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61. : From Rapid Recovery to Slowdown: Why Recent Economic Growth in Latin America Has Been Slow

Author:
Jose De Gregorio
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Latin America's recent economic performance has been disappointing. After a very strong recovery from the Great Recession, growth has slowed considerably, and prospects for 2015 are dim. Among the seven largest economies in the region, output is expected to contract in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, and Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru are projected to grow by only about 3 percent. The decline was not caused by external factors but was mostly cyclical in nature and a result of low productivity. Although monetary and fiscal policies may still have a role in supporting demand in some instances, the main problem in the region is not a lack of demand but low productivity growth. Efforts must be made to foster productivity. Institutional weakness must be addressed and inequality reduced if sustainable high growth is to resume.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Monetary Policy, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Latin America

62. Too Much Finance, or Statistical Illusion?

Author:
William R. Cline
Publication Date:
06-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
For nearly three decades, the dominant view on the role of the financial sector in economic development has been that greater financial depth facilitates faster growth. However, the Great Recession has shaken confidence in that view because of the contributing role of high leverage and such financial innovations as collateralized subprime mortgage-backed assets and derivatives on them. Recent studies from the International Monetary Fund and Bank for International Settlements have argued that "too much finance" reduces growth. In an environment of new doubts about finance following the Great Recession, these studies finding that there can be too much of it seem to have struck a responsive chord. Cline warns that these findings should be viewed with considerable caution. He first shows that correlation without causation could similarly lead to the conclusion that too many doctors spoil growth, for example. He the demonstrates algebraically that if the variable of interest, be it financial depth, doctors, or any other good or service that rises along with per capita income, is incorporated in a quadratic form into a regression of growth on per capita income, there will be a necessary but spurious finding that above a certain point more of the good or service in question causes growth to decline. In some situations, finance can become excessive; the crises of Iceland and Ireland come to mind. But it is highly premature to adopt as a new stylized fact the recent studies' supposed thresholds beyond which more finance reduces growth.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, International Monetary Fund, and Financial Crisis

63. From Populist Destabilization to Reform and Possible Debt Relief in Greece

Author:
William R. Cline
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Using his European Debt Simulation Model (EDSM), Cline examines whether and to what extent additional debt relief is needed in Greece under the new circumstances. Greece's debt burden is significantly lower than implied by the ratio of its gross debt to GDP, because of concessional interest rates on debt owed predominantly to the euro area official sector. The IMF's call for debt relief recognizes the lower interest burden but argues that the gross financing requirement is on track to exceed a sustainable range of 15 to 20 percent. But in the Fund's June Debt Sustainability Analysis that threshold would not be exceeded until after 2030. A sustainability diagnosis based on such a distant future date would seem at best illustrative rather than definitive. The euro area creditors might, nonetheless, be well advised to provide two types of interest relief: an earmarked portion of interest otherwise due to finance a public works employment program; and additional interest relief to compensate for budget shortfalls caused by growth below plan levels. The sovereign debt situation should be alleviated by carrying out the bank recapitalization directly from the European Stability Mechanism to the banks, rather than through the sovereign as the intermediary. The large increase in the ratio of gross debt to GDP imposed by bank recapitalization is mostly an optical illusion because there would be a corresponding rise in state assets, but this increase could, nonetheless, further erode perceptions of sustainability.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, International Monetary Fund, Financial Crisis, and Budget
Political Geography:
Greece

64. Fiscal Tightening and Economic Growth: Exploring Cross-Country Correlations

Author:
Paolo Mauro and Jan Zilinsky
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Abstract:
The global financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 has rekindled the debate on the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth. At the outset of the crisis the focus—particularly in the United States—was on whether fiscal stimulus (an expansion in the fiscal deficit) boosts economic growth. Since 2011 or so, with the depth of the crisis becoming more severe in some European countries and Greece in particular, the emphasis of the debate has shifted to whether fiscal adjustment (a reduction in the fiscal deficit) curtails economic growth. Public discourse has been heavily influenced by simple charts analyzing the correlations between measures of fiscal "austerity" and economic growth for small samples of countries over limited time periods. Mauro and Zilinsky analyze the correlations in the data starting from the simplest and gradually building up, in a step-by-step, transparent manner, to multivariate regressions based on various samples of countries for different periods. The results show that simple correlations are no longer significant when considering slightly longer sample periods and omitting outliers, like Greece, from the sample. In multivariate regressions using broader samples, a tightening of fiscal policy is significantly associated with lower economic growth only in some specifications and estimation samples. On the whole, the data offer partial support to the notion that fiscal choices and output growth are correlated.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Global Focus

