Financial Crisis in Emerging Markets and the Optimal Bailout Policy

This paper develops a framework for analyzing optimal government bailout policy in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model where financial crises are exogenous. Important elements of the model are that private borrowers only internalize part of the social cost of foreign borrowing in the emerging market and that the private sector is illiquid in the event of a crisis. The distinguishing feature of our paper is that it addresses the optimal bailout policy in an environment where there are both costs and benefits of bailouts, and where bailout guarantees potentially distort investment decisions in the private sector. We show that it is always optimal to commit to a bailout policy that only partially protects investment against inefficient liquidation, both in a centralized economy and a market economy. Due to overinvestment in the market economy, the government’s optimal level of bailout guarantees is lower than in the social optimum. Further, we show that, in contrast to a social planner, the government in the market economy should optimally bail out a smaller fraction of private investments when the probability of a crisis increases.financial crisis; government bailout; emerging markets

US imbalances: the role of technology and policy

This paper investigates the role of three likely factors in driving the steady deterioration of the US external balance: US technology developments, changes in the US government fiscal position and the Fed’s monetary policy. Estimating several Vector Autoregressions on US data over the period 1982:2 to 2005:4 we identify five structural shocks: a multi-factor productivity shock; an investment-specific technology shock; a monetary policy shock; and a fiscal revenue and spending shock. Together these shocks can account for the deterioration and subsequent reversal of the trade balance in the 1980s. Productivity improvements and fiscal and monetary policy easing also play an important role in the increase of the external deficit since 2000, but these structural shocks can not explain why the trade balance deteriorated in the second half of the 1990s. JEL Classification: F3, F4global imbalances, open economy, VARs

Trade Deficits in the Baltic States: How Long Will the Party Last?

Since their opening up to international capital markets, the economies of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have experienced large and persistent capital inflows and trade deficits. This paper investigates whether a calibrated two-sector neoclassical growth model can explain the magnitudes and the timing of the trade flows in the Baltic countries. The model is calibrated for each of the three countries, which we simulate as small closed economies that suddenly open up to international trade and capital flows. The results show that the model can account for the observed magnitudes of the trade deficits in the 1995-2001 period. Introducing a real interest rate risk premium in the model increases its explanatory power. The model indicates that trade balances will turn positive in the Baltic states around 2010

Vertical Linkages and the Collapse of Global Trade

A common view is that cross-border vertical linkages played a key role in the 2008-2009 collapse of global trade. This paper presents two accounting results from a global input-output framework that shed light on this channel. We feed in observed changes in final demand and find that trade in final goods fell by twice as much as trade in intermediate goods. Nevertheless, intermediate goods account for more than two-fifths of the trade collapse. We also find that vertical specialization trade fell 13 percent, while value-added trade fell by 10 percent, because declines in demand were largest in highly vertically-specialized sectors

Vertical Linkages and the Collapse of Global Trade

A common view is that cross-border vertical linkages played a key role in the 2008-2009 collapse of global trade. This paper presents two accounting results from a global input-output framework that shed light on this channel. We feed in observed changes in final demand and find that trade in final goods fell by twice as much as trade in intermediate goods. Nevertheless, intermediate goods account for more than two-fifths of the trade collapse. We also find that vertical specialization trade fell 13 percent, while value-added trade fell by 10 percent, because declines in demand were largest in highly vertically-specialized sectors.

Aggregate Investment Expenditures on Traded and

It is a well-established empirical regularity in the macroeconomic literature that the relative price of nontraded goods (expressed in terms of traded goods) correlates positively with income and exhibits large differences across space and time. This paper shows that, despite the large differences in the relative price, aggregate investment expenditure shares on traded and nontraded goods are remarkably similar in rich and poor countries. Furthermore, the two expenditure shares have remained close to constant over time, with the average nontraded expenditure share varying between 0.54-0.60 over the 1960-2002 period. Empirical results of this paper offer a new restriction for the two-sector growth model. We show that, with the restriction imposed on the model, only around 25 percent of the differences in PPP adjusted investment rates between rich and poor countries can be attributed to differences in relative productivity between traded and nontraded sectors, i.e., the Balassa-Samuelson effect

No Guarantees, No Trade: How Banks Affect Export Patterns

This study provides evidence that shocks to the supply of trade finance have a causal effect on U.S. exports. The identification strategy exploits variation in the importance of banks as providers of letters of credit across countries. The larger a U.S. bank's share of the trade finance market in a country is, the larger should be the effect on exports to that country if the bank reduces its supply of letters of credit. We find that supply shocks have quantitatively significant effects on export growth. A shock of one standard deviation to a country's supply of trade finance decreases exports, on average, by 2 percentage points. The effect is much larger for exports to small and risky destinations and in times when aggregate uncertainty is high. Our results imply that global banks affect export patterns and suggest that trade finance played a role in the Great Trade Collapse