The Debt‐Payment‐to‐Income Ratio as an Indicator of Borrowing Constraints: Evidence from Two Household Surveys

Liquidity constraints have been proposed as an important explanation for deviations from the rational expectations/permanent income hypothesis. This paper introduces to the liquidity constraint literature the ratio of a household's debt payments to its disposable personal income, the debt service ratio (DSR). We find that a household with a high DSR is significantly more likely to be turned down for credit than other households. Also, the consumption growth of likely constrained households, identified using the DSR along with the liquid‐asset‐to‐income ratio, is significantly more sensitive to past income than that of other households, confirming the DSR's value in identifying constrained households.     

Debt monetization,inflation, and the ‘neutral’ interest rate

The main purpose of this study is to explore the potential expansionary effect stemming from the monetization of debt. We develop a simple macroeconomic model with Keynesian features and four sectors: creditor and debtor households, businesses, and the public sector. We show that such expansionary effect stems mainly from the reduction in the financial cost to servicing the public debt. The efficacy of the channel that operates allegedly through the compression of the risk/term premium on securities is found to be ambiguous. Finally, we show that countries that issue their own currency can avert getting stuck in a structural ‘liquidity trap’ provided their central banks are willing to monetize the debt created by a strong enough fiscal expansion.     

论我国乡村债务的成因与对策

本文从分析乡村债务的成因入手,分析了目前我国乡村债务的特点、负债增长速度、债权人结构以及用途等乡村债务变化趋势及原因。论述了乡村债务对农村改革和经济发展的影响。提出了解决乡村债务的对策。     

State appropriations and undergraduate borrowing: more debt,less money

When state appropriations decrease, public universities respond by raising tuition. Students borrow more in response to both tuition increases and appropriation cuts. This article investigates the feedback of how borrowing and tuition influence state appropriations. Using a panel data set of 450 four-year public universities from 1999 to 2012, we employ three-stage least squares techniques to control for the endogeneity between state appropriations, tuition and student borrowing. There is evidence that state policy-makers respond to increases in university tuition and student borrowing by decreasing future appropriation levels. After controlling for the effect of appropriations on tuition and borrowing, a one-dollar increase in student borrowing reduces state appropriations per student by $0.06, and a one-dollar increase in tuition results in a decrease of $0.45 in state appropriations per student. When universities increase tuition for reasons other than a reduction in state appropriations, policy-makers respond with a significant cut in future appropriations which could signal an incentive strategy.     

Industry Structure and Corporate Debt Maturity

We examine how industry competition affects firms’ choice of short‐term debt. We find that the percentage of short‐term debt is positively related to industry concentration at low levels of concentration, and inversely related to industry concentration at higher levels of concentration. This nonlinear relation is stronger in industries where firms are either more homogeneous or compete more aggressively. Moreover, we find that firms with shorter‐maturity debt are less aggressive than their rivals in the product market. The overall evidence suggests that although financial contracts alleviate agency problems, they exacerbate the risk of predation.     

我国地方政府自主发债的制度设计

中国地方政府债务问题已经引起了决策层和国内外经济学家的高度重视,债务规模已经十分庞大。防范和化解地方政府债务风险,解决地方财政资金不足,规范地方政府举债行为,就要赋予地方政府自主发债权,并且明确地方政府自主发债的制度设计,制定一套包括发行主体、发行规模、发行利率、发行期限、发行方式等在内的规范、科学的制度。     

Changes of Thai economy since 19701 1

Within the last 30 years, the number of Thai population increased from 35 million to 62 million, the general price level went up 6 times, and Thai currency baht devaluated 2.2 times against the dollar. The industrial production increased 36 times nominally. The biggest industry of Thailand changed from agriculture to manufacture, and the total value of exports jumped by 192 times and that of imports grew by 95 times. Thai current account balance had recorded a deficit every year from 1970 to 1996. During the same period of time, however, the capital account balance had shown surplus. The inflow of foreign capital was the only stronghold of Thai economy at that time. In 1997, Thailand suddenly experienced a total change of its external environment From then on, Thai current account shifted from a deficit to a surplus and Thai capital account turned from a surplus to a deficit. The conclusion of this paper indicates that the future of Thai economy is heavily dependent on whether the amount of surplus in Thai current account could surpass the deficit in Thai capital account     

Institutional Quality and Public Debt Accumulation: An Empirical Analysis

The question of public debt management for both developed and developing economies has generated an enormous amount of political as well as academic interest. This study examines how governance affects public debt accumulation in the MENA countries during the 1996–2015 period. The six Worldwide Governance indicators (voice and accountability, political stability and the absence of violence/terrorism, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law and control of corruption) were used to measure the quality of governance in these countries. The results show that only three governance indicators support well the hypothesis that poor governance leads to higher accumulation of MENA public debt. Moreover, the estimates suggest a significant indirect impact of bad governance operating via decreased GDP growth. These findings have important implications for policy makers of these countries, which are currently facing major fiscal and external imbalances due to the high cost of war and terrorist attacks, low oil prices and a decline in trade. Sound public debt management represents an urgent task especially that public debt management problems often find their origins in the lack of attention paid by policymakers to the costs of bad governance and weak macroeconomic management.     

Accounting for Cross‐Country Differences in Wealth Inequality

There is considerable cross‐country variation in levels of household wealth and in wealth inequality. This paper assesses the extent to which these differences can be accounted for by differences in the distributions of households' demographic and economic characteristics. A counterfactual decomposition analysis of micro data from five countries (Italy, U.K., U.S., Sweden and Finland) is used to identify the effects of characteristics on component wealth holdings, their value and their distribution. The findings of the paper suggest that the biggest share of cross‐country differences is not attributable to the distribution of household demographic and economic characteristics but rather reflect strong unexplained country effects.     

Optimal foreign debt for Egypt: A stochastic control approach

This study assesses the foreign debt policy in Egypt and contrasts it versus the optimal policy during the period 1985–2008. It also presents a forecast of the optimal debt during the period 2009–2014. The optimal debt policy was derived using an open economy model for Egypt. The uncertainties in the model stem from the uncertainties in the interest or debt service payments and the uncertainties in the rate of return on investments. The stochastic control approach was used to find the optimal debt policy. It was found that Egypt could borrow externally as long as the trend in the rate of return on investments exceeds the trend in the real interest rate or the trend in the rate of the debt service payments. The analysis finds that Egypt's foreign debt was higher than the optimal level before 1997. After 1997, foreign debt seems to converge to the optimal level. However, Egypt's foreign debt is still below its optimal level which results in an opportunity cost for the economy to grow, otherwise, GDP could have recorded a favorable increase.