65. International Developments in the Insurance Sector: The Road to Financial Instability?

Author:
Therese M. Vaughan and Mark A. Calabria
Publication Date:
05-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
International activity related to the regulation and supervision of financial services has exploded since the global financial crisis. The crisis exposed weaknesses in the structure for regulating internationally active banks, and motivated a number of work streams aimed at strengthening standards (most notably, significant revisions to the Basel capital standard for internationally active banks, now known as Basel III). The insurance sector was also stressed by the meltdown in financial markets that occurred in 2007-2008, albeit far less than the banking sector, and, with the exception of AIG, it is generally recognized that insurers played little role in the financial crisis, and that traditional insurance activities do not pose a systemic risk to the financial system.1,2 Nonetheless, the insurance sector has also been targeted for a new stream of regulatory initiatives at the international level. The most important organizations with respect to these activities are the International Association of Insurance Supervisors (IAIS) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB), both based in Basel, Switzerland. The purpose of this paper is to review these developments and to highlight potential concerns for U.S. insurance markets.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, Markets, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Global Focus

66. Answering Questions About the Commodity Slump: A Summary from the 2015 NRGI Conference

Author:
David Manley
Publication Date:
10-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Natural Resource Governance Institute
Abstract:
There has rarely been as large a commodity boom, with such resounding effects, as the one that has recently ended. Policy makers and commentators saw the boom as an opportunity to pull hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. But, after the crash of commodity prices, one might ask whether this opportunity been largely missed. Policymakers and citizens of resource-rich countries should draw lessons from the experience and ascertain what risks and opportunities they now face in a period of depressed prices. To contribute to this thinking, NRGI gathered more than 180 experts for two days of discussion at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, in June 2015. Key questions addressed in this conference summary paper include: Were countries prepared for the bust? Was a lack of accountability and transparency really to blame for countries’ poor resource governance efforts? How can transparency be more useful? Has the price slump closed the door on new investment? Is there a “race to the bottom” to stem capital flight? Can we turn the crisis into an opportunity?
Topic:
Development, International Trade and Finance, Oil, Poverty, Natural Resources, and Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
Global Focus

67. Inflation and Activity: Two Explorations and Their Monetary Policy Implications

Author:
Olivier Blanchard, Eugenio Cerutti, and Lawrence H. Summers
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
Blanchard, Cerutti, and Summers explore two issues triggered by the global financial crisis. First, in most advanced countries, output remains far below the prerecession trend, suggesting hysteresis. The authors look at 122 recessions over the past 50 years in 23 countries and find that a high proportion of them have been followed by lower output or even lower growth. Second, while inflation has decreased, it has decreased less than anticipated, suggesting a breakdown of the relation between inflation and activity. The authors estimate a Phillips curve relation over the past 50 years for 20 countries and find that the effect of unemployment on inflation, for given expected inflation, decreased until the early 1990s but has remained roughly stable since then. The paper concludes with implications for monetary policy.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Monetary Policy, Financial Crisis, and GDP
Political Geography:
Global Focus

68. The Financial Sector and Growth in Emerging Asian Economies

Author:
William R. Cline
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
The financial sectors in Asian emerging-market economies are now relatively unlikely to provoke new financial crises, either because of reforms after the East Asian financial crisis in the later 1990s or because of the dominance of state-owned banks not subject to bank runs. Financial intermediation is surprisingly high and is consistent with higher rates of saving and investment and hence growth in the main economies of the region (as compared to, say, counterparts in Latin America). Nonetheless, there are sharply diverging patterns (e.g., high foreign ownership of banks in Korea versus minimal presence in China) and differing national structures (bank dominated, portfolio oriented, and diversified) within Asia. Cline recommends establishing long-term plans to improve efficiency in state-owned banks or reduce their dominance and pursuing bank capitalization targets at least as ambitious as those of Basel III. Cline also calls for ensuring adequate regulation of growing nonbank intermediaries, reversing a recent trend toward national barriers to foreign banks in some economies, and improving the legal security of bank regulators.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, Financial Crisis, and Reform
Political Geography:
Asia

69. Maintaining Financial Stability in the People's Republic of China during Financial Liberalization

Author:
Nicholas Borst and Nicolas R. Lardy
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Peterson Institute for International Economics
Abstract:
China's banking system is now the largest in the world, and its capital markets are rapidly approaching the size of those in the advanced economies. Borst and Lardy trace the evolution of China's financial system away from a traditional bank-dominated and state-directed financial system toward a more complex, market-based system. They analyze and outline the optimal sequence of financial reforms needed to manage the new risks accompanying this evolution.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Financial Crisis, and Reform
Political Geography:
China

70. The 2015 Survey of Progress in International Economic Governance

Author:
Domenico Lombardi and Kesley Shantz
Publication Date:
11-2015
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Abstract:
The annual CIGI Survey of Progress in International Economic Governance assesses progress in five areas of international economic governance: macroeconomic and financial cooperation; cooperation on financial regulation; cooperation on development; cooperation on trade; and cooperation on climate change.
Topic:
Climate Change, Economics, Financial Crisis, and Governance
Political Geography:
Global Focus