KEY ISSUES OF COST-BENEFIT METHODOLOGY FOR IRISH INDUSTRIAL POLICY. General Research Series Paper No. 172, 1998

Industrial development policy in Ireland has long been characterised by its reliance on both discretionary and non-discretionary incentives. The former includes a range of grants for new investment or expansion projects in manufacturing and certain internationally traded service sectors. The latter features a low rate of corporation profits tax rate applicable (up to now) to essentially the same sectors (though the profits tax rate will soon be unified at a low rate for all sectors). Although, like its predecessor export sales relief, the regime does not discriminate between foreign-owned and indigenous firms, it was probably always envisaged chiefly as a mechanism for inducing an inflow of foreign direct investment. The low tax rate, combined with international tax treaties, is of great advantage to US and other firms with unsheltered foreign tax liabilities; the discretionary grants enable the Irish development agencies to compete with other possible destinations for internationally mobile investment projects. The success of the policy is evidenced by the remarkably high share of foreign-owned companies in manufacturing whether measured by employment (45 per cent) or output (70 per cent)

Risk Management and the Costs of the Banking Crisis

The 2007-8 banking crisis in the advanced economies has exposed deficiencies in risk management and prudential regulation approaches that rely too heavily on mechanical, albeit sophisticated, risk management models. These have aggravated private and economic losses, while perhaps protecting the taxpayer from bearing quite as high a share of the direct costs as in typical crises of the past. Policymakers and bankers need to recognize the limitations of rules-based regulation and restore a more discretionary and holistic approach to risk management.

Recapitalizing banking systems : implications for incentives and fiscal and monetary policy

In the aftermath of a banking crisis, most attention is rightly focused on allocating losses, rebuilding properly managed institutions, and achieving debt recovery. But the authorities'decision to use budgetary funds to help restructure a large failed bank or banking system also has consequences for the incentive structure for the new bank management, for the government's budget, and for monetary stability. These issues tend to be lumped together, but each should be dealt with in a distinctive manner. The author points out, among other things, how apparent conflicts between the goals in each of these areas can be resolved by suitably designing financial instruments and appropriately allocating responsibility between different arms of government. First the government must have a coherent medium-term fiscal strategy that determines broadly how the costs of the crisis will be absorbed. Then the failed bank must be securely reestablished with enough capital and franchise value to move forward as a normal bank. This will typically entail new financial institutions involving the government on boththe asset and the liability sides of the bank's balance sheet. The bank should not be left with mismatches of maturity, currency, repricing. Assets that are injected should be bankable and preferably negotiable. The liability structure should give bank insiders the incentive to manage the bank prudently. Financial instruments can be complex and sophisticated but only if the government has the credibility to warrant market confidence that it will deliver on the contracts rather than trying to use its lawmaking powers to renege. Innovative use of segregating sinking funds and"Brady"-type bonds can help where government credibility is weak. Restructuring the bank will alter the size, maturity, and other characteristics of the government's debt. These characteristics should be optimized separately and with the market as a whole, not just the affected banks.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Settlement of Investment Disputes,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring

Avoiding the pitfalls in taxing financial intermediation

Enthusiasts for financial sector tax reform typically come either with some form of"flat tax"(including value added tax on financial services, zero taxation on capital income, or a universal transactions tax) or advocating corrective taxes designed to offset market failures or achieve other targeted objectives. As a result the tax systems in most countries often end up with a complex mixture. Honohan argues that practical policy for taxation of the financial sector needs to take into account two key features of the sector: its capacity for arbitrage and its sensitivity to inflation and thus to nonindexed taxes. Where these aspects have been neglected, poorly constructed tax systems-whether the consequence of a drive for revenue or of misdirected sophistication-often have sizable unexpected side effects. A defensive stance making the minimization of such distortions as its cornerstone is the best policy.Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,Financial Intermediation

Measuring microfinance access : building on existing cross-country data

Given the acknowledged need for a new effort to expand the set of available data on direct access to financial services, including a focus on access by those at low income, Honohan provides a selective review of the diverse sources of data that exist and considers how best to build on them. He proposes a basic framework within which to consider the analysis of the interesting questions: (1) How does access affect poverty and productivity? and (2) What hinders access? The author discusses existing and potential contribution of household and business user surveys, surveys of providers and their regulators, and surveys of experts, and assesses their relative strengths.Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Poverty Assessment,Governance Indicators

Resolving Ireland’s Banking Crisis

The Irish banking system has been, in effect, on a life-support system since September 2008. Complacency resulted in the banks fuelling the late stage of an obvious construction bubble with massive foreign borrowing, leaving them exposed to solvency and liquidity risks which in past times would have been inconceivable. The Government’s steps to put the system back on a sound basis must have regard both to protecting taxpayers’ interests and to ensuring that credit flows to the economy are not hampered by inadequate capital or liquidity.

