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1. Zombies at Large? Corporate Debt Overhang and the Macroeconomy

Author:
Òscar Jordà, Martin Kornejew, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
What are the macroeconomic consequences of business credit booms? Are they as dangerous as household credit booms? If not, why not? We answer these questions by collecting data on non-financial business liabilities (primarily bank loans and corporate bonds) for 17 advanced economies over the past 150 years. Unlike household credit, business credit booms are rarely followed by macroeconomic hangovers. Data on debt renegotiation costs—instrumented by a country’s legal tradition—show that frictions to debt resolution make recessions deeper and longer—an important factor in explaining the differences with household credit booms.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, International Political Economy, Global Recession, Macroeconomics, Credit, and Corporations
Political Geography:
Global Focus

2. Navigating Low-Carbon Finance Management at Banks and Non-Banking Financial Institutions

Author:
Naoyuki Yoshino and Farhad Taghizadeh-Hesary
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)
Abstract:
Lack of long-term financing, the existence of various risks, the low rate of return, and lack of capacity in market actors are major challenges for the development of low-carbon projects. This paper attempts to provide guidelines for governments and financial institutions by highlighting practical solutions as enabling conditions of low-carbon finance and investment. Such solutions include increasing the role of public financial institutions, increasing the share of non-banking financial institutions in long-term investments, using the spillover tax to increase the rate of return, developing green credit guarantee schemes to reduce the credit risk, and addressing low-carbon investment risks via financial and policy de-risking. These solutions are analysed in detail and considerations for their implementation are discussed throughout the paper. Tools and instruments for low-carbon investments and a practical example of the implementation of the proposed tools are also provided in this paper
Topic:
Climate Change, Infrastructure, Banks, Credit, and Financial Institutions
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. Making Enhanced CACs the Rule: A Proposed Amendment of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act

Author:
Gregory Makoff
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
The recent rise in sovereign debt litigation in the US Federal Court System is an unintended consequence of the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 related to an unanticipated shift of the international sovereign debt market from a narrow loan market to a global bond market. Collective action clauses (CACs) — developed in 2003 and “enhanced” in 2014 — are, in theory, an effective contract-based tool to facilitate orderly debt restructurings and control the holdout creditor problem. However, compliance by countries is voluntary and may not be sustained. To assure sustained compliance and to reduce the future incidence of holdout creditor litigation, the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act should be amended to provide that only bonds with enhanced CACs will be subject to suit and enforcement in the US courts.
Topic:
Debt, Legal Theory, Credit, and Global Bond Market
Political Geography:
United States and North America

4. Targeting credit through community members

Author:
Diego A. Vera-Cossio
Publication Date:
11-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD)
Abstract:
Delegating the allocation of public resources to community members is an increasingly popular form of delivering development programs and are associated with a tradeoff between improved information about potential beneficiaries and favoritism towards local elites. Unlike targeting cash transfers to the poor, the optimal targeting of credit is a more complex problem involving issues of productivity, repayment, and market responses: This paper analyzes this problem using a large-scale lending program, the Thai Million Baht Credit Fund, which decentralizes the allocation of loans to an elected group of community members, and provides three main results. First, exploiting a long and detailed panel, I recover pre-program structural estimates of household total factor productivity and find that resources from the program were not allocated to high-productivity, poor households, which is inconsistent with poverty and productive efficiency as targeting criteria. Second, using socioeconomic networks data, I show that actual targeting is strongly driven by connections to village elites and is related to lower program profitability, which suggests favoritism as a reason for mistargeting. Finally, I exploit quasi-experimental variation in the rollout of the program and uncover evidence that, in general equilibrium, informal credit markets compensate for targeting distortions by redirecting credit towards unconnected households, albeit at higher interest rates than those provided by the program. The results highlight the limitations of community-driven approaches to program delivery and the role of markets in attenuating potential targeting errors.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Microcredit, Public Sector, Local, Microeconomics, and Credit
Political Geography:
Thailand

