Working Papers
2019
November 27, 2019
China’s Productivity Convergence and Growth Potential—A Stocktaking and Sectoral Approach
Description: China’s growth potential has become a hotly debated topic as the economy has reached an income level susceptible to the “middle-income trap” and financial vulnerabilities are mounting after years of rapid credit expansion. However, the existing literature has largely focused on macro level aggregates, which are ill suited to understanding China’s significant structural transformation and its impact on economic growth. To fill the gap, this paper takes a deep dive into China’s convergence progress in 38 industrial sectors and 11 services sectors, examines past sectoral transitions, and predicts future shifts. We find that China’s productivity convergence remains at an early stage, with the industrial sector more advanced than services. Large variations exist among subsectors, with high-tech industrial sectors, in particular the ICT sector, lagging low-tech sectors. Going forward, ample room remains for further convergence, but the shrinking distance to the frontier, the structural shift from industry to services, and demographic changes will put sustained downward pressure on growth, which could slow to 5 percent by 2025 and 4 percent by 2030. Digitalization, SOE reform, and services sector opening up could be three major forces boosting future growth, while the risks of a financial crisis and a reversal in global integration in trade and technology could slow the pace of convergence.
November 27, 2019
Recent Shifts in Capital Flow Patterns in Korea: An Investor Base Perspective
Description: Koreas cross border capital flows have tended to respond negatively in global risk-off episodes, resulting in volatility in the foreign exchange market and occasional policy responses in the form of foreign exchange interventions. We study the relationship between Korean capital flows and global volatility up to 2018. The response of capital flows during risk-off episodes have become more muted over time, and occasional safe-haven type flows into Korean bond markets have helped counterbalance the tendency for portfolio investors to leave. We describe these changing patterns and relate them to shifts in Korea’s domestic investor base. We discuss whether they reflect a sustained shift in the sensitivity of Koreas capital flow pressures to global risk-off episodes, and implications for monetary and exchange rate policies.
November 27, 2019
Informality and Aggregate Productivity: The Case of Mexico
Description: We assess the aggregate productivity impact of distortions arising from labor regulations in Mexico and how they interact with informality. Using employment surveys and a firm-level economic census, we document a number of novel features about informal firms in Mexico. We then construct and estimate a model of heterogeneous firms and endogenous informality to study the micro and macro impacts from various policy reforms. Some reforms may have large impacts on informal employment but small impacts on aggregate productivity.
November 27, 2019
The Caribbean and its Linkages with the World: A GVAR Model Approach
Description: Using data from 1980-2017, this paper estimates a Global VAR (GVAR) model taylored for the Caribbean region which includes its major trading partners, representing altogether around 60 percent of the global economy. We provide stilyzed facts of the main interrelations between the Caribbean region and the rest of the world, and then we quantify the impact of external shocks on Caribbean countries through the application of two case studies: i) a change in the international price of oil, and ii) an increase in the U.S. GDP. We confirmed that Caribbean countries are highly exposed to external factors, and that a fall in oil prices and an increase in the U.S. GDP have a positive and large impact on most of them after controlling for financial variables, exchange rate fluctuations and overall price changes. The results from the model help to disentangle effects from various channels that interact at the same time, such as flows of tourists, trade of goods, and changes in economic conditions in the largest economies of the globe.
November 22, 2019
Breaking the Bank? A Probabilistic Assessment of Euro Area Bank Profitability
Description: This paper explores the determinants of profitability across large euro area banks using a novel approach based on conditional profitability distributions. Real GDP growth and the NPL ratio are shown to be the most reliable determinants of bank profitability. However, the estimated conditional distributions reveal that, while higher growth would raise profits on average, a large swath of banks would most likely continue to struggle even amid a strong economic recovery. Therefore, for some banks, a determined reduction in NPLs combined with cost efficiency improvements and customized changes to their business models appears to be the most promising strategy for durably raising profitability.
November 22, 2019
Governance and State-Owned Enterprises: How Costly is Corruption?
Description: State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are present in key sectors of the economies around the world. While they can provide an important public service, there is widespread concern that their activities are negatively affected by corruption. However, there is limited cross-country analysis on the costs of corruption for SOEs. We present new evidence on how corruption affects the performance of SOEs using firm level data across a large number of countries. One striking result is that SOEs perform as well as private firms in core sectors when corruption is low. Taking advantage of a novel database reforms, we also show that SOE governance reforms can generate significant performance gains.
November 18, 2019
Designing Central Bank Digital Currencies
Description: We study the optimal design of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in an environment where agents sort into cash, CBDC and bank deposits according to their preferences over anonymity and security; and where network effects make the convenience of payment instruments dependent on the number of their users. CBDC can be designed with attributes similar to cash or deposits, and can be interest-bearing: a CBDC that closely competes with deposits depresses bank credit and output, while a cash-like CBDC may lead to the disappearance of cash. Then, the optimal CBDC design trades off bank intermediation against the social value of maintaining diverse payment instruments. When network effects matter, an interest-bearing CBDC alleviates the central bank's tradeoff.
November 15, 2019
Integrating Solvency and Liquidity Stress Tests: The Use of Markov Regime-Switching Models
Description: The paper presents a framework to integrate liquidity and solvency stress tests. An empirical study based on European bond trading data finds that asset sales haircuts depend on the total amount of assets sold and general liquidity conditions in the market. To account for variations in market liquidity, the study uses Markov regime-switching models and links haircuts with market volatility and the amount of securities sold by banks. The framework is accompanied by a Matlab program and an Excel-based tool, which allow the calculations to be replicated for any type of traded security and to be used for liquidity and solvency stress testing.
November 15, 2019
Bridging the Mobile Digital Divide in Sub-Saharan Africa: Costing under Demographic Change and Urbanization
Description: Digital connectivity, including through the modern cellular network technologies, is expected to play a key role for the Future of Work in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). We estimate the cost of introducing a full-scale 4G network by 2025 in SSA and an operable 5G network by 2040. We adapt the costing model of Lombardo (2019) by accounting for the significant demographic transformation and rapid urbanization in SSA. We use the WorldPop and GADM databases and the UN’s medium-variant population projections to project the population densities at the highest level of administrative division for each SSA country in 2025 and 2040. For full 4G connectivity, the required capital and operational costs stands approximately at US$14 billion by 2025 and for 5G connectivity, costs amount to US$57 billion in 2040, conditional on having the 4G in place by 2025. These costs roughly translate to 8.4 percent of annual subscriber income, on a median basis, by 2025 for 4G and 4.9 percent of subscriber income by 2040 for 5G. Having the infrastructure in place is not sufficient to bridge the mobile Digital Divide. In addition, policies are needed to address affordability and knowledge gaps.
November 15, 2019
Assessing House Prices in Canada
Description: This paper assesses house prices in 11 Canadian Census Metropolitan Areas (CMA) using the borrowing-capacity and the net-present-value approaches. The results indicate that by the end of 2018, house prices in most metropolitan areas are aligned with macroeconomic fundamentals. However, in Hamilton, Toronto, and Vancouver house prices have increased beyond the values implied by the fundamentals.