We analyze how the inflow of TARP funds in the wake of the 2007/2008 financial crisis impacted banks’ interbank market activity. We show that TARP banks’ interbank market activity was impacted in a statistically and economically significant way. Their interbank lending via federal funds sold increased by 77 percent relative to the mean of the control group of non-TARP banks. We further show that among the TARP banks, the most affected ones also increased credit risk taking, while at the same time not increasing profitability. These findings suggest a new, heretofore not investigated channel through which TARP may have increased banks’ moral hazard incentives.
{"title":"The (Un)Desired Effects of Government Bailouts: The Impact of TARP on the Interbank Market and Bank Risk-Taking","authors":"Patrick Behr, Wen Wang","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3192503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3192503","url":null,"abstract":"We analyze how the inflow of TARP funds in the wake of the 2007/2008 financial crisis impacted banks’ interbank market activity. We show that TARP banks’ interbank market activity was impacted in a statistically and economically significant way. Their interbank lending via federal funds sold increased by 77 percent relative to the mean of the control group of non-TARP banks. We further show that among the TARP banks, the most affected ones also increased credit risk taking, while at the same time not increasing profitability. These findings suggest a new, heretofore not investigated channel through which TARP may have increased banks’ moral hazard incentives.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125852118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Sebastian Essl, Sinem Kilic Celik, P. Kirby, André Proite
Debt vulnerabilities in low-income countries have increased substantially in recent years. Since 2013, median government debt has risen by about 20 percentage points of gross domestic product and increasingly comes from non-concessional and private sources. As a result, in most low-income countries, interest payments are absorbing an increasing proportion of government revenues. The majority of low-income countries would be hard hit by a sudden weakening in trade or global financial conditions given high levels of external debt, lack of fiscal space, low foreign currency reserves, and undiversified exports. A proactive effort to identify and reduce debt-related vulnerabilities is a priority for many low-income countries. Policy makers should focus on mobilizing domestic resources, improving debt transparency, and strengthening debt management practices. These efforts should be complemented by measures to strengthen fiscal frameworks, improve the efficiency of public expenditures and public investment management, and develop domestic financial systems.
{"title":"Debt in Low-Income Countries: Evolution, Implications, and Remedies","authors":"Sebastian Essl, Sinem Kilic Celik, P. Kirby, André Proite","doi":"10.1596/1813-9450-8794","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-8794","url":null,"abstract":"Debt vulnerabilities in low-income countries have increased substantially in recent years. Since 2013, median government debt has risen by about 20 percentage points of gross domestic product and increasingly comes from non-concessional and private sources. As a result, in most low-income countries, interest payments are absorbing an increasing proportion of government revenues. The majority of low-income countries would be hard hit by a sudden weakening in trade or global financial conditions given high levels of external debt, lack of fiscal space, low foreign currency reserves, and undiversified exports. A proactive effort to identify and reduce debt-related vulnerabilities is a priority for many low-income countries. Policy makers should focus on mobilizing domestic resources, improving debt transparency, and strengthening debt management practices. These efforts should be complemented by measures to strengthen fiscal frameworks, improve the efficiency of public expenditures and public investment management, and develop domestic financial systems.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128449368","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates the major drivers of the public debt growth in 184 countries. The underlying cross-country survey is conducted on the basis of the improved compilation of datasets on the central government debt for 2013. The study finds that oil abundance, economic growth rate, the share of mineral rent in the total revenue, interest rate payments for foreign borrowings, and being a developing country have statistically significant impact on the growth of the public debt. In contrast, defense spending, unemployment rate, and inflation rate do not have a statistically significant positive impact on the public debt rate.
{"title":"Determinants of the Public Debt and the Role of the Natural Resources: A Cross-Country Analysis","authors":"E. R. Sadik-Zada, A. Gatto","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3364174","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3364174","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the major drivers of the public debt growth in 184 countries. The underlying cross-country survey is conducted on the basis of the improved compilation of datasets on the central government debt for 2013. The study finds that oil abundance, economic growth rate, the share of mineral rent in the total revenue, interest rate payments for foreign borrowings, and being a developing country have statistically significant impact on the growth of the public debt. In contrast, defense spending, unemployment rate, and inflation rate do not have a statistically significant positive impact on the public debt rate.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130845476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Structural VAR models are frequently identified using sign restrictions on impulse responses. Moving beyond the popular but restrictive Normal-inverse-Wishart-Uniform prior, we develop a methodology that can handle almost any prior distribution on contemporaneous responses. We then propose a new sampler that explores the posterior just as efficiently as done by the existing algorithm for the Normal-inverse-Wishart-Uniform case. We use this exible and tractable framework to combine sign restrictions with information on the volatility of the data, giving less prior mass to impulse effects that are inconsistent with the data from a training sample. This approach sharpens posterior bands and makes sign restrictions more informative. We apply the methodology to the oil market and show that oil supply shocks have a non-negligible effect on oil price dynamics.
