Government Spending Patterns and the Real Exchange Rate in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Do government spending patterns and composition influence the behaviour of the real exchange rate in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA)? First, we present a two‐sector small open economy model which proposes that government spending together with productivity differential leads to real exchange rate appreciation. Then, we take these propositions to SSA data and perform a coordinated empirical analysis. Interestingly, we find empirical support for the propositions in SSA. Finally, we disaggregate government spending into three components—consumption, investment and transfer payments—and check whether the composition of government spending provides any insight into the behaviour of the real exchange rate in SSA. Our results suggest that government composition does influence the real exchange rate in SSA. Specifically, we find that government consumption induces a real appreciation while government investment leads to a real depreciation. Although these findings yield appropriate magnitudes and signed directions, their effects are not always significant.     

Deviation from Purchasing Power Parity: Evidence from Malaysia, 1973–1997

This paper presents an empirical test of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) applied to the Malaysia ringgit for the period from 1973 (CPI) and 1984 (WPI) to 1997. Consistent with other research findings, it is detected that real exchange rate follows a random walk. Using multivariate cointegration methodology for the long-run relationship between real exchange rate and certain macro-economic variables, the study provides evidence supporting a long-run relationship between the real exchange rate and the current account balance and government spending, the last two variables have been not included in previous studies of this economy. The causality test between real exchange rate with the current account balance and government spending, however, does not receive support from the error-correction model. This suggests that both government spending and current account balance are not adequate to explain the changes in ringgit real exchange rate. The puzzle still remains unsolved.     

Government budget deficits,nominal andex ante real long-term interest rates in the U.K., 1960:1–1990:2

This paper explores the impact of government budget deficits on the U.K. nominal and ex ante real long-term interest rates over the period from 1960:1 to 1990:2 utilizing an open and closed economy IS-LM model. An open economy IS-LM model indicates that nominal and ex ante real long-term interest rates are affected by the expected rate of inflation, the real money stock, the real government budget deficit, the real government spending, and the real balance of trade.The evidence presented suggests that increases in the U.K. budget deficits do contribute significantly to increases in nominal and ex ante real long-term interest rates. This implies that rising nominal and ex ante real long-term interest rates, as a result of high government budget deficits, would crowd out private investment and deter capital formation and long-term economic growth.     

The Effects of Fiscal Policy in a Small Open Economy with a Fixed Exchange Rate

We study the empirical effects of fiscal policy in Denmark since the adoption of a fixed exchange rate policy in 1982. Denmark’s fixed exchange rate implies that the nominal interest rate remains fixed after a fiscal expansion, facilitating a substantial impact of the fiscal stimulus on the real economy. On the other hand, the large degree of openness of the Danish economy means that a sizeable share of the fiscal stimulus will be directed towards imported goods. Our results suggest that the ‘monetary accomodation channel’ dominates the ‘leakage effect’ in the short run. We demonstrate that fiscal stimulus has a rather large impact on economic activity in the very short run, with a government spending multiplier of 1.1 on impact in our preferred specification. We also find that the effects of fiscal stimulus are rather short-lived in Denmark, with the effect on output becoming insignificant after around two years. The fiscal multiplier is above 1 only in the first quarter, and drops to 0.6 one year after the shock. We also find that in the short run, the government spending multiplier is larger than the tax multiplier. Finally, we demonstrate that exogenous shocks to government spending account for less than 10 % of the movements in output over the business cycle in Denmark.     

