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The Differential Effects of Oil Demand and Supply Shocks on the Global Economy
We employ a set of sign restrictions on the generalized impulse responses of a Global VAR model, estimated for 38 countries/regions over the period 1979Q2–2011Q2, to discriminate between supply-driven and demand-driven oil-price shocks and to study the time profile of their macroeconomic effects for different countries. The results indicate that the economic consequences of a supply-driven oil-price shock are very different from those of an oil-demand shock driven by global economic activity, and vary for oil-importing countries compared to energy exporters. While oil importers typically face a long-lived fall in economic activity in response to a supply-driven surge in oil prices, the impact is positive for energy-exporting countries that possess large proven oil/gas reserves. However, in response to an oil-demand disturbance, almost all countries in our sample experience long-run inflationary pressures and a short-run increase in real output.
Spillovers from China’s Growth Slowdown and Rebalancing to the ASEAN-5 Economies
After many years of rapid expansion, China’s growth is slowing to more sustainable levels and is rebalancing, with consumption becoming the main growth driver. This transition is likely to have negative effects on its trading partners in the near term. This paper studies the potential spillovers to the ASEAN-5 economies through trade, commodity prices, and financial markets. It finds that countries with closer trade linkages with China (Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand) and net commodity exporters (Indonesia and Malaysia) would suffer the largest impact, with growth falling between 0.2 and 0.5 percentage points in response to a decline in China’s growth by 1 percentage point depending on the model used and the nature of the shock. The impact could be larger if China’s slowdown and rebalancing coincides with bouts of global financial volatility. There are also opportunities from China’s rebalancing, both in merchandise and services trade, and there is preliminary evidence that some ASEAN-5 economies are already benefiting from these trends.
Corporate Indebtedness and Low Productivity Growth of Italian Firms
Productivity growth in Italy has been persistently anemic and has lagged that of the euro area over the period 1999-2015, while the indebtedness of its corporate sector has increased. Using the ORBIS firm-level database, this paper studies the long-term impact of persistent corporate-debt accumulation on the productivity growth of Italian firms and investigates whether total factor productivity growth varies with the level of corporate indebtedness. We employ a novel estimation technique proposed by Chudik, Mohaddes, Pesaran, and Raissi (2017) to account for dynamics, bi-directional feedback effects, cross-firm heterogeneity, and cross-sectional dependence arising from unobserved common fact...
Is There a Debt-threshold Effect on Output Growth?
This paper studies the long-run impact of public debt expansion on economic growth and investigates whether the debt-growth relation varies with the level of indebtedness. Our contribution is both theoretical and empirical. On the theoretical side, we develop tests for threshold effects in the context of dynamic heterogeneous panel data models with cross-sectionally dependent errors and illustrate, by means of Monte Carlo experiments, that they perform well in small samples. On the empirical side, using data on a sample of 40 countries (grouped into advanced and developing) over the 1965- 2010 period, we find no evidence for a universally applicable threshold effect in the relationship between public debt and economic growth, once we account for the impact of global factors and their spillover effects. Regardless of the threshold, however, we find significant negative long-run effects of public debt build-up on output growth. Provided that public debt is on a downward trajectory, a country with a high level of debt can grow just as fast as its peers in the long run.
Crowding-Out or Crowding-In? Public and Private Investment in India
This paper contributes to the debate on the relationship between public-capital accumulation and private investment in India along the following dimensions. First, acknowledging major structural changes that the Indian economy has undergone in the past three decades, we study whether public investment in recent years has become more or less complementary to private investment in comparison to the period before 1980. Second, we construct a novel data-set of quarterly aggregate public and private investment in India over the period 1996Q2-2015Q1 using investment-project data from the CapEx-CMIE database. Third, embedding a theory-driven long-run relationship on the model, we estimate a range o...
Fair Weather or Foul? The Macroeconomic Effects of El Niño
This paper employs a dynamic multi-country framework to analyze the international macroeconomic transmission of El Niño weather shocks. This framework comprises 21 country/region-specific models, estimated over the period 1979Q2 to 2013Q1, and accounts for not only direct exposures of countries to El Niño shocks but also indirect effects through thirdmarkets. We contribute to the climate-macroeconomy literature by exploiting exogenous variation in El Niño weather events over time, and their impact on different regions crosssectionally, to causatively identify the effects of El Niño shocks on growth, inflation, energy and non-fuel commodity prices. The results show that there are consider...
The Global Impact of the Systemic Economies and MENA Business Cycles
This paper analyzes spillovers from macroeconomic shocks in systemic economies (China, the Euro Area, and the United States) to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as well as outward spillovers from a GDP shock in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and MENA oil exporters to the rest of the world. This analysis is based on a Global Vector Autoregression (GVAR) model, estimated for 38 countries/regions over the period 1979Q2 to 2011Q2. Spillovers are transmitted across economies via trade, financial, and commodity price linkages. The results show that the MENA countries are more sensitive to developments in China than to shocks in the Euro Area or the United States, in line with the direction of evolving trade patterns and the emergence of China as a key driver of the global economy. Outward spillovers from the GCC region and MENA oil exporters are likely to be stronger in their immediate geographical proximity, but also have global implications.
Can Italy Grow Out of Its NPL Overhang? A Panel Threshold Analysis
This paper examines whether a tipping point exists for real GDP growth in Italy above which the ratio of non-performing loans (NPLs) to total loans falls significantly. Estimating a heterogeneous dynamic panel-threshold model with data on 17 Italian regions over the period 1997–2014, we provide evidence for the presence of growth-threshold effects on the NPL ratio in Italy. More specifically, we find that real GDP growth above 1.2 percent, if sustained for a number of years, is associated with a significant decline in the NPLs ratio. Achieving such growth rates requires decisively tackling long-standing structural rigidities and improving the quality of fiscal policy. Given the modest potential growth outlook, however, under which banks are likely to struggle to grow out of their NPL overhang, further policy measures are needed to put the NPL ratio on a firm downward path over the medium term.
External Assessments in Special Cases
External Assessments in Special Cases presents the pilot External Balances Assessment methodology developed by IMF staff for estimating current account and exchange rate gaps for a group of advanced and emerging market economies, and discusses modifications to take account of special cases. Different approaches to external assessments for countries with special circumstances are evaluated, and some tools presented that could be used to inform sound judgment on the part of those conducting such assessments.
Oil Prices, External Income, and Growth
This paper extends the long-run growth model of Esfahani et al. (2009) to a labor exporting country that receives large inflows of external income?the sum of remittances, FDI and general government transfers?from major oil-exporting economies. The theoretical model predicts real oil prices to be one of the main long-run drivers of real output. Using quarterly data between 1979 and 2009 on core macroeconomic variables for Jordan and a number of key foreign variables, we identify two long-run relationships: an output equation as predicted by theory and an equation linking foreign and domestic inflation rates. It is shown that real output in the long run is shaped by: (i) oil prices through the...
