Working Papers
2022
July 22, 2022
Distributional Effects of Tax Reforms in Japan: Micro-simulation Approach
Description: This paper conducts micro-simulations to study the distributional effects of several tax measures in Japan, considering households’ heterogeneity in terms of both income and wealth. Simulation results suggest that increasing the consumption tax rate and strengthening the recurrent tax on immovable property would weigh more heavily on low-income households with large wealth than on those of comparable incomes with small wealth, and that introduction of a consumption tax credit would be effective in containing a rise in tax burden of low-income households.
July 22, 2022
Fiscal Multipliers During Pandemics
Description: Many countries have deployed substantial fiscal packages to cushion the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. A historical look at past pandemics and epidemics highlights concomitant public sector support in response to health crises. This paper assesses how fiscal multipliers could vary during health crises, particularly how factors such as social distancing and uncertainty could lower contemporaneous (T) multipliers and increase near-term (T+1 and T+2) multipliers as economies re-open, including due to pent-up demand. Based on Jorda’s (2005) local projection methodology, the paper shows that cumulative fiscal multipliers one year after a health crisis is about twice larger than during normal times, particularly in advanced economies. These results suggest that large-scale fiscal support deployed at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic could have larger than usual lingering impacts on economic activity, which need to be accounted for when calibrating policies.
July 22, 2022
Unorthodox Expenditure Procedures in CEMAC and WAEMU Countries
Description: This paper takes stock of unorthodox expenditure procedures in CEMAC and WAEMU countries and assesses their potential fiscal impact. “Unorthodox procedures” are defined as spending practices that bypass legal provisions governing public expenditure processes and circumvent regular controls or other budgetary rules, including those related to budget time limits, approved ceilings, or approved appropriations. The paper shows that despite PFM reforms, recourse to such procedures has persisted—resulting in the accumulation of arrears; inadequate fiscal reporting, including large stock-flow adjustments; and corruption vulnerabilities.
July 22, 2022
Sudden Stops and Optimal Policy in a Two-agent Economy
Description: We introduce heterogeneity in terms of workers and entrepreneurs in an otherwise standard Fisherian model to study Sudden Stop dynamics and optimal policy. We show that the distinction between workers and entrepreneurs introduces a distributive externality that is absent from the representative-agent setup. While in tranquil times redistribution is driven by the relative marginal utilities of consumption, the planner additionally favors entrepreneurs during Sudden Stops to mitigate Fisherian deation. Although agentheterogeneity does not add much in explaining the Sudden Stop phenomena, it adds to the understanding of how policies can best be designed to alleviate the negative effects of Sudden Stops.
July 22, 2022
Transitioning to a Greener Labor Market: Cross-Country Evidence from Microdata
Description: This paper builds a new set of harmonized indicators of the environmental properties of jobs using micro-level labor force survey data from 34 economies between 2005 and 2019 and analyzes the labor market implications of the green economic transition and environmental policies. Based on the new set of indicators, the paper's main findings are that greener and more polluting jobs are concentrated among smaller subsets of workers, individual workers rarely move from more pollution-intensive to greener jobs, and workers in green-intensive jobs earn on average 7 percent more than workers in pollution-intensive jobs.
July 19, 2022
Natural Gas in Europe: The Potential Impact of Disruptions to Supply
Description: This paper analyzes the implications of disruptions in Russian gas for Europe’s balances and economic output. Alternative sources could replace up to 70 percent of Russian gas, allowing Europe to avoid shortages during a temporary disruption of around 6 months. However, a longer full shut-off of Russian gas to the whole of Europe would likely interact with infrastructure bottlenecks to produce very high prices and significant shortages in some countries, with parts of Central and Eastern Europe most vulnerable. With natural gas an important input in production, the capacity of the economy would shrink. Our findings suggest that in the short term, the most vulnerable countries in Central and Eastern Europe — Hungary, Slovak Republic and Czechia — face a risk of shortages of as much as 40 percent of gas consumption and of gross domestic product shrinking by up to 6 percent. The effects on Austria, Germany and Italy would also be significant, but would depend on the exact nature of remaining bottlenecks at the time of the shutoff and consequently the ability of the market to adjust. Many other countries are unlikely to face such constraints and the impact on GDP would be moderate—possibly under 1 percent. Immediate policy priorities center on actions to mitigate impacts, including to eliminate constraints to a more integrated gas market via easing infrastructure bottlenecks, to accelerate efforts in defining and agreeing solidarity contributions, and to promote stronger pricing pass through and other measures to generate greater energy savings. National responses and RePowerEU contains many important measures to help address these challenges, but immediate coordinated action is called for, with specific opportunities in each of these areas.
