Domestic and global output gaps as inflation drivers: What does the Phillips curve tell?

We study how domestic and global output gaps affect CPI inflation. We use a New-Keynesian Phillips curve framework which controls for non-linear exchange rate movements for a panel of 26 advanced and 22 emerging economies covering the 1994Q1−2017Q4 period. We find that both global and domestic output gaps are significant drivers of inflation both in the pre-crisis (1994–2008) and post-crisis (2008–2017) periods. Furthermore, after the crisis, in advanced economies the effect of the domestic output gap declines, while in emerging economies the effect of the global output gap declines. Our results suggest that emerging and advanced economies have become more similar to each other in terms of output gaps as inflation drivers. The paper demonstrates the usefulness of the New Keynesian Phillips curve in identifying the impact of global and domestic output gaps on inflation.     

ECONOMIES OF SCOPE FOR MICROFINANCE: DIFFERENCES ACROSS OUTPUT MEASURES

In banking, scope economies of mobilizing deposits and lending are often estimated, while consideration of the same measures for microfinance institutions (MFI) is still in its infancy. An open issue remains regarding what characterizes an output of an MFI. Moreover, depending on the output used, do estimated scope economies differ? We use a novel data set for over 800 MFI across more than 70 countries to estimate economies of scope. Our findings suggest that statistical differences arise between estimates of scope economies. However, our qualitative findings indicate that both of these measures provide similar overviews of the landscape of scope economies for MFI.     

Structure of Production,Economic Policy and Performance: the case of Japan,the Republic of Korea and the USA

Using input–output tables as well as a number of indices, this paper attempts to ascertain the degree of similarity of the structures of production of Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States. The results indicate that Japanese and Korean economies are more similar than Japanese and US or Korean and US economies. There are two possible explanations for the similarity of the structures of production of Asian nations. First, technology transfer from Japan to Korea may have contributed to the similarity of the prevailing technologies in these nations. Secondly, the active industrial policies of Japanese and Korean governments over the past several decades may have played an important role in the structures and performances of these economies.     

Output gap in Brazil: a real-time data analysis

Recent literature for developed economies has shown that output gap estimates go through important revisions over time, impairing their reliability in real time. We organize a real-time data set for Brazil’s GDP and assess the revisions of the output gap estimated by four different methods. Similar to the findings of studies for developed economies, the output gap revisions in Brazil are substantial in all methods, with frequent changes in the output gap sign. In general, both the GDP data revision and the effect of adding new observations to the sample are relevant sources of output gap revisions. However, differently from those studies, we cannot assert that the latter source is preponderant.     

Stock returns and output growth in emerging and advanced economies

This paper studies the correlation between output growth and lagged stock returns in a panel of emerging market economies and advanced economies. It finds that the proportion of countries in which this correlation is significant is the same for emerging market economies as it is for advanced economies using yearly data, and somewhat lower using quarterly data. Asset prices therefore seem to contain valuable information to forecast output also in emerging market economies. Moreover, the paper finds that the strength of the correlation between output growth and lagged stock returns is significantly related to a number of stock market characteristics, such as a high market capitalization to GDP ratio and, less robustly, English legal origin and the number of listed domestic companies and initial public offerings.     

ASIAN BUSINESS CYCLE SYNCHRONIZATION

This paper develops a multilevel structural factor model to study international output comovement and its underlying driving forces. Our method combines a structural vector autoregression with a multilevel factor model, which helps us understand the economic meaning of the estimated factors. Using quarterly data of real GDP growth covering 9 emerging Asian economies and G‐7 countries, we estimate a global supply factor, a global demand factor, and group supply and demand factors for each group of the economies. We find that although the role of the global factors has intensified over the past 15 years for most of the economies, output fluctuations in Asia have remained less synchronized with the global factor than those in the industrial countries. The Asian regional factors have become increasingly important in tightening the interdependence within the region over time. Therefore, although emerging Asian economies cannot ‘decouple’ completely from the advanced economies, they have, nonetheless, sustained a strong independent cycle among themselves. We also find that synchronized supply shocks contributed more to the observed synchronization in output fluctuations among the Asian economies than demand shocks. This points to the role of productivity enhancement and transmission of other supply shocks through, for example, vertical trade integration, rather than dependence on external demand, as the primary source of business cycle synchronization in emerging Asia.     