Dollarization and Exchange Rate Fluctuations

Although the worldwide growth in dollarization of bank deposits has recently slowed, it has already reached very high levels in dozens of countries. Building on earlier findings that allowed the main cross-country variations in the share of dollars to be explained in terms of national policies and institutions, this paper turns to analysis of short-run variations, particularly the response of dollarization to exchange rate changes, which is shown to be too small to warrant ‘fear of floating’ by dollarized economies. But high dollarization is shown to increase the risk of depreciation and even suspension, as indicated by interest rate spreads. While specific policy is needed to deal with the risks associated with dollarization, the underlying causes of unwanted dollarization should also be tackled.

Monetary cooperation in the CFA zone

The CFA or franc zone in Africa is the largest and most enduring of currency blocs. This paper is designed as a guide to understanding how the zone works as a mechanism for monetary cooperation. Unfortunately, the experience described in this paper is not encouraging. Despite fixed exchange rates and an elaborate set of rules for avoiding excessive credit expansion, the CFA zone has almost foundered in widespread bank insolvency. The paper is organized as follows : a) section 2 describes member countries of the zone, highlighting their diversity not only in economic structure but in the state of their financial system; b) section 3 shows that there is no effective regional money market and considers how this might be remedied; c) section 4 discusses how credit has been distributed between the member countries and highlights asymmetries which have arisen; d) section 5 explains how seignorage is divided in the unions and shows how the losses may fall disproportionately on non favored countries; and e) section 6 concludes by considering how the recent banking crisis has revealed deficiencies in the zone's arrangements.Financial Crisis Management&Restructuring,Banks&Banking Reform,Economic Theory&Research,Financial Intermediation,Economic Stabilization

Perverse effects of a ratings-related capital adequacy system

It has recently been proposed that banks be allowed to hold less capital against loans to borrowers who have received a favorable rating by an approved rating agency. But a plausible model of rating-agency behavior shows that this strategy could have perverse results, actually increasing the risk of deposit insurance outlays. First, there is an issue of signaling, with low-ability borrowers possibly altering their behavior to secure a lower capital requirement for their borrowing. Second, establishing a regulatory cut-off may actually reduce the amount of risk information made available by raters. Besides, the credibility of rating agencies may not be damaged by neglect of the risk of unusual systemic shocks, although deposit insurers greatest outlays come chiefly at times of systemic crisis. And using agencies'individual ratings is unlikely to be an effective early-warning system for the risk of systemic failure, so use of the ratings could lull policymakers into a false sense of security. It is important to harness market information to improve bank safety (for example, by increasing the role of large, well-informed, but uninsured claimants), but this particular approach could be counterproductive. Relying on ratings could induce borrowers to increase their exposure to systemic risk even if they reduce exposure to specific risk.Banking Law,Banks&Banking Reform,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Financial Intermediation,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation,Banking Law,Environmental Economics&Policies,Insurance&Risk Mitigation

Exchange Rates and Inflation under EMU: An Update

In our recent Economic Policy article(Honohan and Lane, 2003), we argued that the strength of the US dollar 1999-2001 had an important impact on inflation divergence within the EMU and in particular the surge in Ireland’s inflation to over 7 per cent. This hypothesis has been subjected to a grueling out-of-sample test: would the dollar’s subsequent weakness contribute to inflation convergence and in particular to a fall in Irish inflation? Fortunately for us, the theory has passed the test with flying colours. Irish inflation stopped dead in its tracks: consumer prices were unchanged between May and November of 2003. Regression analysis on quarterly inflation data across EMU members 1999.1-2004.1 confirms the importance of the exchange rate channel, although pinning down the exact dynamic specification will require a further span of data.