The Effects of Infrastructure Development on Growth and Income Distribution

This paper provides an empirical evaluation of the impact of infrastructure development on economic growth and income distribution using a large panel data set encompassing over 100 countries and spanning the years 1960-2000. The empirical strategy involves the estimation of simple equations for GDP growth and conventional inequality measures, augmented to include among the regressors infrastructure quantity and quality indicators in addition to standard controls. To account for the potential endogeneity of infrastructure (as well as that of other regressors), we use a variety of GMM estimators based on both internal and external instruments, and report results using both disaggregated and synthetic measures of infrastructure quantity and quality. The two robust results are: (i) growth is positively affected by the stock of infrastructure assets, and (ii) income inequality declines with higher infrastructure quantity and quality. A variety of specification tests suggest that these results do capture the causal impact of the exogenous component of infrastructure quantity and quality on growth and inequality. These two results combined suggest that infrastructure development can be highly effective to combat poverty. Furthermore, illustrative simulations for Latin American countries suggest that these impacts are economically quite significant, and highlight the growth acceleration and inequality reduction that would result from increased availability and quality of infrastructure.Infrastructure, Growth, Income Inequality

Trends in Infrastructure in Latin America, 1980-2001

There is widespread concern across Latin America that the provision of infrastructure services has suffered as a consequence of the retrenchment of the public sector and the insufficient response of the private sector to the opening up of infrastructure industries to private participation in most countries. This paper documents the recent trends in infrastructure stocks and infrastructure investment in major Latin American economies. Using an updated dataset constructed for this task, the paper describes the evolution of the quantity and quality of infrastructure assets – power, transport, telecommunications– as well as the investment expenditures of the public and private sectors. The paper finds that Latin America lags behind the international norm in terms of infrastructure quantity and quality, and there is little evidence that the gap may be closing – except in the telecommunications sector. Furthermore, overall infrastructure investment has fallen, as a combined result of the retrenchment of public investment and the limited response of the private sector, which has been mostly confined to the telecommunications industry. However, there is considerable disparity across countries. On the whole the data show that the countries most successful in attracting large volumes of private investment (Chile, Colombia, Bolivia) are precisely those where public investment has remained high.

Real Exchange Rates, Saving and Growth: Is there a Link?

The view that policies directed at the real exchange rate can have an important effect on economic growth has been gaining adherents in recent years. Unlike the traditional “misalignment" view that temporary departures of the real exchange rate from its equilibrium level harm growth by distorting a key relative price in the economy, the recent literature stresses the growth effects of the equilibrium real exchange rate itself, with the claim being that a depreciated equilibrium real exchange rate promotes economic growth. While there is no consensus on the precise channels through which this effect is generated, an increasingly common view in policy circles points to saving as the channel of transmission, with the claim that a depreciated real exchange rate raises the domestic saving rate -- which in turn stimulates growth by increasing the rate of capital accumulation. This paper offers a preliminary exploration of this claim. Drawing from standard analytical models, stylized facts on saving and real exchange rates, and existing empirical research on saving determinants, the paper assesses the link between the real exchange rate and saving. Overall, the conclusion is that saving is unlikely to provide the mechanism through which the real exchange rate affects growth.real exchange rate, saving, growth

How Did Latin America’s Infrastructure Fare in the era of Macroeconomic Crises?

There is a long-standing literature that shows that fiscal adjustment is often implemented through cuts in public investment, including infrastructure (Roubini and Sachs, 1989; Hicks, 1991; De Haan et al. 1996). In this respect, the present paper aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the evolution of infrastructure stocks, quality and spending in Latin America in order to assess whether the infrastructure sector suffer from the prolonged period of macroeconomic stabilization in the 1980s and 1990s. First, we assess trends in quantity and quality of infrastructure using data on 19 Latin American countries, and we compare them to the performance of the seven "East Asian miracle" countries. Second, we look at trends in infrastructure spending for 9 major Latin American countries on which we have country data. Here we examine to what extent changes in public infrastructure spending were linked to fiscal deficit reductions and driven by the privatization of infrastructure and increased private spending on infrastructure. Finally, we assess the relationship of infrastructure quantity and quality to the path of infrastructure spending in a panel data econometric analysis.

Greenfield Fdi vs. Mergers and Acquisitions: Does the Distinction Matter?

FDI flows to developing countries surged in the 1990s, to become their leading source of external financing. This rise in FDI volume was accompanied by a marked change in its composition: investment taking the form of acquisition of existing assets (M&A) grew much more rapidly than investment in mainly new assets (‘greenfield’ FDI), particularly in countries undertaking extensive privatization of public enterprises. This raises two issues. First, is the M&A boom a one-time effect of privatization, or is it likely to be followed by a rise in greenfield investment? Second, do these two types of FDI have different macroeconomic consequences – in terms of aggregate investment and growth? This paper focuses on establishing the stylized facts in terms of time precedence between both types of FDI, investment and growth using data for a large sample of industrial and developing countries. We find that in developing and industrial countries higher M&A is typically followed by higher greenfield investment, while the reverse is true only for industrial countries. In developing economies domestic investment leads both types of FDI, but not the reverse; while in industrial countries, domestic investment leads M&A FDI but is led by greenfield FDI. Neither type of FDI appears to precede economic growth in either developing or industrial countries, but FDI does respond positively to increases in the growth rate.