The Rise of China and Its Implications for the Global Economy: Evidence from a Global Vector Autoregressive Model

This paper studies empirically the role of China in the world economy. We examine both the way the Chinese economy reacts to exchange rate shocks and the repercussions for the world economy of an output shock emanating from China. Based on a global vector autoregressive model and a new data set that excels in country coverage and covers the most recent time period including the global financial crisis, our results are threefold: First, we show that a +1% shock to Chinese output translates to a permanent increase of 1.1% in Chinese real GDP and a 0.1% to 0.5% rise in output for most large economies. Second, to benchmark the shock to Chinese output, we examine the response to a +1% shock to US GDP. The results show that the US economy remains dominant in the world economy, as output rises in other advanced economies by 0.6 to 1%. By contrast, China seems to be little affected by the US shock. Finally, we are the first to assess the impact of a real appreciation of the renminbi versus the US dollar in a global model. Our results indicate that real appreciation of the renminbi decreases the level of Chinese GDP slightly and the long‐run effect is also negative for many countries exporting (e.g. raw materials) to China.     

Comparing monetary policy rules in CEE economies: A Bayesian approach

Using the Bayesian approach, a small open economy DSGE model was estimated using a sample of quarterly data for three Central and Eastern Europe economies, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The hypothesis that central banks react to exchange rate movements was tested using posterior odds ratio. For these economies, evidence was found that central banks reacted to exchange rate changes. Evidence of similar monetary policy characterized by moderate or low gradualism as well as an active and conservative monetary policy was also found, for the selected countries. When a richer DSGE model featuring habit formation and imperfect pass-through is estimated, the results are generally similar. The inclusion of exchange rate in Taylor rule can also drastically change the dynamics of inflation and output following certain shocks.     

UNDERSTANDING THE INTERACTION BETWEEN INTERNATIONAL AND EURO AREA OUTPUT VOLATILITY

This paper addresses two main questions. First, it seeks to establish whether the stylized facts of the ‘great moderation’ that have been documented for the UK and US economies can be found for the Euro area. Second, it explores possible explanations for any changes that have occurred in the volatility of Euro area output fluctuations. In examining why business cycles have moderated, much of the existing literature has tended to concentrate on a few key factors. These include shifts in the structure of the economy, improved monetary policy and a ‘good luck’ factor. This paper, however, follows a relatively new branch of the great moderation literature by focusing on whether international business cycle linkages have changed in a way that may have perpetuated the dampening in Euro area output fluctuations. The results show Euro area output fluctuations to have significantly reduced in variability over the last quarter of a century. The results go on to highlight that, although Euro area cycles differ little from rest of the world cycles, the moderation in Euro area output fluctuations is only marginally due to changes in international business cycle linkages and smaller international and domestic shock variances.     

Examining asymmetries in the transmission of monetary policy in the euro area: Evidence from a mixed cross-section global VAR model

I estimate the transmission of a common euro area monetary policy shock across individual euro area economies. To do so, I develop a global VAR model in which all euro area economies are included individually while, at the same time, their common monetary policy is modelled as a function of euro area aggregate output growth and inflation. The results suggest that the transmission of monetary policy across euro area economies displays asymmetries, and that, in line with economic theory, these are driven by differences in economies׳ structural characteristics. In particular, euro area economies in which a higher share of aggregate output is accounted for by sectors servicing interest rate sensitive demand exhibit a stronger transmission of monetary policy to real activity. Similarly, even though the evidence is less conclusive, euro area economies which feature more real wage and/or fewer unemployment rigidities also appear to display a stronger transmission of monetary policy to real activity.     

