The Contribution of Chinese FDI to Africa’s Pre Crisis Growth Surge

In the 3 years before the 2008 Financial Crisis, GDP growth in sub Saharan Africa (averaged over individual economies) was around 6%, or 2 percentage points above mean growth rates for the preceding 10 years. This period also coincided with significant Chinese FDI flows into these countries, accounting for up to 10% of total inward FDI flows for certain countries in these years. We use growth accounting methods to assess what portion of this elevated growth can be attributed to Chinese inward FDI. We follow Solow (1957), Dennison (1962), and others and use data for individual economies between 1990 and 2008 to calculate Solow residuals for these years for individual economies. We use capital stock data, workforce, and factor share data by country. Capital stock data is unavailable directly, and so we use perpetual inventory methods to construct the data. Factor shares come from UN National Accounts data. We then run counterfactual growth accounting experiments for thirteen Sub-Saharan African countries excluding Chinese FDI inflows for 2005-2007 and also 2003-2009. Our individual results vary by year and country, but there are several year/country combinations where Chinese FDI contributed to an additional one half of a percentage point or above to GDP growth. These results suggest that a significant, even if in some cases small, portion of the elevated growth in sub Saharan Africa in the three years before the Financial Crisis and also in the two years afterwards (2008-2009) can be attributed to Chinese inward investment.

Banks in the Market for Liquidity

Banks are unique among financial institutions because they are the cheapest source of liquidity in the economy. Banks choose to hold reserves to facilitate settlement of end-of-day net due to positions arising from payments operations. Money market substitutes for bank liabilities do not escape from the cost of reserves since their issuers lean on banks to provide liquidity. Since the cost of reserves falls on all issuers of less liquid liabilities seeking access to payment services, including non-bank intermediaries, reserves cannot represent a tax on the banking system alone.

Towards an Effective Regulatory and Supervisory Framework for Latin America

This paper raises fundamental questions about how banks in Latin America ought to be supervised. The concentration of wealth holders in Latin America and the equity markets` resulting illiquidity permit investors who control banks to subvert the intent of capital requirements, even when the bank itself is subject to rigorous accounting standards. A number of policy implications follow from the analysis. Three of policy recommendations derived from this analysis can be successfully implemented in the short run. Latin American supervisors should focus on: improving the markets that already work in Latin America, which currently are markets for bank liabilities; severely limiting public safety nets for bank liabilities so that risky banks face a high price for raising liabilities; and encouraging macroeconomic policies to play a much more important role in restraining bank risk in Latin America than in the industrial countries.

Building Stability in Latin American Financial Markets

This paper argues that the investor reluctance to make long-term commitments to Latin American financial markets results from experience. In the 1980s, while ex ante real interest rates on Latin American financial assets were usually high, ex-post real interest rates were often highly negative. In the 1990s, policymakers instituted stabilization programs and structural reforms that have improved the environment in which financial markets operate. Based on a review of experiences in the region, this paper shows that, when these opportunities are taken, investor confidence in long-term markets is strengthened.

The Pathways out of Poverty in Rural Indonesia: an empirical assessment

Since most poor live in rural areas, primarily engaged in low productivity farm activity, the pathway out of poverty must be strongly connected to productivity increases, whether they are realised in farming, rural non-farm enterprises or via urban migration. By utilizing the IFLS panel dataset for 1993 and 2000 from Indonesia, this paper shows, using empirical techniques, which pathways out of poverty were most successful in Indonesia?s past. Our findings suggest that the increased engagement of rural farmers in rural non-farm enterprises is a key way to alleviate rural poverty.

Mercados financieros y comportamiento del ahorro privado en América Latina

(Disponible en idioma inglés únicamente) Este trabajo complementa estudios anteriores al proponer que el bajo nivel de ahorro en América Latina se puede vincular con la limitada confianza de hogares y empresas en las instituciones financieras nacionales. Estudios anteriores han comprobado la relación entre el ahorro privado y los mercados financieros, bien sea empleando una medida de profundidad financiera o una medida de limitantes del endeudamiento. Este trabajo presenta una perspectiva alternativa al proponer que el nivel de ahorro privado guarda una correlación positiva con la confianza del sector privado en la solidez del sistema financiero, y que este concepto se puede calcular aproximadamente a partir de la proporción de demanda empresarial a activos líquidos de la banca. Los países latinoamericanos tienen niveles de ahorro más bajos que otros países en desarrollo y que la mayoría de los países industrializados. También exhiben los mayores niveles de depósitos empresariales a depósitos familiares entre los tres grupos de países tomados en cuenta en este trabajo. Además, la proporción de depósitos empresariales a depósitos familiares guarda una estrecha correlación con otros indicadores de la fragilidad del sistema bancario.

Perspectives on the World Income Distribution - Beyond Twin Peaks Towards Welfare Conclusions

This paper contributes towards the growing debate concerning the world distribution of income and its evolution over that past three to four decades. Our methodological approach is twofold. First, we formally test for the number of modes in a cross-sectional analysis where each country is represented by one observation. We contribute to existing studies with technical improvements of the testing procedure, enabling us to draw new conclusions, and an extension of the time horizon being analyzed. Second, we estimate a global distribution of income from national log-normal distributions of income, as well as a global distribution of log-income as a mixture of national normal distributions of log-income. From this distribution we obtain measures for global inequality and poverty as well as global growth incidence curves.Convergence, Silverman\'s test, non-parametric statistics, bimodal, global income distribution, poverty, inequality, growth incidence curves

Pathways Out of Poverty During an Economic Crisis: An Empirical Assessment of Rural Indonesia

Most poor people in developing countries still live in rural areas and are primarily engaged in low productivity farming activities. Thus pathways out of poverty are likely to be strongly connected to productivity increases in the rural economy, whether they are realised in farming, rural non-farm enterprises or via rural-urban migration. We use cross-sectional data from the Central Statistical Board (BPS) for 1993 and 2002, as well as a panel data set from the Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS) for 1993 and 2000, to show which pathways out of poverty were most successful over this period. Our findings suggest that increased engagement of farmers in rural non-farm enterprises is an important route out of rural poverty, but that most of the rural agricultural poor that exit poverty still do so while remaining rural and agricultural. Thus changes in agricultural prices, wages and productivity still play a critical role in moving people out of poverty.Poverty dynamics, non-farm sector, micro-growth regression

Pathways out of poverty during an economic crisis : an empirical assessment of rural Indonesia

Most poor people in developing countries still live in rural areas and are primarily engaged in low productivity farming activities. Thus pathways out of poverty are likely to be strongly connected to productivity increases in the rural economy, whether they are realized in farming, in rural nonfarm enterprises, or by way of rural-urban migration. The authors use cross-sectional data from the Central Statistical Board for 1993 and 2002, as well as a panel data set from the Indonesia Family Life Survey for 1993 and 2000, to show which pathways out of poverty were most successful over this period. The findings suggest that increased engagement of farmers in rural nonfarm enterprises is an important route out of rural poverty, but that most of the rural agricultural poor that exit poverty still do so while remaining rural and agricultural. So changes in agricultural prices, wages, and productivity still play a critical role in moving people out of poverty.Rural Poverty Reduction,Population Policies,Achieving Shared Growth,Economic Theory&Research