East Asia in the aftermath: Was there a crunch?

This paper investigates whether there was a credit crunch in East Asia during the recent financial and economic crises. Motivated by widespread concern that, over and above any increases in real interest rates, corporates may have also faced credit rationing, we adopt an explicit disequilibrium framework for analyzing the behavior of real credit with a view to assessing whether the supply of, or demand for credit has been a binding constraint. The findings highlight the dynamics associated with a credit crunch. We find evidence of a »credit crunch« in all three crisis countries (Indonesia, Korea, Thailand) in the period immediately following the crisis as the banking system distress deepened, and the supply of (real) credit declined. Thereafter, however, credit demand also fell sharply as economic recession took hold and corporate bankruptcies increased. By the end of the first quarter of 1998, therefore, the constraining factor was the demand for credit. We conclude that, beyond the initial crisis period, there is little evidence of a credit crunch at the aggregate level, although high real interest rates - and credit rationing of individual firms - may have continued to contribute to the difficulties of the corporate sector. --emerging markets,credit crisis

Structural Vulnerabilities and Currency Crises

This paper examines the role of structural factors - governance and rule of law, corporate sector governance (creditor rights and shareholder rights), corporate financing structure - as well as macroeconomic variables in currency crises. Using a technique known as a binary recursive tree allows for interactions between the various explanatory variables. It is found that structural vulnerabilities play an important role in the occurrence of "deep" currency crises (those with a real GDP growth decline of at least 3 percentage points) and that there are complex interactions between these structural vulnerabilities and macroeconomic imbalances. Copyright 2003, International Monetary Fund

Pricing in International Markets: Lessons From The Economist

Export firms are often assumed to stabilize destination market prices in the face of nominal exchange rate changes in order to protect market share. We show that standard tests of such pricing to market fail to discriminate against the alternative hypothesis of menu costs. As a case study, we examine the characteristics and determinants of changes in the cover prices of The Economist magazine in a sample of twelve countries over the floating rate period. We find that, while the law of one price fails, there is no evidence of systematic attempts to offset nominal exchange rate movements. Instead, the findings are consistent with menu cost driven pricing behavior.

Geographical and Sectoral Shocks in the U.S. Business Cycle

We examine whether the aggregate U.S. business cycle is driven mainly by geographical" shocks (affecting all sectors within a state), or by sectoral shocks (affecting the same sector in all" states). We find that, at the level of an individual sector in an individual state growth are driven by the sector, not by the state: textiles in Texas moves more with textiles" elsewhere in the U.S. than with other sectors in Texas. But shocks to sector growth rates exhibit" a lower correlation across sectors compared to the correlation of shocks to state growth rates" across states. As a result, geographical shocks gain greater importance at higher levels of" aggregation. Finally, we find that changes in the volatility of the aggregate U.S. business cycle" reflect, to a roughly comparable degree, both changes in the volatility of state and sector business" cycles, and changes in their correlation across sectors and states.

Thresholds and Context Dependence in Growth

Is there a single recipe for fast growth? Much of the recent cross-section empirical growth literature implicitly assumes there is. Yet both development and growth theory as well as casual empiricism suggest pervasive non-linearities in the growth process. Low inflation may grease the wheels of commerce' while high inflation may arrest them, secondary education may be crucial for promoting growth in open economies, but be largely ineffective in war-ravaged countries, etc. Such threshold effects and context dependence are difficult to capture in standard multivariate regressions, but are readily identified by classification tree analysis, undertaken here. Our results suggest that both types of non-linearities are indeed pervasive. The findings go some way towards explaining the limited robustness of cross-country growth regressions, and argue against the existence of a universal growth recipe.

Entradas de capital: el papel de los controles

Este escrito analiza el manejo de las entradas de capital en los mercados emergentes. Revisa las principales herramientas de política, incluidas la política fiscal y monetaria, la política cambiaria, la intervención en el mercado de cambios, la regulación prudencial doméstica y los controles al capital. Una conclusión clave es que si la economía funciona cerca del potencial, el nivel de reservas es adecuado, la tasa de cambio no está subvaluada y es probable que las entradas sean transitorias, el uso de controles al capital –además de la política prudencial y macroeconómica– se justifica como parte del conjunto de herramientas de política para manejar las entradas. La evidencia de la crisis actual sugiere que los controles encaminados a lograr una estructura de obligaciones externas menos riesgosa redujeron la fragilidad financiera y aumentaron la resiliencia ante caídas del crecimiento

Fiscal Fatigue, Fiscal Space and Debt Sustainability in Advanced Economies

How high can public debt rise without compromising fiscal solvency? We answer this question using a stochastic ability-to-pay model of sovereign default in which risk-neutral investors lend to a government that displays “fiscal fatigue,” because its ability to increase primary balances cannot keep pace with rising debt. As a result, the government faces an endogenous debt limit beyond which debt cannot be rolled-over. Using data for 23 advanced economies over 1970–2007, we find evidence of a fiscal reaction function with these features, and use it to compute “fiscal space,” defined as the difference between projected debt ratios and debt limits.

Entradas de capital: el papel de los controles

This paper analyzes the management of surges in capital inflows to Emerging Markets. It reviews the main policy tools, including fiscal and monetary policy, exchange rate policy, foreign exchange market intervention, domestic prudential regulation, and capital controls. A key conclusion is that, if the economy is operating near potential, if the level of reserves is adequate, if the exchange rate is not undervalued, and if the flows are likely to be transitory, then use of capital controls –in addition to both prudential and macroeconomic policy– is justified as part of the policy toolkit to manage inflows. Evidence from the current crisis suggests that controls aimed at achieving a less risky external liability structure reduced financial fragilities and increased growth resilience.capital inflows, capital controls, financial crisis