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.
Financial Conditions and Growth at Risk in the ECCU
We study the growth determinants in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU), using the Growth at Risk (GaR) framework with a focus on financial variables. We find that excessive bank credit growth is associated with lower future real GDP growth in the medium term especially on the low quantiles of growth distribution. Moreover, worsening of both global financial conditions and external conditions are associated with lower future growth in the short term, especially at the high quantiles of growth distribution. Country-specific results are broadly in line with ECCU-wide results, with some variation potentially due to the strong Citizenship-By-Investment program inflows and lack of credit union data. The establishment of a macroprudential framework in the ECCU would need to pay close attention to credit growth not only of banks but also credit unions and continue to monitor global and external conditions.
Real Exchange Rates, Economic Complexity, and Investment
We show that the response of firm-level investment to real exchange rate movements varies depending on the production structure of the economy. Firms in advanced economies and in emerging Asia increase investment when the domestic currency weakens, in line with the traditional Mundell-Fleming model. However, in other emerging market and developing economies, as well as some advanced economies with a low degree of structural economic complexity, corporate investment increases when the domestic currency strengthens. This result is consistent with Diaz Alejandro (1963)—in economies where capital goods are mostly imported, a stronger real exchange rate reduces investment costs for domestic firms.
New Insights into ECCU's Tourism Sector Competitiveness
Tourism has become the main driver of economic growth and employment and the most important source of income in the ECCU. Preserving and, possibly, enhancing the competitiveness of the tourism product is key for these countries. Unfortunately, the evidence shows that tourism arrivals to the ECCU have been declining slightly while global demand for tourism is on the rise. The objective of this paper is to study the structural determinants of competitiveness for the ECCU, defined as the relative cost advantage over other touristic regions (Di Bella, Lewis, and Martin 2007). Using a gravity model, we show that proximity to North American and European markets is indeed an important competitive advantage for the ECCU. However, despite this advantage, and, in some cases, specialization in high-end tourism, regression analysis shows that arrivals to the ECCU are sensitive to relative prices. Our simulations show that mitigating supply-side constraints would improve the ECCU’s competitiveness and allow the region to regain global market shares.
Disagreement about Future Inflation: Understanding the Benefits of Inflation Targeting and Transparency
We estimate the determinants of disagreement about future inflation in a large and diverse sample of countries, focusing on the role of monetary policy frameworks. We offer novel insights that allow us to reconcile mixed findings in the literature on the benefits of inflation targeting regimes and central bank transparency. The reduction in disagreement that follows the adoption of inflation targeting is entirely due to increased central bank transparency. Since the benefits of increased transparency are non-linear, the gains from inflation targeting adoption have accrued mainly to countries that started from a low level of transparency. These have tended to be developing countries.
Eastern Caribbean Currency Union
This 2018 discussion on common policies of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) highlights that the member countries are gradually recovering following the catastrophic impact of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. Conditions remain favorable to growth, however, risks are increasing. The fiscal balance for the region as a whole worsened in 2017, reflecting lower inflows from citizenship-by-investment programs and higher reconstruction and current spending. The IMF team made several policy recommendations including shifting focus from the current emphasis on recovery from natural disasters to building ex-ante resilience. The report also recommends intensifying decisive and timely actions to resolve weaknesses in the financial sector, including longstanding problems in the banking sector and emerging risks in the non-banking sector. The authorities expressed commitment to the acceleration of key reforms to upgrade and strengthen the financial sector regional oversight framework. In addition to fiscal consolidation, injecting new vigor into the structural policy agenda will help enhance competitiveness and make growth more inclusive.
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.
Global Financial Conditions and Monetary Policy Autonomy
Is the Mundell-Fleming trilemma alive and well? International co-movement of asset prices takes place alongside synchronized business cycles, complicating the identification of financial spillovers and assessments of monetary policy autonomy. A benchmark for interest rate comovement is to impose the null hypothesis that central banks respond only to the outlook for domestic inflation and output. We show that common approaches used to estimate interest rate spillovers tend to understate the degree of monetary autonomy enjoyed by small open economies with flexible exchange rates. We propose an empirical strategy that partials out those spillovers that are associated with impaired monetary autonomy. Using this approach, we revisit the predictions of the trilemma and find more compelling evidence that flexible exchange rates deliver monetary autonomy than prior work has suggested.
Challenges for Central Banking
In the wake of the 2008–09 global financial crisis, central banking and monetary policy in many corners of the world came under intense pressure and entered unchartered waters. The breadth and scale of central bank operations have been modified or expanded in unprecedented and even unimaginable ways given the circumstances. Additionally, a fundamental rethinking of central banking and its policy frameworks has been taking place. This volume reflects a multilateral effort to help close the gap in our knowledge in meeting the critical challenges presented by these significant changes, in particular, those confronting central banks in Latin America. The volume’s first section provides a panoramic overview of the policy progress made to date and the challenges that lie ahead. The related issue of spillovers and monetary independence is taken up more fully in the next section. The final section presents chapters that reexamine macroprudential and monetary policies and policy frameworks from the perspective of central bank staff members from the region.
The Fiscal Institutions of Tomorrow
The Fiscal Institutions of Tomorrow, the first publication in the series Institutions for People, addresses issues of public management that are key to economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean. It presents the challenges that the countries in the region face to strengthen fiscal institutions with a view to the future and with policy recommendations. This publication serves as reference material for policymakers and economic analysts interested in studying the evolution of fiscal institutions in the region and identifying areas to improve governance.
Explaining High Unemployment in ECCU Countries
In recent years, unemployment rates in some ECCU countries have been among the highest globally. This paper evaluates several factors that could explain them, finding that high unit labor costs, in a context of strong unionization, are significantly associated with high structural unemployment, while the global crisis added a cyclical component. Our analysis also suggests that high-paid jobs in the public and tourism sectors, which have been growing considerably in recent decades, could have increased the reservation wage and lowered labor force participation. We find no indication that high structural unemployment is related to the phase out of EU preferences on bananas/sugar exports or to a skills mismatch. As expected, unemployment has been substantially, but only temporarily fueled by large natural disasters.
