OPTIMAL FOREIGN BORROWING REVISITED

Foreign capital has become increasingly important in financing investment and growth in developing countries. Foreign capital flows, however, can be volatile as is evident from the recent financial crises. It has also recently been noted by researchers that there is little systematic empirical evidence that foreign capital contributes to the economic growth of developing countries. In this context, this paper attempts to theoretically reevaluate the borrowing behaviour of a developing economy that relies on foreign borrowing for its capital formation. In particular, this paper investigates the implications of different lending policies of international financial institutions. It is found that no matter whether the borrowing interest rate increases with the level of foreign debt per capita or with the foreign‐capital/total‐capital ratio, the economy always moves toward the stationary state. The result holds even when the representative agent regards the interest rate given as constant. This implies that foreign borrowing does help economic growth, irrespective of lending policies of international financial institutions.     

Forecasting Turkey’s Credit Ratings with Multivariate Grey Model and Grey Relational Analysis

The concept of credit rating rooted back to mid-nineteenth century has become one of the most important elements in the world economy together with the globalization period gradually accelerating in the last two decades and increasing the interaction and sensitivity in the international markets. With the globalization and deepening in the financial markets; the effect, reliability and stability of knowledge of the actors who are in charge for directing the global capital flows have quite a big importance in terms of the decisions to be made in the future. In this process, credit rating agencies eliminating the information asymmetry between the countries and institutions who want to create financial resource by borrowing from the savings owners and foreign institutions. Credit ratings determined by the mentioned organizations are accepted as an indicator of the countries to meet the financial obligations in other words their creditworthiness. For Turkey’s economy having a structure with a high level of external financing needs in terms of accelerating the growth and development process, it is inevitable to have an international creditworthiness increasing long-term investment tendency meeting foreign capitals’ trust search. In this study, firstly the determinants of the credit ratings given by credit rating agencies are determined and then forecasting Turkey’s future credit ratings by combining them with multivariate grey model and grey relational analysis are performed.

     

The impact of macroprudential policies on the transmission of shocks across financially integrated countries

We study the implications of macroprudential policies across countries on the transmission of shocks when international investment activities are allowed. In a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model in which international investors are borrowing constrained and pledge international assets, we introduce a time-varying loan-to-value (LTV) ratio that adjusts to the variation of three different financial vulnerability indicators. We examine the effect of these policies on negative productivity and borrowing capacity shocks. Although time-varying LTV ratios reduce the international propagation of the productivity shock, their response to the shock depends on the financial vulnerability indicator with which the LTV ratio changes. With a productivity shock, the adjustment of the LTV ratio to the deviation of credit or asset price helps to reverse the negative impact of the shock. With a financial shock, LTV ratios varying with a deviation of credit-to-GDP ratio or aggregate credit can mitigate the impact of a negative financial shock. Adjustment of the LTV ratios reduces the fluctuation of international investors' balance sheets, investment, and productivity. We find that countries improve their welfare when time-varying LTV ratios are in place. The magnitude of the welfare gain differs with both the financial vulnerability indicator and the shock.     

Financial Support from the Family Network and Illegal Immigration

Barriers to immigration of low‐skilled workers from developing countries into the advanced countries prevent many potential migrants from leaving their countries of origin. With very low home‐country wages in relation to the cost of undocumented migration, the opportunity to migrate often hinges on the possibility of obtaining credit from a human smuggling organization or family and friends. This paper examines the conditions under which migration is optimal for an individual who lacks liquid assets, with a focus on alternative options for financing migration costs. One is by accumulating the required amount of savings out of source‐country income, with or without financial support from the family or social network. The other is debt‐bonded migration, which involves borrowing from a smuggling organization and paying off the loan while working in the host country. I find that greater financial support from the family network increases the attractiveness of debt‐bonded relative to self‐financed migration.     

Financial constraints and occupational choice in Thai villages

Financial constraints and entrepreneurship are key factors affecting economic performance in developing countries. I formulate and solve a model of occupational choice with moral hazard under three alternative financial market environments: savings only, borrowing and lending with default and moral hazard constrained insurance. I use computationally efficient techniques based on mechanism design, genetic algorithms and maximum likelihood to estimate and statistically test these models of financial constraints. Using occupational choice data from Thai villages I find evidence that the saving only regime is rejected in favor of regimes allowing for borrowing and/or insurance, especially in higher-wealth data stratifications. A direct test between the borrowing and insurance regimes reveals that neither can be rejected in favor of the other. Allowing ex-ante lotteries over wealth improves the explanatory power of the model. I also find evidence for differences in the best fitting regimes by region, wealth, and access to formal credit.     

The social cost of foreign exchange reserves

Abstract

There has been a very rapid rise since the early 1990s in foreign reserves held by developing countries. These reserves have climbed to almost 30% of developing countries' GDP and 8 months of imports. Assuming reasonable spreads between the yield on reserve assets and the cost of foreign borrowing, the income loss to these countries amounts to close to 1% of GDP. Conditional on existing levels of short-term foreign borrowing, this does not seem too steep a price as an insurance premium against financial crises. But why developing countries have not tried harder to reduce short-term foreign liabilities in order to achieve the same level of liquidity (thereby paying a smaller cost in terms of reserve accumulation) remains an important puzzle.     