Sudden stops and output: an empirical Markov switching analysis

Sudden stops and their negative effects on GDP have recently received increased attention because quantitative easing has led to substantial capital inflows into emerging economies. We extend the empirical literature on the impact of sudden stops on GDP by proposing an alternative econometric approach which is multivariate, nonlinear and uses a novel way to identify sudden stops. We estimate a Markov switching vector autoregression with a latent variable indicating whether the economy is in a sudden stop regime. We use the maximum fraction of forecast error variance approach for partial structural identification of the vector autoregression model. Beyond confirming findings from the existing empirical literature on sudden stops, our results additionally show that (i) sudden stops are associated with regime switches (i.e., breaks in the behavior of economic variables), which have significantly negative and permanent effects on GDP; (ii) impulse responses to net capital inflow shocks are regime dependent with economies being more vulnerable to shocks during the sudden stop regime; and (iii) there were different main drivers of the output decline in historical sudden stop episodes.     

Financial Development and Economic Activity in Advanced and Developing Open Economies: Evidence from Panel Cointegration

This study considers the effects of financial development on output in a panel cointegration framework, focusing on the implications of trade and financial openness. Our analysis indicates that after controlling for cross‐sectional dependence, the typical relationship between finance and output does not hold in the long run. This relationship, however, is re‐established once we account for economic openness. While trade openness emerges as more important for developing countries, financial openness is more important for advanced economies. In the long run, causality runs from financial development to output in the advanced economies, while in developing economies causality is bidirectional. There is no short‐run causality between financial development and output, however.     

“When it rains,it pours”: Fiscal policy,credit constraints and business cycles in emerging and developed economies

Fiscal procyclicality, meaning co-movement between government expenditure and macroeconomic fundamentals, is an important feature of business cycle dynamics for emerging and poor economies. I estimate a panel SVAR to investigate the reasons for fiscal procyclicality. The analysis sheds light on the role of external financial constraints in shaping fiscal policy. My findings suggest that the response of emerging governments to output fluctuations is similar to that of developed governments. However, emerging governments curtail spending in response to increases in the sovereign borrowing rate, which forces their consumption expenditure to act more procyclically. Using counterfactual analysis, I show that the key forces behind fiscal procyclicality are the sensitivity of government spending to international borrowing costs and the procyclical nature of these costs for emerging economies.     

Deleveraging,deflation and depreciation in the euro area

During the post-crisis period, economic performance has been highly heterogenous across the euro area. While some economies rebounded quickly after the 2009 output collapse, others are undergoing a protracted further decline as part of an extensive deleveraging process. At the same time, inflation has been subdued throughout the whole of the euro area and intra-euro-area exchange rates have hardly moved. We interpret these facts through the lens of a two-country model of a currency union. We find that deleveraging in one country generates deflationary spillovers which cannot be contained by monetary policy, as it becomes constrained by the zero lower bound. As a result, the real exchange rate response becomes muted, and the output collapse—concentrated in the deleveraging economies.     

Borrowing constraints and the trade balance–output comovement

The countercyclical trade balance ratio is among the key stylized facts about open economies. The magnitude of the correlation between the trade balance and output, however, differs from country to country. In particular, the trade balance ratio is more negatively correlated with output in emerging economies than in developed economies, suggesting that the trade balance is more sensitive to output changes in the former than in the latter. This paper explores whether this difference is caused by international borrowing constraints imposed on emerging economies.By modeling borrowing constraints as conditional on macroeconomic performance, this paper shows that when there is a positive shock takes place in an emerging economy, GDP increases and the borrowing constraint becomes less binding, resulting in a decreased incentive to accumulate foreign assets. When there is a negative shock, by contrast, GDP falls, and the representative household must increase the trade balance to avoid possible binding borrowing constraints.     

