South Africa: Macroeconomic challenges after a decade of success1

More than halfway through the decade, the South African economy has done very well. This report asks whether such achievements provide grounds for complacency. In particular it discusses the current account challenge in light of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (ASGI‐SA) program. Our assessment is that a cautionary note on the need to reduce external imbalances is needed. We provide policy recommendations to minimize the negative impact of a possible sudden stop of capital inflows. On the consistency of ASGI‐SA program, we note that, given South Africa's recent employment and productivity performance a large investment program would be required to deliver the desired growth rates. In our view this imposes a large burden on public investment and on the current account itself.     

The feasibility of low inflation: theory with an application to the argentine case

In this paper we review the Argentine experience of hyperinflation, concentrating on understanding why stabilization took so long, and was only implemented by the most unlikely candidate. To explain these facts we present a voting model in which politicians' actions transmit information about the state of the economy and thus shape voters' behavior. We discuss the implications of the model for countries which are going through the same instability that characterized Argentina in the late 80s.     

DISTRIBUTIONAL CONFLICT, FINANCIAL ADAPTATION AND DELAYED STABILIZATIONS

In this paper we model delayed stabilizations as the rational outcome of a distributional conflict between two risk averse groups in the presence of post-stabilization payoff uncertainty and costly policy reversion. We show that in the initial stages of an extreme inflation episode there is a bias towards maintaining the current inefficient (but certain) revenue collection system which prevents the adoption of the required fiscal adjustment program. The access by those with higher income to a financial adaptation technology increases the average rate of inflation through time for any given government deficit, raising the welfare costs of not reaching an agreement and increasingly redistributing the burden of inflation to those with lower income. This process, if strong enough, will eventually trigger the necessary political support for the required fiscal adjustment. Delayed stabilizations will, nevertheless, induce the poor into accepting conditions that they did not find optimal before.     

The Valuation of Hidden Assets in Foreign Transactions: Why “Dark Matter” Matters

This paper clarifies how the valuation of hidden assets— what we call “dark matter”—changes our assessment of the U.S. external imbalance. Dark matter assets are defined as the capitalized value of the return privilege obtained by U.S. assets. Because this return privilege has been steady over recent decades, it is likely to persist in the future or even to increase, as it becomes leveraged by an increasingly globalized world. Once this is included in future projections of U.S. current accounts, the U.S. external position looks much more balanced than depicted in official statistics. JEL Classification F21     

A balance-sheet approach to fiscal sustainability

This paper proposes an alternative methodology to assess fiscal sustainability. Our balance-sheet approach (BSA) relies on estimating separately all of a government's assets and liabilities as opposed to focusing only on the burden of explicit liabilities. In our approach, assets are primarily the present discounted value of taxes, and liabilities include explicit liabilities but also the present discounted value of expenditures. Using the value of assets and liabilities, we compute the government's balance sheet, and therefore net worth. We then evaluate the response of net worth to growth, commodity prices or real exchange rate shocks. By computing a value for the government's net worth, our methodology allows an assessment of fiscal sustainability that is less reliant on the analyst's assumptions than traditional debt sustainability analysis (DSA).