Impacts of macroeconomic policies on the Mexican output

This paper examines the potential effects of macroeconomic policies, stock market performance, exchange rate fluctuations, and other related variables on real GDP in Mexico. Extending the works by Arango and Nadiri (1981) and Bahmani‐Oskooee and Ng (2002), and applying comparative‐static analysis, possible effects of a change in the exchange rate or government debt on the equilibrium output are examined. All the variables have unit roots and are stationary in first difference. There is a long‐run stable relationship between real GDP and the right‐hand‐side variables. The GARCH(p,q) (Engle 2001) model is applied to estimate regression parameters. Real GDP is positively associated with real M2, government deficit spending, stock prices, U.S. output, and world oil prices, and negatively affected by the government debt ratio, peso depreciation, and the expected inflation rate. Therefore, fiscal policy to incur more debt needs to be pursued with caution, and both net exports and money demand need to be considered in studying the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on output.     

Sources of Real Exchange Rate Volatility in Africa: The Case of ECOWAS*

Abstract: This study examines the impact of (real) demand shocks, (aggregate) supply shocks, and monetary shocks on real exchange rates in 13 West African countries. We observe that the real demand shocks explain most of the fluctuations in real exchange rates in all these countries. Accordingly, policymakers should adopt a careful demand management strategy by controlling government expenditure and taxes.     

An empirical analysis of China's equilibrium exchange rate: A co-integration approach

This paper estimates time specific values for China's long-run equilibrium exchange rate and develops measures of the direction and extent of misalignment based on a reduced-form real effective exchange rate (REER) model. An appropriately specified long-run equilibrium model is estimated and tested following Johansen and Juselius (1990) procedures, which is then used to construct an estimated time path for long-run equilibrium exchange rate values.Unit root tests indicated that each series can be considered as I(1) and that there was one cointegrating relationship linking the RMB series with its “fundamentals” – openness, money supply, productivity and government spending – with long-run elasticities of (0.41), (0.97), (0.51) and (0.75), respectively. The estimated error-correction model of REER determination showed that during China's latest exchange rate regime (from 2005:Q3) the RMB was undervalued by an average of 6.7 percent, which is modest compared to related studies.Estimation of the associated short-run error correction model shows that the error correction term has a statistically significant value of 0.85, implying that the actual real effective exchange rates would converge relatively quickly (just over one quarter, on average) towards their long-run equilibrium level in the absence of central bank intervention.     

EXPLAINING THE GROWTH OF GOVERNMENT SPENDING IN SOUTH AFRICA

What determines government spending in South Africa? The paper estimates the determinants of real per capita government spending in the Republic of South Africa using annual data for the period 1960‐2007, a tumultuous period during which South Africa experienced a variety of internally imposed changes (e.g. the abolition of apartheid, changes in political institutions) and externally generated shocks (e.g. war, oil shocks). Using multivariate cointegration techniques, we find that per capita government spending, per capita income, the tax share and the wage rate are cointegrated, a result that supports the notion that government spending is associated not only with per capita income and the true cost of government service provision as given by the wage rate but also with the fiscal illusion caused by budget deficits. We also find evidence that per capita government spending was positively affected by external shocks. These external shocks seem to play a significant role in explaining the dynamics of government spending growth.     

Fiscal Shocks and The Sectoral Composition of Output

We study the impact of shocks to different types of government spending on the sectoral composition of output for a panel of EMU member countries. We find that fiscal shocks lead to an increase in the relative size of the nontraded sector, with the impact varying across the different spending categories. There is typically no significant impact on the level of production in the tradables sector but the level of imports increases and the level of exports declines in most cases. Overall, the results show that fiscal shocks matter not only for aggregate variables but also for the sectoral composition of output. The sectoral output results are consistent with previous work concerning the impact of fiscal shocks on the real exchange rate and the relative price of nontradables.     

Hunting the Whale: More Evidence on State Government Leviathans

Caplan holds that governments are Leviathans, seeking to extend their power by increasing government expenditures beyond the level preferred by voters. We extend Caplan's model by examining the real (percentage) growth rates of government. We also examine whether government size increases at an increasing rate as the minority party weakens. We find evidence that supports and fails to support the original Leviathan hypothesis. We also fail to support our extensions of Caplan's hypothesis. Furthermore, our significant and contrary results have intuitively appealing interpretations. From these results, we conclude that the impact of political party power on government spending is ambiguous.     

