Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
To Bet or Not to Bet
A strand of research documents Chile’s copper dependence hence significant exposure to terms of trade shocks. Copper prices’ sharp decline and forecast uncertainty since the end of the commodity super-cycle has rekindled the debate on Chile’s adjustment capacity to external shocks. Following Malz (2014), this paper builds a time-varying measure of copper price uncertainty using options contracts. VAR analysis shows that the investment response to an uncertainty shock of average magnitude in the sample is strong and persistent: the cumulative fall in investment from trend at a one-year horizon ranges 2–5.8 percentage points; and it takes between 11⁄2 and 2 years for investment to return to its trend level. Empirical ranges depend on alternative definitions for investment, uncertainty, and options’ maturing time.
Fiscal Consolidations and Growth
Should fiscal consolidations be front-loaded or proceed at a more steady pace, and how does this affect growth? We make an attempt to address this question using a three-step methodology. First, we modify a standard regression of growth on consolidation size to allow speed to affect the multiplier. Second, using the narrative dataset of Devries and others (2011), we construct a new sample of multi-year consolidation episodes for 17 advanced economies over 1978-2009. Third, we develop a novel concept of speed to measure the pace of the consolidation episodes identified in the data. The main empirical finding is that fast episodes have higher multipliers than gradual consolidations. This provides some preliminary support for consolidating at a steady pace, market access and a credible adjustment plan permitting. However, as the sample size is small, identifying mechanisms and testing robustness is difficult, and so our findings should not be interpreted causally.
The EU Services Directive
The EU Services Directive was adopted in 2006 to foster competition in services across Europe. However, progress in liberalizing services has fallen short of expectations due to the article 15 of the Directive, which allows countries to maintain pre-existing restrictions if judged necessary to protect the public interest. Through input output analysis, this paper finds important multiplier effects of greater efficiency services to the rest of the economy. A renewed impulse to the liberalization process could be given by enhancing the advocacy role of national competition authorities in interpreting the notion of public interest underpinning existing regulations.
Demand Patterns in France, Germany, and Belgium
The need to revive Euro area growth highlights the importance of the evolution of domestic and external demand in the core. This paper puts recent demand patterns in France, Germany, and Belgium into historical perspective. We find that, first, dynamics for private consumption, non-residential business investment, and exports since 2008 is dominated by conventional determinants, with no discernible structural break as a result of the crisis. Second, although country-specific factors matter in some cases, demand patterns in these countries are largely driven by common determinants. Third, developments in common fundamentals tend to dominate demand dynamics, coupled, in a few cases, with structurally different elasticities across countries. Fourth, short-term analysis suggests a role for confidence and uncertainty factors in explaining temporary deviations of these variables from long-term fundamentals.
Attaining Selected Sustainable Development Goals in Guatemala: Spending, Provision, and Financing Needs
Raising living standards continues to be the main challenge facing Guatemala, as a matter of economic success and social cohesion. This paper discusses the spending, financing, and delivery capacity aspects of a viable development strategy for Guatemala couched within the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agenda. Overall, Guatemala faces additional spending of about 81⁄2 percent of GDP in 2030 to attain health, education, and roads, water, and sanitation infrastructure SDGs. While substantial, these cost estimates are commensurate with a well-defined financing strategy encompassing continuing tax administration efforts, broad-based tax reform, scaled-up private sector participation, and greater spending efficiency. Improving delivery capacities is also essential to secure access of those public goods to all Guatemalans, irrespective of their place of residence, ethnic group, or ability to pay.
Fintech Potential for Remittance Transfers: A Central America Perspective
This paper analyzes the potential for fintech to facilitate cheaper and more efficient remittances, and to enhance financial inclusion in Central America. Digital remittances remain nascent in the region, primarily reflecting behavioral inertia, small cost advantages of digital over traditional channels, and inadequate financial literacy. Through expanded alliances between traditional and fintech operators, digital remittances can further reduce transaction costs and reach those remote, low-income households in a timely and secure manner. A meaningful expansion of fintech remittances necessitates an enabling regulatory environment for digital financial services, and KYC and AML/CFT requirements proportionate to the value of transfers.
Outside the Band
This paper examines inflation dynamics in Chile during the last peso depreciation episode 2013-15. The evidence is for substantial pass-through effects to inflation, given the large and persistent depreciation movement. Widespread indexation practices in non-traded goods markets are found to amplify the inflation response to the depreciation, while the role of wage indexation is less relevant to the inflation dynamics. Overall, inflation would have remained within the central bank’s target band absent the peso depreciation. The analysis also shows that tightening monetary policy in response to a depreciation shock can be costly in terms of output: the response of activity to rates is found to be strong, while the transmission from activity to inflation is found to be weak. Simulations under uncertainty about the extent of the pass-through also suggest that monetary policy can play a countercyclical role in the face of depreciation shocks at a moderate inflationary cost, as long as inflation expectations remain anchored.
Can Institutional Reform Reduce Job Destruction and Unemployment Duration? Yes it Can
We read search theory's unemployment equilibrium condition as an Iso-Unemployment Curve(IUC).The IUC is the locus of job destruction rates and expected unemployment durations rendering the same unemployment level. A country's position along the curve reveals its preferences over the destruction-duration mix, while its distance from the origin indicates the unemployment level at which such preferences are satisfied Using a panel of 20 OECD countries over 1985-2008, we find employment protection legislation to have opposing efects on destructions and durations, while the effects of the remaining key institutional factors on both variables tend to reinforce each other. Implementing the right reforms could reduce job destruction rates by about 0.05 to 0.25 percentage points and shorten unemployment spells by around 10 to 60 days. Consistent with this, unemployment rates would decline by between 0.75 and 5.5 percentage points, depending on a country's starting position.
The Trade Impact of China on EMU
This paper investigates the asymmetries in trade spillovers from sector-specific technology shocks in China to selected euro area countries. We use a Ricardian-gravity trade model to estimate sectoral competitiveness in individual euro area countries. Simulations on the impact of productivity shocks in Chinese textiles and machinery suggest that the required adjustment in wages, prices, and factor re-allocation is widely heterogenous across euro area countries on accounts of their different specialization patterns. This raises the question of the distribution of gains and losses from external trade shocks.
Financing for the Post-pandemic Recovery: Developing Domestic Sovereign Debt Markets in Central America
The pandemic has urged countries around the globe to mobilize financing to support the recovery. This is even more relevant in Central America, where the policy response to cushion the pandemic’s economic and social impact has accentuated pre-existing debt vulnerabilities. This paper documents the potential for local currency bond markets to diversify and expand financing for the recovery, lowering bond yields, funding volatility, and exposure to global shocks. The paper further identifies priority actions, both national and regional, to support market development.