{"title":"Bayesian Structural VAR Models: A New Approach for Prior Beliefs on Impulse Responses","authors":"Martin Bruns, Michele Piffer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3366913","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3366913","url":null,"abstract":"Structural VAR models are frequently identified using sign restrictions on impulse responses. Moving beyond the popular but restrictive Normal-inverse-Wishart-Uniform prior, we develop a methodology that can handle almost any prior distribution on contemporaneous responses. We then propose a new sampler that explores the posterior just as efficiently as done by the existing algorithm for the Normal-inverse-Wishart-Uniform case. We use this exible and tractable framework to combine sign restrictions with information on the volatility of the data, giving less prior mass to impulse effects that are inconsistent with the data from a training sample. This approach sharpens posterior bands and makes sign restrictions more informative. We apply the methodology to the oil market and show that oil supply shocks have a non-negligible effect on oil price dynamics.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116922196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper analyses factors that account for credit risk in the Chinese market for bonds issued by non-financial enterprises. By exploring a data set of covering monthly observations of individual corporate and enterprise bonds a number of important structural features of the market are seen to account for cross sectional and time series variations of yield spreads. The analysis sheds light on the issue of implicit government guarantees. The results suggest that steps taken by Chinese authorities to restructure local public finance are concentrating such guarantees to a few segments and are bringing greater financial discipline to other segments of the market.
{"title":"Understanding China’s Evolving Credit Risk Maze","authors":"Ronald W. Anderson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3332411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3332411","url":null,"abstract":"This paper analyses factors that account for credit risk in the Chinese market for bonds issued by non-financial enterprises. By exploring a data set of covering monthly observations of individual corporate and enterprise bonds a number of important structural features of the market are seen to account for cross sectional and time series variations of yield spreads. The analysis sheds light on the issue of implicit government guarantees. The results suggest that steps taken by Chinese authorities to restructure local public finance are concentrating such guarantees to a few segments and are bringing greater financial discipline to other segments of the market.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114826348","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
During the Great Financial Crisis several euro area Member States with current account deficits were subject to sharp reversals of private capital flows. We examine how the specific policy rules of the euro area's payments system TARGET2 affects the macroeconomic adjustments to sudden stops. We find that – in the short run – public capital flows in form of TARGET2 help euro area‐deficit countries to stabilize output, consumption, and investment after a sudden stop of private capital inflows. In the long run, however, euro area countries suffer under a prolonged economic recovery and accumulated large public debt as well as higher welfare losses relative to euro peggers.
{"title":"Sudden Stops in a Currency Union – Some Lessons from the Euro Area","authors":"Lena Kraus, J. Beier, B. Herz","doi":"10.1111/sjpe.12194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/sjpe.12194","url":null,"abstract":"During the Great Financial Crisis several euro area Member States with current account deficits were subject to sharp reversals of private capital flows. We examine how the specific policy rules of the euro area's payments system TARGET2 affects the macroeconomic adjustments to sudden stops. We find that – in the short run – public capital flows in form of TARGET2 help euro area‐deficit countries to stabilize output, consumption, and investment after a sudden stop of private capital inflows. In the long run, however, euro area countries suffer under a prolonged economic recovery and accumulated large public debt as well as higher welfare losses relative to euro peggers.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127136771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Josefin Meyer, Carmen M. Reinhart, Christoph Trebesch
This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. We compile a new database of 220,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo) and 2016, covering 91 countries. Our main insight is that, as in equity markets, the returns on external sovereign bonds have been sufficiently high to compensate for risk. Real ex-post returns averaged 7% annually across two centuries, including default episodes, major wars, and global crises. This represents an excess return of around 4% above US or UK government bonds, which is comparable to stocks and outperforms corporate bonds. The observed returns are hard to reconcile with canonical theoretical models and with the degree of credit risk in this market, as measured by historical default and recovery rates. Based on our archive of more than 300 sovereign debt restructurings since 1815, we show that full repudiation is rare; the median haircut is below 50%.
{"title":"Sovereign Bonds Since Waterloo","authors":"Josefin Meyer, Carmen M. Reinhart, Christoph Trebesch","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3339573","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3339573","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies external sovereign bonds as an asset class. We compile a new database of 220,000 monthly prices of foreign-currency government bonds traded in London and New York between 1815 (the Battle of Waterloo) and 2016, covering 91 countries. Our main insight is that, as in equity markets, the returns on external sovereign bonds have been sufficiently high to compensate for risk. Real ex-post returns averaged 7% annually across two centuries, including default episodes, major wars, and global crises. This represents an excess return of around 4% above US or UK government bonds, which is comparable to stocks and outperforms corporate bonds. The observed returns are hard to reconcile with canonical theoretical models and with the degree of credit risk in this market, as measured by historical default and recovery rates. Based on our archive of more than 300 sovereign debt restructurings since 1815, we show that full repudiation is rare; the median haircut is below 50%.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126269387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The recent wave of recommendations of unlimited credit creation to finance government expenditures to achieve economic growth and prosperity seems to be grounded in misunderstanding Keynes’s countercyclical fiscal policy. Keynes’s deficit spending denotes the stimulus geared towards increasing private investment as opposed to big government spending boosting consumption. Taking Japan as a case study, I showcase that deficit financing meeting Keynesian preconditions, including a sound monetary system, well-developed financial markets, and lower/zero interest rate, may not lead to raising growth and lowering public debts as the proponents predict. I maintain that unlimited credit expansion to the public sector in consumption-based economies, which is the general case for developing countries, is most likely to generate inflation while leaving the economy’s productivity unchanged.