July 19, 2022
The Economic Impacts on Germany of a Potential Russian Gas Shutoff
Description: We analyze the potential impacts on the German economy of a complete and permanent shutoff of the remaining Russian natural gas supplies to Europe, accounting for the curtailment of flows through Nord Stream 1 that has already taken place. We find that such a scenario could lead to gas shortages of 9 percent of national consumption in the second half of 2022, 10 percent in 2023 and 4 percent in 2024, which would be worse in the winter months, and would likely fall on firms, given legal protections on households. We combine the effects of less gas on production with the consequent effects of reduced supply of intermediate goods and services to downstream firms, and with reduced economic activity due to rising uncertainty. Together, these three channels reduce German GDP relative to baseline levels by about 1.5 percent in 2022, 2.7 percent in 2023 and 0.4 percent in 2024, with no gains in subsequent years from deferred economic activity. The associated rise in wholesale gas prices could increase inflation by about 2 percentage points on average in 2022 and 2023. Our simulations suggest that the economic impacts can be reduced significantly by having households voluntarily share a small part of the burden, and by rationing gas supplies more to more gas-intensive and downstream firms. We also suggest other ways to enhance German energy security.
July 19, 2022
Market Size and Supply Disruptions: Sharing the Pain of a Potential Russian Gas Shut-off to the European Union
Description: We assess the supply-side effects on European Union (EU) economic activity if Russian gas imports were to suddenly cease. Unlike other studies, we account for the global scope of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. In the absence of frictions, an open-economy, multi-sector general equilibrium model suggests that the adverse economic impact on the EU shrinks five-fold if integration with the global LNG market is considered. While greater integration provides a buffer for the EU through trade, the flip side is that other LNG importers (such as Japan, South Korea, and Pakistan) see adverse effects from higher prices.
July 15, 2022
A Comprehensive Package of Macroeconomic Policy Measures for Implementing China’s Climate Mitigation Strategy
Description: This paper presents ways for China to achieve its climate goals while also attain high-quality growth—growth that is balanced, inclusive, and green. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium model that is calibrated to China, multiple scenarios are considered that incorporate a sequence of layered policies: (i) frontloading mitigation with an earlier emissions peak, (ii) power market reforms, and (iii) economic rebalancing. The results highlight that these policies can significantly contribute to the success of the climate strategy overall, including by lowering the shadow price of carbon as well as the associated mitigation costs. Distribution analysis offers proposals to lessen the impact on vulnerable households.
July 15, 2022
Assessing the Impact of Business Closures on COVID-19 Outcomes
Description: In this paper, we present a framework for assessing the effectiveness of different business closure policies, using New York City as a case study. Business closure policies have been widely implemented in an attempt to slow down the pandemic, but it is difficult to measure the contribution of closures of specific industries to virus transmission. Our framework allows us to estimate the impact of specific industry closures on the spread of COVID-19 via their effects on aggregate mobility. We find that early reopening led to a prolonged pandemic and a large case surge in the second wave during 2020, though the reopening allowed the city to regain its economic function as a consumption hub. An alternative policy that extends the lockdown is found to be more cost-effective as it makes future traveling safer and prevents the economy from relapsing into a more stringent policy regime.