Working Papers
2020
May 29, 2020
Drivers of Financial Access: the Role of Macroprudential Policies
Description: This study analyzes the drivers of the use of formal vs. informal financial services in emerging and developing countries using the 2017 Global FINDEX data. In particular, we investigate whether individuals’ choice of financial services correlates with macro-financial and macro-structural policies and conditions, in addition to individual and country characteristics. We start our analysis on middle and low-income countries, and then zoom in on sub-Saharan Africa, currently the region that most relies on informal financial services, and which has the largest uptake of mobile banking. We find robust evidence of an association between macroprudential policies and individuals’ choice of financial access after controlling for personal and country-level characteristics. In particular, macroprudential policies aimed at controlling credit supply seem to be associated with greater resort to informal financial services compared with formal, bank-based access. This highlights the importance for central bankers and financial sector regulators to consider the potential spillovers of monetary policy and financial stability measures on financial inclusion.
May 29, 2020
Hysteresis and Business Cycles
Description: Traditionally, economic growth and business cycles have been treated independently. However, the dependence of GDP levels on its history of shocks, what economists refer to as “hysteresis,” argues for unifying the analysis of growth and cycles. In this paper, we review the recent empirical and theoretical literature that motivate this paradigm shift. The renewed interest in hysteresis has been sparked by the persistence of the Global Financial Crisis and fears of a slow recovery from the Covid-19 crisis. The findings of the recent literature have far-reaching conceptual and policy implications. In recessions, monetary and fiscal policies need to be more active to avoid the permanent scars of a downturn. And in good times, running a high-pressure economy could have permanent positive effects.
May 29, 2020
When Banks Punch Back: Macrofinancial Feedback Loops in Stress Tests
Description: In the presence of adverse macroeconomic shocks, simultaneous capital losses in multiple banks can prompt them to contract their balance sheets. These bank responses generate externalities that propagate in the form of macro-financial feedback loops. This paper develops a credit response and externalities analysis model (CREAM) that integrates a disaggregated banking sector into an otherwise standard macroeconomic structural vector autoregressive model. It shows that accounting for macro-financial feedback loops can significantly affect macroeconomic outcomes and bank-specific stress tests results. The heterogeneity in bank lending responses matters: it determines how each bank fares under adverse conditions and the external effects that banks impose on each other and on economic activity. The model can thus be used to assess the contributions of individual banks to systemic risk along the time dimension.
May 29, 2020
The Fiscal State-Dependent Effects of Capital Income Tax Cuts
Description: Using the post-WWII data of U.S. federal corporate income tax changes, within a Smooth Transition VAR, this paper finds that the output effect of capital income tax cuts is government debt-dependent: it is less expansionary when debt is high than when it is low. To explore the mechanisms that can drive this fiscal state-dependent tax effect, the paper uses a DSGE model with regime-switching fiscal policy and finds that a capital income tax cut is stimulative to the extent that it is unlikely to result in a future fiscal adjustment. As government debt increases to a sufficiently high level, the probability of future fiscal adjustments starts rising, and the expansionary effects of a capital income tax cut can diminish substantially, whether the expected adjustments are through a policy reversal or a consumption tax increase. Also, a capital income tax cut need not always have large revenue feedback effects as suggested in the literature.
May 29, 2020
Global Smartphones Sales May Have Peaked
Description: Global smartphone sales may have peaked. After reaching nearly 1.5 billion units in 2016, global smartphone sales have since declined, contributing negatively to world trade in 2019 and suggesting that the global market may now be saturated. This paper develops a simple model to forecast smartphone sales, which shows that sales are likely to decline further. As tech companies shift to embedded services (cloud computing, content subscriptions, and financial services), the impact on global trade may also be shifting in favor of services exports mostly from advanced economies.
May 22, 2020
Do Remittances Enhance Financial Inclusion in LMICs and in Fragile States?
Description: This paper explores the relationship between remittances and financial inclusion for a sample of 187 countries over the period 2004-2015, using cross-country as well as dynamic panel GMM regressions. At low levels of remittances-to-GDP, these flows act as a substitute to formal financial channels, thereby reducing financial inclusion. In contrast, when remittance-to-GDP ratio is high, above 13% on average, they tend to complement formal access and usage channels, thus enhancing financial inclusion. This “U shaped” relationship highlights the role of remittance flows in financing household consumption at low levels, while raising formal household bank savings and allowing for more intermediation, at high levels of remittance-to-GDP.
May 22, 2020
Model-Based Globally-Consistent Risk Assessment
Description: This paper outlines an approach to assess uncertainty around a forecast baseline as well as the impact of alternative policy rules on macro variability. The approach allows for non-Gaussian shock distributions and non-linear underlying macroeconomic models. Consequently, the resulting distributions for macroeconomic variables can exhibit skewness and fat tails. Several applications are presented that illustrate the practical implementation of the technique including confidence bands around a baseline forecast, the probabilities of global growth falling below a specified threshold, and the impact of alternative fiscal policy reactions functions on macro variability.
May 22, 2020
Are Capital Goods Tariffs Different?
Description: In this paper we demonstrate the importance of distinguishing capital goods tariffs from other tariffs. Using exposure to a quasi-natural experiment induced by a trade reform in Colombia, we find that firms that have been more exposed to a reduction in intermediate and consumption input or output tariffs do not significantly increase their investment rates. However, firms’ investment rate increase strongly in response to a reduction in capital goods input tariffs. Firms do not substitute capital with labor, but instead also increase employment, especially for production workers. Reduction in other tariff rates do not increase investment and employment. Our results suggest that a reduction in the relative price of capital goods can significantly boost investment and employment and does not seem to lead to a decline in the labor share.
May 22, 2020
Real Exchange Rate Overshooting in Large Depreciations: Determinants and Consequences
Description: The consequences of large depreciations on economic activity depend on the relative strength of the contractionary balance sheet and expansionary expenditure switching effects. However, the two operate over different time horizons: the balance sheet effect hits almost immediately, while expenditure switching is delayed by nominal rigidities and other frictions. The paper hypothesizes that the overshooting phase—observed early in the depreciation episode and driven by the balance sheet effect—is largely irrelevant for expenditure switching, which is more closely aligned with ex-post equilibrium depreciation. Given this, larger real exchange rate overshooting should signal a relatively stronger balance sheet effect. Empirical findings support this hypothesis: (i) overshooting is driven by factors associated with the balance sheet effect (high external debt, low reserves, low trade openness), (ii) overshooting-based measures of the balance sheet effect foreshadow post-depreciation output losses, and (iii) the balance sheet effect is strongest early on, while expenditure switching strengthens over the medium term.
May 22, 2020
The Anatomy of the Transmission of Macroprudential Policies
Description: We analyze how regulatory constraints on household leverage—in the form of loan-to-income and loan-to-value limits—affect residential mortgage credit and house prices as well as other asset classes not directly targeted by the limits. Supervisory loan level data suggest that mortgage credit is reallocated from low-to high-income borrowers and from urban to rural counties. This reallocation weakens the feedback loop between credit and house prices and slows down house price growth in “hot” housing markets. Consistent with constrained lenders adjusting their portfolio choice, more-affected banks drive this reallocation and substitute their risk-taking into holdings of securities and corporate credit.