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221. Getting Surplus Countries to Adjust

Author:
John Williamson
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The world has witnessed two distinct attempts to build a multilateral mechanism to discipline surplus countries that declined to adjust their surpluses, and several proposals are currently on the table to do the same. On the two previous occasions the major surplus country of the day defeated attempts to create such a mechanism, and today China (not to mention Japan or Germany) exhibits no enthusiasm for the idea. Despite the importance of the issue, there has been remarkably little discussion of these proposals.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, International Monetary Fund, and Monetary Policy
Political Geography:
Japan, China, and Germany

222. Integration in the Absence of Institutions: China-North Korea Cross-Border Exchange

Author:
Jennifer Lee, Stephan Haggard, and Marcus Noland
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Theory tells us that weak rule of law and institutions deter cross-border integration, deter investment relative to trade, and inhibit trade finance. Drawing on a survey of more than 300 Chinese enterprises that are doing or have done business in North Korea, the authors consider how informal institutions have addressed these problems in a setting in which rule of law and institutions are particularly weak. Given the apparent reliance on hedging strategies, the rapid growth in exchange witnessed in recent years may prove self-limiting, as the effectiveness of informal institutions erodes and the risk premium rises. Institutional improvement could have significant welfare implications, affecting the volume, composition, and financial terms of cross-border exchange.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Foreign Direct Investment
Political Geography:
Israel

223. Sovereign Wealth Funds: Is Asia Different?

Author:
Edwin M. Truman
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have become a prominent feature of the international financial landscape. They are sufficiently diverse in their origins, structures, and objectives that generalizations are perilous. However, legitimate concerns have been raised in home and host countries about the management, behavior, and interactions of these funds. Many of those concerns can be addressed via increased accountability and transparency. The Santiago Principles are a good start in doing so, but Edwin M. Truman's SWF scoreboard points to areas where these principles can be improved. Meanwhile, SWF compliance must be further increased. At the same time, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) effort to address concerns from the host-country side has not resulted in the erection of new barriers to that form of cross-border investment, but the OECD failed to reverse the creeping financial protectionism of the past decade. Because of their size and the source of their funding, some Asian funds are different. As a result, they will be held to a higher standard of accountability and transparency even as their government owners press for more openness to cross-border investment.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Asia

224. Foreign Manufacturing Multinationals and the Transformation of the Chinese Economy: New Measurements, New Perspectives

Author:
Theodore H. Moran
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
What is the relationship between foreign manufacturing multinational corporations (MNCs) and the expansion of indigenous technological and managerial technological capabilities among Chinese firms? China has been remarkably successful in designing industrial policies, joint venture requirements, and technology transfer pressures to use FDI to create indigenous national champions in a handful of prominent sectors: high speed rail transport, information technology, auto assembly, and an emerging civil aviation sector. But what is striking in the aggregate data is how relatively thin the layer of horizontal and vertical spillovers from foreign manufacturing multinationals to indigenous Chinese firms has proven to be. Despite the large size of manufacturing FDI inflows, the impact of multinational corporate investment in China has been largely confined to building plants that incorporate capital, technology, and managerial expertise controlled by the foreigner. As the skill-intensity of exports increases, the percentage of the value of the final product that derives from imported components rises sharply. China has remained a low value-added assembler of more sophisticated inputs imported from abroad—a “workbench” economy. Where do the gains from FDI in China end up? While manufacturing MNCs may build plants in China, the largest impact from deployment of worldwide earnings is to bolster production, employment, R, and local purchases in their home markets. For the United States the most recent data show that US-headquartered MNCs have 70 percent of their operations, make 89 percent of their purchases, spend 87 percent of their R dollars, and locate more than half of their workforce within the US economy—this is where most of the earnings from FDI in China are delivered.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Israel

225. The Liquidation of Government Debt

Author:
Carmen M. Reinhart
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Historically, periods of high indebtedness have been associated with a rising incidence of default or restructuring of public and private debts. A subtle type of debt restructuring takes the form of "financial repression." Financial repression includes directed lending to government by captive domestic audiences (such as pension funds), explicit or implicit caps on interest rates, regulation of cross-border capital movements, and (generally) a tighter connection between government and banks. In this paper, the authors describe some of the regulatory measures and policy actions that characterized the heyday of the financial repression era. In the heavily regulated financial markets of the Bretton Woods system, several restrictions facilitated a sharp and rapid reduction in public debt/GDP ratios from the late 1940s to the 1970s. Low nominal interest rates help reduce debt servicing costs while a high incidence of negative real interest rates liquidates or erodes the real value of government debt. Thus, financial repression is most successful in liquidating debts when accompanied by a steady dose of inflation. Inflation need not take market participants entirely by surprise and, in effect, it need not be very high (by historical standards). For the advanced economies in Reinhart and Sbrancia's sample, real interest rates were negative roughly half of the time during 1945–80. For the United States and the United Kingdom, their estimates of the annual liquidation of debt via negative real interest rates amounted on average to 3 to 4 percent of GDP a year. For Australia and Italy, which recorded higher inflation rates, the liquidation effect was larger (around 5 percent per annum).
Topic:
Debt, Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
Political Geography:
United States and United Kingdom

