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Financial markets are eager for any signal of monetary policy from the People’s Bank of China (PBC). The importance of effective monetary policy communication will only increase as China continues to liberalize its financial system and open its economy. This paper discusses the country’s unique institutional setup and empirically analyzes the impact on financial markets of the PBC’s main communication channels, including a novel communication channel. The results suggest that there has been significant progress but that PBC communication is still evolving toward the level of other major economies. The paper recommends medium-term policy reforms and reforms that can be adopted quickly.
The aftermath of the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008 saw its influence spread around the world, including Europe. The European crisis turned out to be longer, deeper and more resilient than anticipated. An unexpected consequence was the increasingly divergent economic and financial situation of two main groups of countries within the Eurozone, which includes the countries that adopt the euro as their common currency. The divergence was caused by a number of factors, fundamentally stemming from the dissimilar economic and financial situation of its member countries and from the incomplete institutional architecture and the monetary and fiscal policies in the Eurozone.One Currency, Two Eur...
We investigate the link between gender inequality in financial inclusion and income inequality, with three contributions to the recent literature. First, using a micro-dataset covering 146,000 individuals in over 140 countries, we construct novel, synthetic indices of the intensity of financial inclusion at the individual and country level. Second, we derive the distribution of individual financial access “scores” across countries to document a “Kuznets”-curve in financial inclusion. Third, cross-country regressions confirm that our measure of inequality in financial access is significantly related to income inequality, above and beyond other factors previously highlighted in the literature.
The latest World Economic Outlook reports signs that policy tightening is starting to cool activity despite core inflation proving persistent. Risks are more balanced as banking sector stress has receded, but they remain tilted to the downside. Monetary policy should stay the course to bring inflation to target, while fiscal consolidation is needed to tackle soaring debts. Structural reforms are crucial to revive medium-term growth prospects amid constrained policy space.
We develop a DSGE model with a banking sector to analyze the impact of the financial crisis on Zambia and the role of the monetary policy response. We view the crisis as a combination of three related shocks: a worsening in the terms of the trade, an increase in the country’s risk premium, and a decrease in the risk appetite of local banks. We characterize monetary policy as "stop and go": initially tight, subsequently loose. Simulations of the model broadly match the path of the economy during this period. We find that the initial policy response contributed to the domestic impact of the crisis by further tightening financial conditions. We study the factors driving the "stop" part of policy and derive policy implications for central banks in low-income countries.
As relatively small open economies, South-East Asian emerging markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand or ASEAN-4) are highly susceptible to external shocks—both financial and real—that could induce large capital flows and exchange rate volatility that could lead to foreign exchange market dysfunction. With the exception of Bank Negara Malaysia, ASEAN-4 central banks mostly have flexible inflation-targeting frameworks for monetary policy implementation. Their main policy objectives include medium-term price stability, sustainable economic growth, and financial stability. Central Banks in ASEAN-4 economies have been early pilots in the operationalization of the IMF’s Integ...
We examine the role of household financial access in determining the extent of risksharing in Nigeria using household-level panel data. We estimate changes in the response of consumption to shocks for households with formal and informal access to finance and those without, both for the country as a whole and for different regions. Our findings suggest that households with financial access who experience an unexpected negative income shock see consumption fall by 15 percentage points less than those without access. This result is mainly driven by households with informal financial access, and by household savings rather than borrowing. Regional variation in risk sharing tends to be significant, suggesting that financial inclusion efforts going forward should have a more regional focus.
Using data collected from pan-African banks’ (PABs), balance sheets and other sources (Orbis, Fitch), this study identifies some key patterns of cross-border investment in bank subsidiaries by key banking groups in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and discusses some of the determinants of this investment. Using a gravity model relating the annual value of a banking group’s investment in the net equity of its subsidiaries to a set of explanatory variables, the analysis finds that cross-border banking is in part driven by a search for yield, diversification, and expansion for strategic reasons.
A popular myth about the travails of Africa holds that the continent's long history of poor economic performance reflects the inability of its leaders and policymakers to fulfill the long list of preconditions to be met before sustained growth can be achieved. These conditions are said to vary from the necessary quantity and quality of physical and human capital to the appropriate institutions and business environments. While intellectually charming and often elegantly formulated, that conventional wisdom is actually contradicted by historical evidence and common sense. It also suggests a form of intellectual mimicry that posits a unique path to prosperity for all countries regardless of the...