Anticipations of Foreign Exchange Volatility and Bid-Ask Spreads

The paper studies the effect of the market's perceived exchange rate volatility on bid-ask spreads. The anticipated volatility is extracted from currency options data. An increase in the perceived volatility is found to widen bid-ask spreads. The direction of the effect is consistent with an option model of the spread, but the magnitude is smaller. An increase in trading volume of spot exchange rates also widens the spread. The omission of the trading volume, however, does not bias the estimate of the effect of the volatility on the spreads. Although the spread-volatility relation implied by the option model of the spread is close to linear, some form of nonlinearity can still be detected from the data.

Corruption in economic development - beneficial grease, minor annoyance, or major obstacle?

The author reviews the overwhelming statistical evidence that countries with high levels of corruption experience poor economic performance. Corruption hinders economic development by reducing domestic investment, discouraging foreign direct investment, encouraging overspending in government, and distorting the composition of government spending (away from education, health, and infrastructure maintenance toward less efficient but more manipulable public projects). The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, among others, define corruption as"the abuse of public office for private gains". Whenever a public office is abused, a public function or objective is set aside and compromised. Only if a public function is unproductive are policy goals unharmed by corruption. But one often hears that bribery greases the machinery of commerce, so the author studied the evidence - which clearly rejects the hypothesis. Culture shapes the difference between a"bribe"and a"gift"but culturally induced differences seem small. There is no evidence to support the notion that corruption in Asia, including East Asia, entails lesser consequences. Corruption can be symptomatic of many social ills so the fight against it must be multifaceted. Laws and law enforcement are indispensable, but countries serious about fighting corruption should also reform government's role in the economy, especially in areas that (by giving officials discretionary power) are hotbeds of corruption. Recruiting and promoting civil servants on the basis of merit and paying them a salary competitive with similar jobs in the private sector helps attract moral, high-quality civil servants. International pressure on corrupt countries, and also to criminalize the bribing of foreign officials by multinational firms, can be useful. But anti-corruption campaigns cannot succeed without reforming domestic institutions in the corrupt countries.Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Legal Products,Decentralization,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,National Governance,Governance Indicators,Legal Products,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures

Local Corruption and Global Capital Flows

Local Corruption, Global Capital Flows, macroeconomics

How Taxing is Corruption on International Investors?

This paper studies the effect of corruption on foreign direct investment. The sample covers bilateral investment from fourteen source countries to forty-five host countries during 1990-91. There are three central findings. (1) A rise in either the tax rate on multinational firms or the corruption level in a host country reduces inward foreign direct investment (FDI). An increase in the corruption level from that of Singapore to that of Mexico is equivalent to raising the tax rate by over twenty percentage points. (2) There is no support for the hypothesis that corruption has a smaller effect on FDI into East Asian host countries. (3) American investors are averse to corruption in host countries, but not necessarily more so than average OECD investors, in spite of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977. On the other hand, there is some weak support for the hypothesis that Japanese investors may be somewhat less sensitive to corruption. Neither American nor Japanese investors treat corruption in East Asia any differently from that in other parts of the world. There are other interesting and sensible findings. For example, consistent with theories that emphasize the importance of networks in trade and investment, sharing a common linguistic tie between the source and host countries and geographic proximity between the two are associated with a sizable increase in the bilateral FDI flow.

Does corruption relieve foreign investors of the burden of taxes and capital controls?

In a sample of fourteen source countries making bilateral investments in forty five countries, the author finds that taxes, capital controls, and corruption, all have large, statistically significant negative effects on foreign investment. Moreover, there is no robust support in the data for the"efficient grease"hypothesis - that corruption helps attract foreign investment by reducing firms'tax burden and the irritant of capital controls.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Capital Markets and Capital Flows,Decentralization,Fiscal&Monetary Policy,Economic Theory&Research,Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Governance Indicators,National Governance,Capital Flows

Corruption, composition of capital flows, and currency crises

Crony capitalism and international creditors'self-fulfilling expectations are often suggested as rival explanations for currency crises. A possible link between the two has not been explored. The author shows one channel through which crony capitalism can increase the chance of a currency/financial crisis by altering the composition of capital inflows. Using data on bilateral foreign direct investment and bilateral bank loans, the author finds clear evidence that in corrupt countries the composition of capital inflows is relatively light in foreign direct investment. Earlier studies indicated that a country with a capital inflow structure is more likely to run into a currency crisis down the road (partly through international creditors'self-fulfilling expectations). Therefore, crony capitalism, through its effect on the composition of a country's capital inflows, makes the country more vulnerable to currency crises brought about by self-fulfilling expectations. Corruption may also weaken domestic financial supervision, with a subsequent deterioration in the quality in banks'and firms'balance sheets.International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Banks&Banking Reform,Decentralization,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Economic Theory&Research,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Governance Indicators,Banks&Banking Reform,Foreign Direct Investment

Natural Openness and Good Government

This paper offers a new interpretation of the connection between openness and good governance. Assuming that corruption and bad governance drive out international trade and investment more than domestic trade and investment, a naturally more open economy' as determined by its size and geography would devote more resources to building good institutions and would display lower corruption in equilibrium. In data, naturally more open economies' do exhibit less corruption even after taking into account their levels of development. Residual openness' which potentially includes trade policies is found not to be important once natural openness' is accounted for. Moreover, naturally more open economies' also tend to pay better civil servant salaries relative to their private sector alternatives indicative of the marginal benefit of good governance in a society's revealed preference. These patterns are consistent with the conceptual model.