226. Coordinating Regional and Multilateral Financial Institutions

Author:
C. Randall Henning
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Recent crises and the expansion of international financial arrangements have dramatically elevated the importance of cooperation between regional institutions and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). While the case for coordination between regional and multilateral institutions is generally accepted, however, the need to organize it on an ex ante basis is not fully appreciated. The relatively successful cooperation among the European Commission, European Central Bank, and IMF on the European debt crisis is not likely to be easily replicated in joint programs for countries in other regions, moreover, and the costs of coordination failure could be very large. Recent innovations at the IMF, on the other hand, present opportunities for cooperation with regional facilities. Henning reviews (1) the case for organizing cooperation on an ex ante basis, (2) the policy and institutional matters that should be coordinated, (3) how East Asian arrangements in particular and the IMF might cooperate, and (4) an Interinstitutional Agenda of general principles, modalities, and institutional recommendations. The G-20, member states, and institutions themselves should address this agenda proactively.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Regional Cooperation, International Monetary Fund, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe and East Asia

227. Resource Management and Transition in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, and Mongolia

Author:
Richard Pomfret
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The paper presents a comparative analysis of the resource-rich transition economies of Mongolia and the southern republics of the former Soviet Union. For Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the ability to earn revenue from cotton exports allowed them to avoid reform. Oil in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan was associated with large-scale corruption, but with soaring revenues in the 2000s their institutions evolved and to some extent improved. Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia illustrate the challenges facing small economies with large potential mineral resources, with the former suffering from competition for rents among the elite and the latter from lost opportunities. Overall the countries illustrate that a resource curse is not inevitable among transition economies, but a series of hurdles need to be surmounted to benefit from resource abundance. Neither the similar initial institutions nor those created in the 1990s are immutable.
Topic:
Corruption, Economics, Oil, and Natural Resources
Political Geography:
Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan

228. IFSWF Report on Compliance with the Santiago Principles: Admirable but Flawed Transparency

Author:
Edwin M. Truman and Sarah Bagnall
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
On July 7, 2011 the International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds (IFSWF) released a report on IFSWF Members' Experience in the Application of the Santiago Principles. The report is a self-assessment of the voluntary compliance of 21 member sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) with the Generally Accepted Principles and Practices of SWFs, issued in October 2008. We commend the IFSWF for undertaking the surveys on which the report is based, for the later decision to publish the results, and for the detail included in the report. However, as with many self-assessments, the report has some flaws. The principal flaw is that the characterization of the extent of compliance with the Santiago Principles is exaggerated.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Sovereign Wealth Funds
Political Geography:
Santiago

229. Europe on the Brink

Author:
Simon Johnson and Peter Boone
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Attempts to resolve the problems in Europe are failing, and the crisis is spreading from Greece, Ireland, and Portugal to larger nations. Europe's financial system relies on moral hazard, i.e., a “no defaults” policy, to attract the funding needed to roll over large amounts of short–term bank and sovereign debt. Now that politicians in creditor nations are calling for private sector burden sharing, investors are demanding higher interest rates to hold these debts. But higher rates may tip banks and nations toward bankruptcy. Europe's banks and financial system are highly integrated across countries. Rising expectations of default in some countries could lead to large-scale capital flight into “safe” countries. This shift will raise concerns regarding solvency and liquidity of many financial institutions. The payments system of the euro area is serving as an opaque bailout mechanism that is currently preventing the euro area from falling apart at this time. If the number of nations in trouble spreads beyond Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, this bailout system will be stressed because of the potential size of accumulated funding. The European Central Bank (ECB) could soon see a vocal debate between inflationist and hawkish (anti–inflation) members. Inflationists will call for large–scale interventions, including bond buybacks and emergency loans, while the hawks will attempt to close loopholes in the payments system that effectively permit each troubled nation to create money needed to finance capital flight and budget deficits. At this stage in the debate, we see little chance that Europe can avoid ending the “moral hazard” regime, in which case it needs to plan for widespread sovereign and bank debt restructurings.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Regional Cooperation, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Europe, Greece, and Ireland

230. Markets vs. Malthus: Food Security and the Global Economy

Author:
Cullen S. Hendrix
Publication Date:
07-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
In the past four years, rising world food prices and the global economic downturn increased the ranks of the world's food insecure1 from 848 million to 925 million by September 2010, reversing decades of slow yet steady progress in reducing hunger (WFP and FAO 2010). While the human costs have been considerable, the political consequences have been significant as well. Food prices sparked demonstrations and riots in 48 countries 2007–08. While prices receded in 2009, they reached historic highs in February 2011—and were once again implicated in political turmoil. High food and fuel prices were among the grievances motivating the demonstrations that led to the ouster of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, International Trade and Finance, Poverty, and Food
Political Geography:
Ethiopia and Egypt