The eurozone financial crisis: debt,credit ratings and monetary and fiscal policy

This paper discusses the eurozone financial crisis. It argues that it was largely the result of a common monetary policy not being suitable for individual countries which led to excessive private and public borrowing and a debt crisis. Neither borrowing rates nor credit ratings anticipated the crisis. Fundamental changes to eurozone governance are being proposed. The paper examines whether instead there might be a market solution if financial markets priced risk better. Accordingly, a more timely way of obtaining credit ratings is shown.     

Remittances,financial development,and growth

Despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows, the relationship between remittances and growth has not been adequately studied. This paper studies one of the links between remittances and growth, in particular how local financial sector development influences a country's capacity to take advantage of remittances. Using a newly-constructed dataset for remittances covering about 100 developing countries, we find that remittances boost growth in countries with less developed financial systems by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints. This finding controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development, does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used, and is robust to a number of robustness tests, including threshold estimation. We also provide evidence that there could be an investment channel trough which remittances can promote growth especially when the financial sector does not meet the credit needs of the population.     

Emerging Market Countries’ Access to International Financial Markets

Recent global imbalances have changed the way international capital flows are shared among developed and developing countries. In the new environment, the U.S., a former lender, has become a borrower. This article discusses how the privileged position of this new borrower might influence developing countries?? access to international financial markets. It suggests that for some emerging market countries, the recent increase in current account surpluses might be because of worsening in their borrowing opportunities. Empirical analysis for 39 emerging market economies shows that the increase in the U.S. deficit limited the access of emerging market economies that we analyzed in Commonwealth of Independent States, Developing Asia, Central and Eastern Europe to international financial markets for the 1980?C2009 time period.     

WHERE IS THE MISSING CREDIT CARD DEBT? CLUES AND IMPLICATIONS

I create comparable estimates of aggregate credit card use based on household data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and industry data. The two sources match up well on credit card charges and fairly well on account totals. But the SCF always yields much lower estimates of revolving debt. My estimated lower bound for the discrepancy in 2004 is half of the revolving credit card debt total implied by industry data. There is no obvious source for this remaining discrepancy and some evidence that the discrepancy has grown over time. Such growth is worrisome because it parallels substantial changes in credit card use and in the pool of credit card users, suggesting that the discrepancy could be driven by household underreporting that is correlated with unobserved heterogeneity. This correlation could confound inference on the relationship between credit card borrowing and outcomes of interest like household financial condition, consumption paths, and portfolio choice. Given this possibility it is critical to continue developing evidence on whether and why household surveys undercount credit card borrowing.     

财富不平等会抑制金融素养对家庭借贷行为的作用效果吗*——基于CHFS数据的经验分析

本文基于2013年中国家庭金融调查（CHFS）数据,选用工具变量法,考察了金融素养对城乡家庭借贷行为影响的差异性,并验证了财富不平等扩大会抑制金融素养对家庭借贷行为的影响。研究发现：（1）金融素养是影响家庭借贷行为的重要因素。户主金融素养水平的改善显著提高了家庭发生借贷的概率与家庭借贷规模。（2）金融素养对城乡家庭借贷行为的影响存在明显差异,金融素养的提高对信贷约束较为严重的农村家庭借贷行为的促进作用更大。（3）财富不平等对家庭借贷行为存在明显的抑制作用,财富不平等的扩大减少了家庭借贷需求,降低了家庭发生借贷的概率和家庭负债规模。（4）随着家庭财富不平等程度的扩大,金融素养对家庭借贷行为的促进作用受到抑制。基于以上结论,政府应该大力开展消费者金融素养教育,注重家庭收入分配合理性,从而推动我国消费金融市场的健康发展。     

Political credit cycles

This paper tests the existence of political credit cycles, the positive comovement between credit and elections. While several single‐country studies point to the existence of this relationship, the link between electoral cycles and credit expansion has seen little exploration at the multicountry level. Using a comprehensive dataset covering bank and non‐bank credit in 165 countries from 1960 to 2013, we show that both government and private credit significantly increase in election years. This finding suggests the possibility that politicians use not only fiscal and monetary policy to court voters, but also implement credit policies such as interest rate subsidies and tax breaks for debt to enhance credit growth. We also find that a higher degree of financial openness weakens the frequency and magnitude of political credit cycles; yet, the conditional effect of financial openness is stronger for developing countries than developed economies.     