The impact of public investment on private investment spending in Latin America: 1980–95

This paper investigates the theoretical and empirical links between key economic variables and private spending in Latin America during 1980 to 1995. The empirical findings of this paper directly address the complementarity hypothesis which suggests that increases in public investment spending raise the marginal productivity of private capital, thereby inducing higher rates of private investment spending. This paper also addresses the issue of whether changes in the real exchange rate (expenditure-switching policies) have a deflationary effect on the economics of Latin America. The findings in this paper make an important contribution to the ongoing debate about which policies need to be promoted to raise and sustain the rate of private capital formation in Latin America—the region's future source of employment and income creation.     

How can quality regional spending reduce poverty and improve human development index?

There is only a small amount of literature that discusses government spending and development performance, especially poverty and the human development index (HDI). Most of them discuss through income. Although some discuss government spending, few discuss their quality. This paper attempts to examine and discuss the quality of government spending and then to link its effects to poverty and HDI rates for underdeveloped areas in Indonesia in Java. The method used in this study is to use the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Model (PLS-SEM) with the help of SmartPLS software. The results of this study indicate that the quality of government spending is supported by the constructs of PRIORITY, ALLOCATION, TIME, ACCOUNTABILITY, and EFFECTIVENESS. This means that government spending can be said to be of quality when viewed from the five constructs. The results of this study also concluded that quality government spending can reduce poverty levels and the human development index (HDI).     

固定汇率制度下的财政政策:开放经济宏观经济学的拓展

本文主要建立在新开放主义宏观经济学理论上,进一步拓展和分析不同财政政策在固定汇率制度下对国民经济的影响,如消费、产出与汇率等。通过引入迭代模型的基本框架从而打破传统的李嘉图等价假设,我们发现因为有限生命代理人把所购买的国债看作是一种净财富,所以通过发行债券融资而导致的政府支出暂时的增加毫无疑问地将会增加本国居民相对于国外居民的消费水平。而另一方面,由于汇率水平固定不变和短期的价格粘性,政府支出增加的部分将平均分配给本国和外国商品。因此,政府支出暂时的增加将会减少本国的净国外资产头寸。而对于货币政策来说,本国居民相对消费水平的增加将导致本国货币升值压力,本国中央银行为了维系固定汇率水平不得不被动地增加货币供给。     

Oil revenues for public investment in Africa: targeting urban or rural areas?

This paper investigates the effects of oil-financed public investment on economic growth and poverty reduction using a dynamic multi-sectoral general equilibrium model featuring inter-temporal productivity spillovers. The paper shows that the relationship between resource-rent flows and real exchange rates, output growth, and poverty is less straightforward than simple models of the “resource curse” suggest. Taking Ghana as a stylized agriculture-based economy with poverty most pronounced in a region with home based agricultural production, a policy mix of smoothing the real exchange rate shock and an allocation of infrastructure spending in rural areas seems to be the most promising public investment strategy to enhance growth and reduce poverty.     

Estimating local fiscal multipliers using political connections

We use political connections between central and local governments in China to identify the effects of government spending. Our key innovation is using changes of central government ministers as a source of exogenous variation in earmarked transfers received by prefectural city-level governments. The analysis reveals that the increase in earmarked transfers is temporary and local effective tax rates do not respond to such fiscal expansions. Given that using cross-regional analysis for a monetary union can difference out the influence of monetary policy, the fiscal shock we study is a temporary, non-tax financed and no-monetary-policy-response government spending shock. We find the local fiscal multiplier in China is above one and there are no significant spillover effects from local government spending.     

