Working Papers
2022
September 2, 2022
The Systemic Impact of Debt Default in a Multilayered Global Network Model
Description: The world has become more interconnected over the past few decades. Against this backdrop, economic and financial contagion following adverse shocks can have a severe impact on the global economy. How systemic can the effects of contagion be? What specific transmission channels are involved? What is their relative importance? We address these questions using a multilayered global network model of contagion that simulates the impact of sovereign debt default on the global economy. We also develop a measure of global systemic risk and use bank stress testing techniques to quantify the systemic impact of the shock and the extent of contagion on the global economy. Our model shows that economic and financial contagion are highly non-linear, and many bystander economies can experience significant negative effects as the initial default is spread through the network. This suggests that many economies might be systemically more important than what conventional measures of size or openness might suggest.
September 2, 2022
Effective Fiscal-Monetary Interactions in Severe Recessions
Description: The COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent need for policy support have called the traditional separation between fiscal and monetary policies into question. Based on simulations of an open economy DSGE model calibrated to emerging and advance economies and case study evidence, the analysis shows when constraints are binding a more integrated approach of looking at policies can lead to a better policy mix and ultimately better macroeconomic outcomes under certain circumstances. Nonetheless, such an approach entails risks, necessitating a clear assessment of each country’s circumstances as well as safeguards to protect the credibility of the existing institutional framework.
September 2, 2022
Quarterly Projection Model for the Bank of Ghana
Description: The paper describes the Quarterly Projection Model (QPM) that underlies the Bank of Ghana Forecasting and Policy Analysis System (FPAS). The New Keynesian semi-structural model incorporates the main features of the Ghanaian economy, transmission channels and policy framework, including an inflation targeting central bank and aggregate demand effects of fiscal policy. The shock propagation mechanisms embedded in the calibrated QPM demonstrate its theoretical consistency, while out-of-sample forecasting accuracy validates its empirical robustness. Another important part of the QPM is endogenous policy credibility, which may aggravate policy trade-offs in the model and make it more realistic for developing economies. Historical track record of real time policy analysis and medium-term forecasting conducted with the QPM – as a component of the broader FPAS analytical organization – establishes its critical role in supporting the Bank’s forward-looking monetary policy framework.
September 2, 2022
Inflation-at-Risk in in the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia
Description: This paper investigates inflation risks for 12 Middle East and Central Asia countries, with an equal share of commodities exporters and importers. The empirical strategy leverages the recent developments in the estimation of macroeconomic risks and uses a semi-parametric approach that balances well flexibility and robustness for density projections. The paper uncovers interesting features of inflation dynamics in the region, including the role of backward versus forward-looking drivers, non-linearities, and heterogeneous and delayed exchange rate pass-through. The results have important implications for the conduct of monetary policy and central bank communication in the Middle East and Central Asia and emerging markets in general.
September 2, 2022
Breaking Bad: A Disaggregated Analysis of Inflation Inertia
Description: The post-pandemic rise in consumer prices across the world has renewed interest in inflation dynamics after decades of global disinflation. This paper contributes to the literature by providing a granular investigation of inflation persistence at the city level in Lithuania during the period 2000–2021, as well as a comparison of inflation persistence at the country level vis-àvis the eurozone over the same period. Using disaggregate monthly data collected in five major cities, the empirical analysis finds a mixed and ambiguous picture of inflation persistence. While the headline inflation does not appear to exhibit a high degree of persistence, most consumption categories have significant persistence. As a result, shocks may not remain transitory and instead have persistent effects that could spillover across subcomponents depending on the size of the shock.
August 26, 2022
India’s State-Owned Enterprises
Description: India’s recently announced privatization strategy can facilitate a change in the composition of the public sector balance sheet toward high-return public sector investments in infrastructure and human capital where there is a clear role for government, leaving commercially viable companies for the private sector. Against this background, this paper provides a description of the SOE sector in India, consider different criteria which can inform the scope and rationale for privatization. It also highlights takeaways from international experience with privatization, highlights the importance of improved governance and oversight of SOEs and showcases analytical tools that can help analyze risks from SOEs. While this paper focuses on India, the framework for SOEs developed in this paper can be used to evaluate SOEs policy options in other countries.
August 19, 2022
The Fiscal Stance in Japan: A Model-based Analysis
Description: This paper assesses Japan’s fiscal stance in the past and the future with a stochastic structural model called the Buffer-Stock Model of the Government. Our retrospective analysis suggests that the fiscal stance in the 1990s and the early 2000s was overall looser than the model recommendations. As for the future, the model advises the near-term fiscal policy to be supportive with a view to narrowing the output gap and minimizing hysteresis, while recommending a fiscal consolidation over the medium-term at a gradual pace.
August 19, 2022
Bank Stress Testing of Physical Risks under Climate Change Macro Scenarios: Typhoon Risks to the Philippines
Description: Bank stress tests of climate change risks are relatively new, but are rapidly proliferating. The IMF and World Bank staff collaborated to develop an experimental macro scenario stress testing approach to examine physical risks for banks by building a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model linked to global climate and a catastrophe risk model specifically for the Philippines. Our model shows that the impact of extremely rare typhoons on GDP could already be systemic and worsen substantially with climate change. However, bank capital declines only modestly unless the event is compounded with other disasters, partly thanks to the strength of Philippines’ banks and economy before the COVID crisis. However, more work is needed before drawing strong conclusions about the relevance of climate risk, as the model focused only on typhoons’ physical capital destructions and their macroeconomic-level transmissions to banks.
August 12, 2022
Debt-for-Climate Swaps: Analysis, Design, and Implementation
Description: This paper compares debt-for-climate swaps—partial debt relief operations conditional on debtor commitments to undertake climate-related investments—to alternative fiscal support instruments. Because some of the benefits of debt-climate swaps accrue to non-participating creditors, they are generally less efficient forms of support than conditional grants and/or broad debt restructuring (which could be linked to climate adaptation when the latter significantly reduces credit risk). This said, debt-climate swaps could be superior to conditional grants when they can be structured in a way that makes the climate commitment de facto senior to debt service; and they could be superior to comprehensive debt restructuring in narrow settings, when the latter is expected to produce large economic dislocations and the debt-climate swap is expected to materially reduce debt risks (and achieve debt sustainability). Furthermore, debt-climate swaps could be useful to expand fiscal space for climate investment when grants or more comprehensive debt relief are just not on the table. The paper explores policy actions that would benefit both debt-climate swaps and other forms of climate finance, including developing markets for debt instruments linked to climate performance.
August 12, 2022
Inflation Expectations and the Supply Chain
Description: We show that firms rely on price changes observed along their supply chain to form expectations about aggregate inflation, and that these expectations have a complete pass-through to sales prices. Leveraging a unique dataset on Chilean firms merging expectation surveys and records from the VAT and customs registries, we document that changes in prices at which firms purchase inputs inform their forecasts of the economy’s inflation. This is the case even if changes in input costs do not determine the inflation outcome. These findings reject the full-information rational-expectations hypothesis and are consistent with firms’ disagreement about future inflation and inattention to macroeconomic news, which we document for Chile. Our results from a firm-level Phillips’ curve estimation suggest that firms’ beliefs about inflation are a key determinant for their price-setting decisions. Therefore, we argue that the channel we highlight in this paper has the potential to lead to dispersion in inflation expectations, price dispersion, and weaken the expectation channel of policies.