信贷融资对异质性企业出口参与的影响* ——基于商业信贷和银行信贷角度的理论和实证分析

本文在新新贸易理论框架下，基于商业信贷和银行信贷的综合视角，系统研究了信贷融资对异质性企业出口参与的影响。本文重点围绕商业信贷对银行信贷的促进作用展开分析，从企业层面为中国出口增长“奇迹”提供来自金融视角的证据。本文在异质企业出口模型中引入商业信贷和银行信贷，论证商业信贷和银行信贷通过缓解出口成本融资约束影响企业出口参与，并运用中国制造业企业和IVprobit估计方法进行实证检验。本文发现：（1）改善商业信贷和银行信贷融资状况会提高企业出口概率；（2）商业信贷对银行信贷的促进作用有利于企业参与出口；（3）商业信贷对企业出口参与的作用不受企业所有制、企业规模、行业竞争性和企业出口固定成本差异的影响，银行信贷的作用则受上述差异的影响，商业信贷对银行信贷的促进作用受企业所有制和企业规模差异的影响。因此，发展信贷融资、建立商业信贷和银行信贷的互融互通机制，是加快中国出口增长的重要举措。     

金融发展与内生经济波动

开放经济中,金融发展在促进经济增长的同时,也把影响经济波动的国际因素传导到了国内。而这种负面影响在金融发展理论中却被忽略了,正因为如此,许多发展中国家出现了超越其经济发展水平的“过度金融发展”问题。金融深化可以促进金融市场发展和金融中介机构的发展,通过资产组合、财富效应、国际资本借贷把国外影响经济波动的效应传导至国内;另外,金融发展还可通过促进国际贸易的发展而传导外部影响。对样本国家进行分析的结果证实金融发展的确导致经济波动内生化。     

Leveraged borrowing and boom–bust cycles

Investment booms and asset “bubbles” are often the consequence of heavily leveraged borrowing and speculations of persistent growth in asset demand. We show theoretically that dynamic interactions between elastic credit supply (due to leveraged borrowing) and persistent credit demand (due to consumption habit) can generate a multiplier–accelerator mechanism that transforms a one-time productivity or financial shock into large and long-lasting boom–bust cycles. The predictions are consistent with the basic features of investment booms and the consequent asset-market crashes led by credit expansions.     

Group Lending under Dynamic Incentives as a Borrower Discipline Device

In recent years group lending has become an increasingly utilized tool for providing credit access to the poor in developing countries. Using empirical results from first-hand field research on Guatemalan borrowing groups, this paper develops a simple game-theoretic model of group lending. Results from the model show that through peer monitoring, the threat of group expulsion, and the safety net of intragroup credit insurance, group lending mitigates some risky investment behavior that would otherwise occur under an individual borrowing contract. The credible threat of social sanctions against group members who misallocate borrowed capital further reduces instances of such behavior.     

Dollarization and financial integration

How does a country's exchange rate regime impact its ability to borrow from abroad? We build a small open economy model in which the government responds to shocks by adjusting monetary policy and foreign borrowing. Sovereign borrowing is subject to endogenous limits, which ensure repayment when the default punishment corresponds to financial autarky. Dollarizing implies renouncing monetary policy, but can make access to international debt markets more valuable, thereby loosening borrowing constraints. This mechanism linking dollarization to financial integration is consistent with observed declines in spreads on foreign-currency debt in countries adopting the dollar or the euro.     

DEALER PRICING OF CONSUMER CREDIT*

Price discrimination incentives may induce dealers to bear the financial cost of their customers' credit purchases. We focus on how financial market imperfections make it possible to segment the customer population. When borrowing and lending rates differ from each other and from the rate of interest on a durable good purchase, the structure of those rates influences customers' choices to purchase on credit or cash terms, and the scope for dealers' price discrimination. Empirical analysis of a set of installment‐credit, personal‐loan, and regional interest rate data offers considerable support to the assumptions and implications of our theoretical framework.     

Jointly issued notes: a financial instrument to improve SME credit worthiness in China

A financial instrument to improve the credit worthiness of small and medium enterprises (SMEs), i.e. Jointly Issued Notes (JINs), improves the average credit rating of SMEs by eight notches, from BBB to AA+, thus reducing borrowing cost by 298 basis points. This research note describes the various kinds of JINs, and then analyzes their effect on the credit worthiness of SMEs. We conclude that the JINs successfully facilitate access to credit at lower rates in China.     

The Nature of Capitalist Money and the Financial Links Between Debt-Led and Export-Led Growth Regimes

The aim of this article is to develop a consistent theoretical approach to the financial links between the so-called debt-led (DLG) and ‘export-led’ (XLG) growth regimes. Assuming the endogenous supply of money and the unstable dynamics of financial markets, the leveraging process of DLG regimes is taken as an inherent dynamic of developed domestic financial systems, without the need of any external capital inflow. Foreign inflows are not a requisite for such expansions; however, attracted by high expected returns, they can play a key role in fueling DLG cases. Alternatively, current-account imbalances are not an indicator of the international financial flows but rather a side effect stemming from the productive, financial and trade links between DLG and XLG countries. Based on this approach, we study the relationship between changes in credit and current-account balances in several countries before and after the crisis of 2008. Both the observed general relationship of these variables for most of the countries, as well as some specific national cases ‘out of the norm’ are fundamental for understanding the national and international financial links between DLG and XLG models.