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Commodity Cycles, Inequality, and Poverty in Latin America
Over the past decades, inequality has risen not just in advanced economies but also in many emerging market and developing economies, becoming one of the key global policy challenges. And throughout the 20th century, Latin America was associated with some of the world’s highest levels of inequality. Yet something interesting happened in the first decade and a half of the 21st century. Latin America was the only region in the World to have experienced significant declines in inequality in that period. Poverty also fell in Latin America, although this was replicated in other regions, and Latin America started from a relatively low base. Starting around 2014, however, and even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, poverty and inequality gains had already slowed in Latin America and, in some cases, gone into reverse. And the COVID-19 shock, which is still playing out, is likely to dramatically worsen short-term poverty and inequality dynamics. Against this background, this departmental paper investigates the link between commodity prices, and poverty and inequality developments in Latin America.
Euro Area Inflation After the Pandemic and Energy Shock: Import Prices, Profits and Wages
We document the importance of import prices and domestic profits as a counterpart to the recent increase in euro area inflation. Through a novel consumption deflator decomposition, we show that import prices account for 40 percent of the average change in the consumption deflator over 2022Q1 – 2023Q1, while domestic profits account for 45 percent. The increase in nominal profits was largest in sectors benefiting from increasing international commodity prices and those exposed to recent supply-demand mismatches. While the results show that firms have passed on more than the nominal cost shock, and have fared relatively better than workers, the limited available data does not point to a wide...
Peru
This 2019 Article IV Consultation discusses that Peru’s economic performance continues to be strong, however, external and domestic headwinds, including the fallout from Lava Jato corruption investigations, have reduced growth momentum and raised concerns about long-term growth prospects. Policy responses have been appropriate, but further reforms have been delayed by a political stalemate between the executive and legislative powers. After President Vizcarra dissolved Congress in September 2019, new parliamentary elections will be held in January 2020. The current slowdown in activity and heightened uncertainty justify policy stimulus. However, the fiscal stance is procyclical owing to hi...
Regional Economic Outlook, April 2018, Western Hemisphere Department
The world economy and global trade are experiencing a broad-based cyclical upswing. Since October 2017, global growth outcomes and the outlook for 2018–19 have improved across all regions, reinforced by the expected positive near-term spillovers from tax policy changes in the United States. Accommodative global financial conditions, despite some tightening and market volatility in early February 2018, have been providing support to economic recovery. Higher commodity prices are contributing to an improved outlook for commodity exporters. The US and Canadian economies posted solid gains in 2017 and are expected to grow above potential in the near term. Despite the improved near-term outlook...
Colombia
This Selected Issues paper examines the export growth in Colombia. Colombian exports are heavily concentrated in commodities but the large real depreciation since 2015 offers an opportunity to grow nontraditional exports substantially. Colombia’s comparative advantage in noncommodity products was weak in 2013-15, and export diversification was low, partly owing to the commodity price boom. Exports grew moderately in recent years but in line with historical relationships given fundamentals. The export outlook is positive. Given global growth assumptions, the IMF staff’s models predict acceleration in export growth. The historical experience of commodity exporters suffers large real depreciations also paints a positive picture.
Uruguay
This 2017 Article IV Consultation highlights that the fiscal adjustment in Uruguay is on track. Fiscal policy has been countercyclical in 2017, with higher income tax receipts partly offset by rising pension and health care costs. The overall deficit is estimated to decline to 3.3 percent of GDP, and the government continues to be able to access international financial markets on favorable terms, including through global nominal-peso bonds. Financial flows have remained volatile, and local and nonresident investor interest in the peso has been strong overall. The current account balance has been improving and is now in surplus, estimated to approach 2 percent of GDP in 2017.
Credit Booms—Is China Different?
Strong Chinese output growth after the Global Financial Crisis was supported by booming credit. This credit boom carries risks. International experience suggests that China’s credit growth is on a dangerous trajectory, with increasing risks of a disruptive adjustment and/or a marked growth slowdown. Several China-specific factors—high savings, current account surplus, small external debt, and various policy buffers—can help mitigate near-term risks of a disruptive adjustment and buy time to address risks. But, if the risks are left unaddressed, these mitigating factors will likely not eliminate the eventual adjustment, but make the boom larger and last longer. Hence, decisive policy action is needed to deflate the credit boom safely.
Brazil
Brazil is at crossroads, emerging slowly from a historic recession that was preceded by a huge economic boom. Reasons for the historic bust following a boom are manifold. Policy mistakes were an important contributory factor, and included the pursuit of countercyclical policies, introduced to deal with the effects of the global financial crisis, beyond the point where they were helpful. More fundamentally, it reflects longstanding structural weaknesses plaguing the economy, that also help explain Brazil’s uninspiring growth performance over the past four decades.
The Rewards of Fiscal Consolidation: Sovereign Spreads and Confidence Effects
This paper investigates the effects of fiscal consolidation announcements on sovereign spreads in a panel of 21 emerging market economies during 2000-18. We construct a novel dataset using a global news database to identify the precise announcement date of fiscal consolidation actions. Our results show that sovereign spreads decline significantly following news that austerity measures have been approved by the legislature (congress or parliament), in periods of high sovereign spreads or in countries under an IMF program. In addition, consolidation announcements are less contractionary when sovereign spreads decline, with the reduction in output being half of the counterfactual case in which spreads do not respond to announcements. These results constitute direct evidence that confidence effects, in the form of lower sovereign spreads, are an important transmission channel of fiscal shocks. We also find that the role of confidence effects increases with the level of spreads such that countries with high spread levels stand to benefit the most from putting in place credible austerity packages.
