Working Papers
2024
July 19, 2024
Deciphering Delphic Guidance: The Bank of England and Brexit
Description: In response to the 2016 referendum on EU Membership and the ensuing uncertainty as to the eventual consequences of Brexit, the Bank of England (BoE) adopted various methods of influencing market rates, including conventional, unconventional monetary policy measures and communications on forward guidance. To investigate the effectiveness of BoE’s communication, we first decompose long-dated yields into a risk neutral and term premium component. Text-based analysis of Monetary Policy Committee minutes is then used to measure the stance of policy, attitudes to QE and Brexit. We show that the Bank’s communication strategy acted to complement the stance of monetary policy, which had responded by lowering Bank rate and expanding QE, and acted to lower the term premium that might otherwise have risen in response to Brexit uncertainty.
July 19, 2024
Minimum Wages, Inequality, and the Informal Sector
Description: How do minimum wages affect earnings inequality in countries with large informal sectors? I provide reduced-form evidence that the 2000s minimum wage hike in Brazil raised overall inequality by increasing inequality inside the informal sector. I develop a model where heterogeneous firms select into informality to investigate when and how raising the minimum wage can increase inequality. I calibrate the model to Brazil and find that, by generating substantial informality, the increase in the minimum wage raised overall inequality by 6.4%. These results suggest that movements into and out of the informal sector modulate the effects of formal labor legislation.
July 19, 2024
The Global Financial Cycle: Quantities versus Prices
Description: We quantify the importance of the Global Financial Cycle (GFCy) in domestic credit and various local asset prices and compare it with that in capital flows. Using 2000-2021 data for 76 economies and a simple methodology, we find that each respective series’ common factor and conventional US GFCy-drivers together typically explain about 30 percent of the variation in domestic credit, up to 40 percent in stock market returns, about 60 percent in house prices, and more than 75 percent in interest rates and government bond spreads. These median estimates much exceed the 25 percent for capital flows. Our findings help to put the existing literature into context and have important implications for economic and financial stability policies, notably for the usage of quantity tools (e.g., FX interventions) that impact asset prices.
July 19, 2024
Gender Diversity and Corporate Resilience to Climate Change: Evidence from Greenfield Investments
Description: This paper examines the impact of board gender diversity on the performance of firms whose greenfield investments are struck by natural disasters. We find that corporations with more diverse boards are more likely to earn higher net income but less likely to have negative earnings in front of natural disasters. Further analyses indicate that those corporations with more diverse boards invest less in countries vulnerable to climate change but more in countries ready to adapt for climate change. They have lower exposure to environmental policy risks and are more likely to establish dedicated committees to oversee the risks.
July 19, 2024
From Adoption to Innovation: State-Dependent Technology Policy in Developing Countries
Description: Should policymakers in developing countries prioritize foreign technology adoption over domestic innovation? How might this depend on development stages? Using historical technology transfer data from Korea, we find that greater productivity gaps with foreign firms correlate with faster productivity growth after adoption, despite lower fees. Furthermore, non-adopters increased patent citations to foreign sellers, suggesting knowledge spillovers. Motivated by these findings, we build a two-country growth model with innovation and adoption. As the gaps narrow, productivity gains and spillovers from adoption diminish and foreign sellers strategically raise fees due to intensified competition, which renders adoption subsidies less effective. Korea’s shift from adoption to innovation subsidies substantially contributed to growth and welfare. We also explore the optimal policy and its interaction with import tariffs.
July 12, 2024
Knowledge Diffusion Through FDI: Worldwide Firm-Level Evidence
Description: This paper examines the impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on knowledge diffusion by analyzing the effect of firm-level FDI activities on cross-border patent citations. We construct a novel firm-level panel dataset that combines worldwide utility patent and citations data with project-level greenfield FDI and crossborder mergers and acquisitions (M&A) data over the past two decades, covering firms across 60 countries. Applying a new local projection difference-indifferences methodology, our analysis reveals that FDI significantly enhances knowledge flows both from and to the investing firms. Citation flows between investing firms and host countries increase by up to around 10.6% to 13% in five years after the initial investment. These effects are stronger when host countries have higher innovation capacities or are technologically more similar to the investing firm. We also uncover knowledge spillovers beyond targeted firms and industries in host countries, which are particularly more pronounced for sectors closely connected in the technology space.
July 12, 2024
A Suggested Medium-Term Fiscal Framework for Guyana
Description: Guyana is growing rapidly, and fiscal policy plays a critical role in ensuring that the country’s wealth is managed effectively and equitably. The paper analyzes crucial elements of a comprehensive fiscal policy framework, anchored on a medium-term fiscal framework, that would help in balancing several, and sometimes competing, fiscal policy objectives common to natural resource rich developing countries.
July 12, 2024
Understanding Barriers to Financial Access: Insights from Bank Pricing Data
Description: Greater availability of financial access related data in recent years is increasingly enabling policymakers to better track and monitor financial access trends and developments. However, data on barriers to financial access, including costs associated with using financial services—a key factor of financial exclusion—remain scarce. To gain insight into the costs of financial access faced by the low-income segments of population, this paper presents an analysis of a novel dataset on bank pricing containing information on fees and charges associated with various banking services—collected as part of the United Nations Capital Development Fund’s (UNCDF) Making Access Possible (MAP) program—based on a market research approach for 34 low- and middle-income countries in the ASEAN, SADC, and WAEMU regions. The results of our affordability analysis reveal that the costs of maintaining a bank checking account and conducting a few basic transactions can exceed 5 percent of monthly income for consumers in more than 10 percent of the countries in the sample, mainly in the WAEMU and SADC regions. These findings underscore the considerable challenge of affordability as a significant barrier to access to financial services, especially for low-income households and SMEs. The analysis also highlights the need to collect more granular data on the affordability aspect of financial access to facilitate more effective policymaking.
July 12, 2024
A Monetary and Financial Policy Analysis and Forecasting Model for the Philippines (PAMPh2.0)
Description: The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has enhanced its macroeconomic modeling through the Forecasting and Policy Analysis System (FPAS), transitioning from a multi-equation econometric model to a modernized system centered on the Quarterly Projection Model (QPM). In its new version, the Policy Analysis Model for the Philippines (PAMPh2.0) integrates forward-looking projections, endogenous monetary policy, fiscal and macroprudential considerations, labor dynamics, and addresses complex shocks and policy trade-offs, facilitating effective policy mix determination and supporting real-time policy evaluation. The BSP’s modernization efforts also include refining forecast calendars and strengthening communication channels to accommodate the operationalization of PAMPh2.0. Detailed validation methods ensure empirical consistency. Finally, future refinements will align the model with evolving empirical findings and theoretical insights, ensuring its continued relevance.
July 12, 2024
Nowcasting and Near-Term Forecasting Cambodia’s Economy
Description: Assessing the current state of the economy and forecast the economic outlook in the next few quarters are important inputs for policymakers. This paper presents a suite of models with an integrated approach to forecast Cambodia’s economy in the current and next few quarters. First, we estimate historical quarterly GDP using information extracted from high-frequency indicators to construct quarterly nowcasting model. Second, we forecast current economic activities using a high-frequency data such as credit, export, tourist arrival, foreign reserves, and trading partner’s GDP. Third, we present inflation forecasting models for Cambodia. Fourth, the paper present a vector autoregression model to forecast Cambodia’s GDP in the next few quarters using global forecasts of China’s and US’s economy as well as oil and rice price. This paper showcase how high-frequency data set can be utilized in assessing current economic activities in countries with limited and lagged data.