country growth spillovers for the three large economic units in our sample: China, Europe and the US.
October 10, 2023
Monetary Policy Transmission through Commodity Prices
Description: Monetary policy influences inflation dynamics by exerting impact on a diverse array of commodity prices. At high frequencies, we show that a 10 basis points increase in US monetary policy rate reduces commodity prices between 0.5% and 2.5%, after 18 to 24 business days. Beyond the dollar appreciation channel, the effects are larger for highly storable and industrial commodities, consistent with the cost of carry and the expected demand channel. We then study the quantitative importance of the commodity-price channel of monetary policy on domestic and international inflation at longer horizons (6-36 months). The results indicate that the response of commodity prices—oil, base metals, and food prices—to monetary policy accounts for 47% of the total effect of US monetary policy on US headline inflation, and 57% of the effect of US monetary policy on other countries’ headline inflation. The commodity price channel on core inflation is smaller and mainly driven by base metal prices. Finally, the commodity-price channel of ECB monetary policy is smaller, and it mainly operates through its effect on energy prices.
October 4, 2023
Labor Market Exposure to AI: Cross-country Differences and Distributional Implications
Description: This paper examines the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on labor markets in both Advanced Economies (AEs) and Emerging Markets (EMs). We propose an extension to a standard measure of AI exposure, accounting for AI's potential as either a complement or a substitute for labor, where complementarity reflects lower risks of job displacement. We analyze worker-level microdata from 2 AEs (US and UK) and 4 EMs (Brazil, Colombia, India, and South Africa), revealing substantial variations in unadjusted AI exposure across countries. AEs face higher exposure than EMs due to a higher employment share in professional and managerial occupations. However, when accounting for potential complementarity, differences in exposure across countries are more muted. Within countries, common patterns emerge in AEs and EMs. Women and highly educated workers face greater occupational exposure to AI, at both high and low complementarity. Workers in the upper tail of the earnings distribution are more likely to be in occupations with high exposure but also high potential complementarity.
October 4, 2023
Mining the Gap: Extracting Firms’ Inflation Expectations From Earnings Calls
Description: Using a novel approach involving natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, we construct a new cross-country index of firms' inflation expectations from earnings call transcripts. Our index has a high correlation with existing survey-based measures of firms' inflation expectations, it is robust to external validation tests and is built using a new method that outperforms other NLP algorithms. In an application of our index to United States, we uncover some facts related to firm's inflation expectations. We show that higher expected inflation translates into future inflation. Going into the firms level dimension of our index, we show departures from a rational framework in firms' inflation expectations and that firms' attention to the central enhances monetary policy effectiveness.
October 3, 2023
Geoeconomic Fragmentation and Commodity Markets
Description: This paper studies the economic impact of fragmentation of commodity trade. We assemble a novel dataset of production and bilateral trade flows of the 48 most important energy, mineral and agricultural commodities. We develop a partial equilibrium framework to assess which commodity markets are most vulnerable in the event of trade disruptions and the economic risks that they pose. We find that commodity trade fragmentation – which has accelerated since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – could cause large price changes and price volatility for many commodities. Mineral markets critical for the clean energy transition and selected agricultural commodity markets appear among the most vulnerable in the hypothetical segmentation of the world into two geopolitical blocs examined in the paper. Trade disruptions result in heterogeneous impacts on economic surplus across countries. However, due to offsetting effects across commodity producing and consuming countries, surplus losses appear modest at the global level.
September 29, 2023
Monetary Policy and Labor Market Gender Gaps
Description: We study the effects of monetary policy shocks on employment gender gaps in a panel of 22 countries using quarterly data from 1990 to 2019. Our results show that men’s employment falls more than women’s after contractionary monetary policy shocks, narrowing the employment gender gap over time. Two factors contribute to explaining this heterogeneous effect. First, a larger impact of monetary policy shocks on employment in the industry sector that employs more men. Second, the larger response of the employment gap in the sector (services) that employs the largest share of men and women. In terms of labor market adjustment, the narrowing of the gender employment gap is initially driven by a reduction in the gender unemployment gaps that, over time, results in an adjustment in the gender labor force participation gap—with men’s labor force participation dropping more than women’s. The effects are larger in countries with more flexible labor market regulations, higher gender wage gaps, and lower informal women’s employment compared to men’s. Finally, the effects are also larger for contractionary monetary policy shocks and during expansions.
September 29, 2023
Identifying News Shocks from Forecasts
Description: We propose a method to identify the anticipated components of macroeconomic shocks in a structural VAR. We include empirical forecasts about each time series in the VAR. This introduces enough linear restrictions to identify each structural shock and to further decompose each one into “news” and “surprise” shocks. We estimate a VAR on US time series using forecast data from the SPF, CBO, Federal Reserve, and asset prices. Unanticipated fiscal stimulus and interest rate shocks we identify have typical effects that match existing evidence. In our news-surprise decomposition, we find that news drives around one quarter of US business cycle volatility. News explains a larger share of the variance due to fiscal shocks than for monetary policy shocks. Finally, we use the news structure of the shocks to estimate counterfactual policy rules, and compare the ability of fiscal and monetary policy to moderate output and inflation. We find that coordinated fiscal and monetary policy are substantially more effective than either tool is individually.
September 29, 2023
Reassessing GDP Growth in Countries with Statistical Shortcomings - A Case Study on Turkmenistan
Description: Reliable national accounts are essential for proper economic analyses and informed policymaking by national authorities as well as other stakeholders. Nevertheless, in many countries, national accounts statistics are subject to serious shortcomings, which are often manifested as overestimated growth rates. In cases where official data are not adequate for surveillance, IMF staff compile alternative estimates by applying various forecasting methods. This study proposes a more holistic, bottom-up approach, which is based on the compilation of GDP by the expenditure method with limited source data. The study also discusses the case of Turkmenistan, where this method was implemented in practice.