The export-led growth hypothesis: The role of the exchange rate, money, and government expenditure from Korea

This article examines the export-led growth hypothesis for Korea in five-variable vector autoregressive and vector error correction models from 1973:1 to 1994:4. Results of the vector autoregressive models indicate economic growth Granger-causing export growth, regardless of the sample period. However, results of the vector error correction models show bidirectional causality between export growth and economic growth when the multivariate generalization of the Granger causality tests are used. In the variance decompositions, the real exchange rate contains most information regarding future fluctuations in economic growth and export growth followed by money supply and government expenditure in the subsample and the full sample, with economic growth as a dependent variable. However, when the dependent variable is export growth, then the order of the magnitude in the full sample becomes the exchange rate, followed by economic growth, government spending, and money supply. The findings in this paper suggest that the omitted variables have masked or overstated the effect of exports on income or income on exports in prior studies.     

Economic growth and the human capital intensity of government spending

The paper models an economy in which long-run growth is driven by human-capital-intensive, private sector research and development, and shows how government spending affects growth through its impact on relative wages. The more human-capital-intensive government spending is relative to private spending, the greater the derived demand for and relative wage of human capital and, hence, the more costly is research and development. The private sector thus devotes fewer resources to research and development and the rates of innovation and economic growth are lower. The paper argues that these effects are likely to be negative, and possibly substantial, in the U.S. The paper's results also offer a plausible explanation for the insignificance of government spending in cross-country growth regressions in recent empirical studies.     

Government Purchases and the Real Exchange Rate

Recent empirical research documents that an exogenous rise in government purchases in a given country triggers a persistent depreciation of its real exchange rate—which raises an important puzzle, as standard macro models predict an appreciation of the real exchange rate. This paper presents a simple model with limited international risk sharing that can account for the empirical real exchange rate response. When faced with a country-specific rise in government purchases, local households experience a negative wealth effect; they thus work harder, and domestic output increases. Under balanced trade (financial autarky) this supply-side effect is so strong that the terms of trade worsen, and the real exchange rate depreciates. In a bonds-only economy, an increase in government purchases triggers a real exchange rate depreciation, if the rise in government purchases is sufficiently persistent and/or labor supply is highly elastic.     

Exchange rate volatility and agricultural trade under policy reforms in South Africa

Decades of government intervention have helped develop the South African agriculture sector to its present state. Policy reforms have included trade and exchange rate policies to increase the country's international competitiveness, reduce poverty and promote economic growth. These reforms are facilitating the growth in agricultural trade and South Africa's reintegration into the global economy. Annual agricultural exports and imports have increased. This paper uses annual data and a vector error-correction model to investigate the supply and demand relationships for agricultural trade flows in South Africa during the past four decades. The results show that prices, real exchange rates, domestic production capacity and real incomes have significant impacts on the country's agricultural trade. In particular, exchange rate volatility has negative impacts. This cannot be viewed solely as an exogenous source of macroeconomic instability in South Africa, as domestic policies play a crucial role in influencing the movement of exchange rates.     

政府支出的构成与中国经济波动——基于动态随机一般均衡模型的分析

政府支出对于一国经济波动具有显著性影响。基于我国的现实数据,向量自回归模型的脉冲响应函数证实：（1）生产性政府支出与消费性政府支出对于总产出具有不同的冲击效应,并且生产性政府支出对于产出具有相对较大的影响;（2）无论是政府生产性支出还是消费性支出,其对于不同部门的产出均具有不同的冲击效应,即政府支出的冲击效应具有部门依存性特征。在此基础上,文章建立了一个包含不同部门与政府支出不同构成成分的多部门经济NK-DSGE模型,考察了政府支出冲击的不同构成成分对于我国经济波动的影响。贝叶斯脉冲响应分析的结果支持了经验证据,并且模型主要变量的周期性特征与现实数据较为接近。在此基础上,贝叶斯冲击分解的结果指出,相对于消费性政府支出而言,生产性政府支出冲击对于各宏观经济变量的波动具有更大的推动作用。因此,在使用支出政策熨平经济波动时,政府需依据现实经济情况及时调整政府支出的构成。