5. Leftist Politics and the Limits of Microcredit in Argentina

Author:
Ronald Ahnen
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
The success of microcredit lending programs depends in part on the regulatory framework that policymakers create to support them. A fact that many microcredit analyses often ignore or overlook is that this framework is shaped by both ideological and partisan political considerations of policymakers. In Argentina, the Peronist governments of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner launched and supported a state-centered microcredit program characterized by strict loan conditions and direct state grants for capital and operational costs to existing non-profit organizations that were largely supportive of Peronism. Provinces and municipalities governed by anti-Peronists refused to participate. As a result, the National Microcredit Program has come to mimic past patronage based policies to a significant extent, engendering dependency on government resources, and thereby threatening its long-term viability. This article explores the impact of the left’s ideological and political project on microcredit policy, implementation, and outcomes in Argentina.
Topic:
Regulation, Microcredit, Leftist Politics, and Credit
Political Geography:
Argentina, South America, and Latin America

6. A Note on Credit Allocation, Income Distribution, and the Circuit of Capital (pdf)

Author:
Paulo dos Santos
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
This note considers the relationship between credit allocation and the aggregate, class distribution of income in the Circuit of Capital. Production and consumption credit inject means of purchase in different locations in the monetary circuits of capitalist reproduction. On the basis of comparative-dynamic analysis of the properties of steady-state evolutions, the note shows that production credit increases the wage share in total income, while consumption credit increases profit shares. These findings hold in general for any evolution in which sectoral revenue- elasticities of outlays measure less than unity. The note also motivates a new endogenous approach to the aggregate distribution of income, and offers new analytical tools facilitating work based on demand-constrained models of the Circuit of Capital.
Topic:
Inequality, Income Inequality, Economic Theory, Credit, and Capital
Political Geography:
Global Focus

7. Corporate Liquidity and Financial Fragility: The Role of Investment, Debt and Interest

Author:
Jan Toporowski
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
The paper addresses the issue of how debt deflation may arise in a capitalist economy with a sophisticated credit system. It argues that the standard argument of debt deflationists, that debt-financed investment causes a build-up of unsustainable investment, fails to recognise that debt is back by credit. A corollary of this is that the rate of interest is not a factor in investment decisions. Financial fragility is caused by heterogeneity of balance sheets, debt financed operations in financial markets and insufficient debt-financed investment, rather than too much such investment.
Topic:
Debt, Markets, Investment, and Credit
Political Geography:
Global Focus

8. Neologism as Theoretical Innovation in Economics: The case of 'Financialisation

Author:
Jan Toporowski
Publication Date:
03-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Oriental and African Studies - University of London
Abstract:
The term „financialisation‟ is a recognition that finance has come to play a key role on the modern capitalist economy. But users of the term do not agree on its meaning and recognition of the growing scale of finance has not brought about an increased understanding of financial processes. The paper examines the reasons for increased turnover in financial markets. The main themes in the literature on financialisation are examined and shown to lack a coherent account of financial processes that goes beyond the evidence of financial activity.
Topic:
Debt, Finance, Credit, and Financialisation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

9. Emerging Market Business Cycles with Remittance Fluctuations

Author:
Ceyhun Bora Durdu and Serdar Sayan
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
This paper analyzes the implications of remittance fluctuations for various macroeconomic variables and Sudden Stops. The paper employs a quantitative two-sector model of a small open economy with financial frictions calibrated to Mexican and Turkish economies, two major recipients, whose remittance receipts feature opposite cyclical characteristics. We find that remittances dampen the business cycles in Mexico, whereas they amplify the cycles in Turkey. Their quantitative effects in the long run, approximated by the stochastic steady state are mild. In the short run, however, remittances have quantitatively large impacts on the economy, when the economy is borrowing constrained. This is because agents in the economy cannot adjust their precautionary wealth to sudden tightening in credit, hence, fluctuations in remittances get magnified through an endogenous debt-deflation mechanism. Our findings suggest that procyclical (or countercyclical) remittances can play a significant deepening (or mitigating) role for Sudden Stops.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, and Credit
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Asia, North America, and Mexico

10. Expected Consumption Growth from Cross-Country Surveys: Implications for Assessing International Capital Markets

Author:
Charles Engel and John H. Rogers
Publication Date:
09-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
Survey data show that the expected growth rates of consumption across countries vary widely and are not highly correlated. This data contradicts the simplest of open-economy models in which there is a freely traded non- state-contingent bond and purchasing power parity holds. We explore two alternative explanations for the finding: that households in each country in effect face different ex ante real interest rates or that there are significant credit constraints, so that expected consumption growth rates are driven largely by expected income growth. The empirical evidence strongly supports the latter hypothesis. These findings challenge the modeling of consumption that is at the heart of many, if not most, macroeconomic models.
Topic:
Economics, Finance, Interest Rates, and Credit
Political Geography:
Global Focus