Infrastructure Compression and Public Sector Solvency in Latin America

Public investment and infrastructure spending are often singled out for drastic cuts at times of fiscal retrenchment. Fiscal austerity in Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s was characterized by a sharp contraction in infrastructure spending. In 5 of the 9 major Latin American countries, infrastructure investment cuts contributed half or more of the total fiscal adjustment. However, the compression of infrastructure spending does not guarantee the sustainability of the public sector. Infrastructure spending cuts not only reduce the public deficit (thereby raising the public sector’s net worth) but also leads to a decline in infrastructure stock accumulation and in output growth as well. This in turn implies a reduction in the economy’s debt-servicing capacity, thus weakening the public sector net worth (Easterly, 2001). In the present paper we quantitatively assess the growth cost of public infrastructure compression for major Latin American economies during the fiscal austerity period of the 1980s and 1990s, and examine the effectiveness of infrastructure spending cuts as a device to enhance public sector solvency.

Saving in Mexico: The National and International Evidence

How does Mexico’s saving performance compare to the world’s? Is Mexico ‘different’? And what drives Mexico’s saving behavior since the 1980s? This paper addresses these questions bringing together empirical evidence from Mexico with that from a large cross-country time-series data set on saving aggregates and their determinants. Using dynamic panel data estimation techniques, the paper characterizes the major factors behind world saving performance. In the light of this evidence, Mexico’s saving experience is compared to the international benchmark. Further, the paper turns to quarterly time-series evidence on saving in Mexico, and examines the factors behind the observed evolution of private and national saving using a regression framework, with particular attention to the issues of inflation adjustment and Ricardian equivalence. Key variables in Mexico’s saving performance have been the terms of trade, public saving, the real interest rate, and the inflation rate. Sustained future growth could be reinforced by a virtuous saving-growth cycle, nurtured by the strong response of private (and national) saving rates to income growth observed in the world sample.

Country portfolios

Capital flows to developing countries are small and are mostly take the form of loans rather than direct foreign investment. We build a simple model of North-South capital flows that highlights the interplay between diminishing returns, production risk and sovereign risk. This model generates a set of country portfolios and a world distribution of capital stocks that resemble those in the data.Internationall capital flows, country portfolios, sovereign risk

General Equilibrium Dynamics of External Shocks and Policy Changes in Chile

This paper develops a macroeconomic general-equilibrium model fully parameterized for the Chilean economy. The model’s basic relations are derived from intertemporal optimization by a group of rational forward-looking agents. The model also adds critical real-world features – such as short-run wage rigidities and a group of myopic agents – that generate deviations from the frictionless fullemployment equilibrium of the unconstrained neoclassical paradigm. The model is numerically simulated to illustrate the dynamics of Chile’s economy in response to the external shocks and policy shifts that led to the 1998-99 recession.

Testing weak exogeneity in cointegrated panels

Incluye bibliografíaFor reasons of empirical tractability, analysis of cointegrated economic time series is often developed in a partial setting, in which a subset of variables is explictly modeled conditional on the rest. This approach yields valid inference only if the conditioning variables are weakly exogenous for the parameters of interest. This paper proposes a new test of weak exogeneity in panel cointegration models. The test has a limiting Gumbel distribution that is obtained by first letting T ->∞ and then letting N ->∞ . We evaluate the accuracy of the asymptotic approximation in fi nite samples via simulation experiments. Finally, as an empirical illustration, we test weak exogeneity of disposable income and wealth in aggregate consumptionEl análisis empírico de series temporales bajo cointegración se desarrolla habitualmente en un contexto parcial en el que un subconjunto de las variables se analiza condicionado al resto. Este enfoque produce inferencia válida solo si las variables condicionantes son débilmente exógenas respecto a los parámetros de interés. Este trabajo propone un nuevo test de exogenidad débil en modelos de cointegración con datos de panel. El test resultante se distribuye bajo la hipótesis nula como una distribución Gumbel a medida que T (número de períodos) y N (número de unidades) van a infinito de forma secuencial (primero T y después N). Además, se evalúa la precisión de esta aproximación asintótica en muestras finitas mediante experimentos de simulación. Por último, como ilustración empírica utilizamos el test propuesto para comprobar la validez del supuesto de exogenidad débil de la renta disponible y la riqueza en ecuaciones de consumo agregad