{"title":"Limitless Deficit Financing for Economic Prosperity: Where They Got the Keynes’s Deficit Spending Wrong?","authors":"S. Javed","doi":"10.4197/islec.32-1.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4197/islec.32-1.7","url":null,"abstract":"The recent wave of recommendations of unlimited credit creation to\u0000finance government expenditures to achieve economic growth and prosperity seems to\u0000be grounded in misunderstanding Keynes’s countercyclical fiscal policy. Keynes’s\u0000deficit spending denotes the stimulus geared towards increasing private investment as\u0000opposed to big government spending boosting consumption. Taking Japan as a case\u0000study, I showcase that deficit financing meeting Keynesian preconditions, including a\u0000sound monetary system, well-developed financial markets, and lower/zero interest rate,\u0000may not lead to raising growth and lowering public debts as the proponents predict. I\u0000maintain that unlimited credit expansion to the public sector in consumption-based\u0000economies, which is the general case for developing countries, is most likely to\u0000generate inflation while leaving the economy’s productivity unchanged.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130216552","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The analysis of government deficits and public debt points to a fundamental error in contemporary economic discussions. It is not possible to assess the stance of fiscal policy from estimates of the public sector deficit. John Maynard Keynes’s macroeconomics and the empirical evidence discussed in this paper indicate that expansionary fiscal policy financed by loan issues will lead to growth in economic activity and employment. In an economy with spare capacity and idle resources, high government expenditure generates income, including tax revenues and thereby reduces the government deficit, and cuts public debt. The main purpose of increased loanfinanced government spending at times of private economic weakness is to increase the nation’s income. Keynes argued that any such government spending was not deficit spending, because he understood the spending as the most sensible means to cut the deficit. Deficit-reduction spending might be a more appropriate definition, because as he argued with Josiah Stamp: “You will never balance the budget through measures which reduce national income” (Keynes, 1978, vol. 21, p. 149).
{"title":"‘Deficit Financing’ or ‘Deficit-Reduction Financing?’ Debates in Contemporary Economics: Origins, Confusions and Clarity","authors":"A. Pettifor","doi":"10.4197/islec.32-1.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4197/islec.32-1.4","url":null,"abstract":"The analysis of government deficits and public debt points to a fundamental error in contemporary economic discussions. It is not possible to assess the\u0000stance of fiscal policy from estimates of the public sector deficit. John Maynard\u0000Keynes’s macroeconomics and the empirical evidence discussed in this paper indicate\u0000that expansionary fiscal policy financed by loan issues will lead to growth in economic\u0000activity and employment. In an economy with spare capacity and idle resources, high\u0000government expenditure generates income, including tax revenues and thereby reduces\u0000the government deficit, and cuts public debt. The main purpose of increased loanfinanced government spending at times of private economic weakness is to increase\u0000the nation’s income. Keynes argued that any such government spending was not deficit\u0000spending, because he understood the spending as the most sensible means to cut the\u0000deficit. Deficit-reduction spending might be a more appropriate definition, because as\u0000he argued with Josiah Stamp: “You will never balance the budget through measures\u0000which reduce national income” (Keynes, 1978, vol. 21, p. 149).","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-01-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125663550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper studies the debt multiplier, that is, the effects of a temporary and pure change in government debt on economic activity. Contrary to an infinitely-lived representative agent model, in an overlapping generations (OLG) framework output increases even after a temporary increase in debt due to a lump-sum tax reduction that is totally reversed in the future. When nominal interest rates are positive, the debt multiplier is generally quite small. However, the debt multiplier is much larger when the nominal interest rate is at the zero lower bound. Hence, the call for fiscal consolidation in recession times seems ill-advised. Moreover, the steady state level of debt matters in an OLG framework. Multipliers tend to increase with the level of debt in steady state. A rise in the steady state debt-to-GDP level increases the steady state real interest rate and thus it provides an alternative route to increase the room for manoeuvre for monetary policy facing de flationary shocks.
{"title":"The Debt Multiplier","authors":"Alice Albonico, G. Ascari, Alessandro Gobbi","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3304494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3304494","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the debt multiplier, that is, the effects of a temporary and pure change in government debt on economic activity. Contrary to an infinitely-lived representative agent model, in an overlapping generations (OLG) framework output increases even after a temporary increase in debt due to a lump-sum tax reduction that is totally reversed in the future. When nominal interest rates are positive, the debt multiplier is generally quite small. However, the debt multiplier is much larger when the nominal interest rate is at the zero lower bound. Hence, the call for fiscal consolidation in recession times seems ill-advised. Moreover, the steady state level of debt matters in an OLG framework. Multipliers tend to increase with the level of debt in steady state. A rise in the steady state debt-to-GDP level increases the steady state real interest rate and thus it provides an alternative route to increase the room for manoeuvre for monetary policy facing de flationary shocks.","PeriodicalId":127865,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy: Budget","volume":"13 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132532103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}