Cyclical wage movements in emerging markets compared to developed economies: The role of interest rates

This paper documents that, at the aggregate level, (i) real wages are positively correlated with output and, on average, lag output by about one quarter in emerging markets, while there are no systematic patterns in developed economies, and (ii) real wage volatility (relative to output volatility) is about twice as high in emerging markets compared with developed economies. We then present a small open economy model with productivity shocks and countercyclical interest rates. The model incorporates a working capital requirement and the Jaimovich and Rebelo (2009) preference that allows for flexible parameterization of the strength of income effects on labor supply. The model can account for the high volatility of wage and consumption relative to output and countercyclical trade balances that characterize emerging-market economies. During economic downturns, rising interest rates in emerging markets induce relatively large income effects on labor supply, so households would not reduce their labor input as much even though wages drop significantly.     

Entrepreneurship and productivity: The slow growth of the planned economies

Trends in gross domestic product (GDP) and total factor productivity (TFP) growth in the former socialist economies seem to indicate that these economies were converging to unusually low long-run growth rates in the late 1980s. In this paper we develop an endogenous growth model of entrepreneurship that is able to account for the difference in long-run performance between centrally planned economies and market-oriented ones. Long-run growth rates of output and productivity are determined by the growth of the stock of managerial knowledge, which in turn depends on the share of the population involved in entrepreneurial activities and on the time that spent on those activities. We analyze the effect of two characteristics of centrally planned economies on their growth performance. First, in centrally planned economies factors of production are distributed by the central planner to the firms' managers through a contest that uses up some of the managers' productive effort. Second, the leadership is “egalitarian,” in the sense that it treats individuals with different abilities equally. We show that these two features reduce the fraction of people becoming entrepreneurs/managers, as well as their managerial effort, which in turn reduces long-run output and TFP growth. Furthermore, we find that centrally planned economies have lower income inequality and slightly higher capital–output ratios, which is consistent with these countries' experiences.     

The real effect of financial crises in the European transition economies1

The aim of this work is to assess the impact of financial crises on output for 11 European transition economies (CEECs). The results suggest that financial crises have a significant and permanent effect, lowering long‐term output by about 12–17 percent. The effect is larger in smaller countries in which the banking sector presented more important financial disequilibria. We also found that fiscal policy has been the most efficient tool in dealing with the crises, whereas the effect of monetary policy has been rather modest. Flexible exchange rates are found to attenuate the impact of the crises in the short and medium term, but to amplify the effect in the long run. International Monetary Fund support is found to moderate the effect in the long run. Finally, the effect in the CEECs is considerably larger than in the EU advanced economies.     

中国和东盟人民币贸易结算的经济学分析

本文构建了一个三经济体的贸易模型,从贸易损失的角度分析中国和东盟地区采用人民币进行贸易结算对中国和东盟,以及对世界其他主要经济体的福利影响。分析结果表明:中国和东盟地区结成货币联盟对世界主要经济体都将产生正面效应;由于东盟地区整体技术稍低,中国和东盟结成货币联盟将使东盟贸易损失下降更多和产出增加更大,从而提升东盟地区的整体福利;中国和东盟进行人民币结算对各经济体而言,属于帕累托改进,符合激励相容原则,具备理论上的可行性;中国和东盟进行货币联盟的优势在于两大经济体之间的地缘优势和生产技术类似。     

Trends in employment and the employment elasticity in manufacturing, 1971-92: an international comparison

Employment growth in manufacturing is limited by output growthin this sector, but the elasticity of employment with respectto output has varied widely in different regions and economies.This paper focuses attention on the idea that a major determinantof employment elasticity is the way the fruits of output growthare divided between employment growth and wage growth. But beforewe are able to determine the quantitative dimension of the trade-off,we have to allow for two other factors which affect the sizeof the cake available to labour in real terms. These are: (i)the elasticity of the wage bill with respect to output, whichdetermines the trend in the share of labour; and (ii) the priceeffect, depending partly on the rate of inflation and partlyon the movements of producer prices relative to consumer prices.A simple decomposition procedure is outlined in the paper whichallows us to quantify the relative importance of these factors,and hence give a clearer idea of the labour market outcome leaningto one or other of the two interests, employment growth andreal wage growth. The empirical analysis for different regionsof the world is carried out on time series data for the manufacturingsector collected by UNIDO from the national surveys of membercountries for the decades of the 1970s and the 1980s.