The Effects of Volatility on Growth and Financial Development through Capital Market Imperfections

This paper provides a model to account for the empirical evidence that volatility reduces growth. In the model, greater volatility increases the cost associated with capital market imperfections and induces the financial intermediaries to charge higher interest rates. The model is based on one of overlapping generations with two types of technologies. The more productive technology requires fixed investment in the first period. Individual with income less than the amount of fixed investment may borrow in financial markets to obtain more productive technology. Increase in volatility raises the cost of borrowing and makes it less attractive to invest in more productive technology for individuals below certain income in the first period. Hence, volatility reduces growth by deterring people from taking advantage of more productive technology. This model also explains the empirical findings of Ramey and Ramey (1995) that investment is not the channel between volatility and growth by suggesting that totals factor productivity rather than the total factor accumulation is the key for growth.Volatility; Growth; Financial Development; Capital Market Imperfections; Costly State Verification; Limited Enforceability of Contracts

Distributional Effects of Boom-Bust Cycles in Developing Countries with Financial Frictions

This paper sheds light on the distributional implications of the exchange rate based stabilizations with financial imperfections when a country is populated by heterogeneous agents with respect to their source of income. This paper shows that boom-bust cycles in developing countries lead to income redistribution from tradable to nontradable sectors. Since the share of tradable sectors in aggregate GDP increases above its usual share with the devaluation of the currency, the individuals in tradable sectors pay more tax than what they receive as capital inflow in the expansion phase of the economy. The opposite holds for the individuals in nontradable sectors who gain more from the capital inflow as compared to what they lose from taxationDistributional Effects; Boom-Bust Cycles; Financial Frictions

Bank competition and outreach: evidence from Turkey

In light of the importance of banking sector outreach and given concerns that competition may adversely affect it, this study explores the empirical linkage between banking structure and outreach in Turkey for the period 1988-2010. Bank-, province-, and bank-province-level estimation results indicate that competition is in general conducive to the outreach of banks. We do not find evidence for collusive behavior among banks when they have multimarket contact. At the province level, the presence of foreign-owned banks is associated with higher outreach, while at the bank-province level, we observe that outreach of domestic banks exceeds that of foreign banks. Together, these results suggest that there are procompetitive spillover effects from foreign banks to their domestic counterparts