Prospect Group Policy Research Working Papers -- Recent Issues
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Resolving Puzzles of Monetary Policy Transmission in Emerging Markets (November 2024)
Conventional empirical models of monetary policy transmission in emerging market economies produce puzzling results: monetary tightening often leads to an increase in prices (the price puzzle) and depreciation of the currency (the foreign exchange puzzle). This paper shows that incorporating forward-looking expectations into standard open economy structural vector autoregressive models resolves these puzzles. Specifically, the models are augmented with novel survey-based measures of expectations based on consumer, business, and professional forecasts. The findings show that the rise in prices following monetary tightening is related to currency depreciation, so eliminating the foreign exchange puzzle helps solve the price puzzle.
Identifying Growth Accelerations (October 2024)
This paper introduces a new method to identify output growth accelerations that integrates elements of both the “criteria-based” and “break-testing” approaches, which are prevalent in the literature. The proposed criteria do not impose a fixed length on growth accelerations, thus enabling duration analyses without relying on questionable statistical techniques for the identification of these accelerations. The findings show that growth accelerations last an average 13.4 years, albeit with significant variations in duration across regions. Initial conditions and contemporaneous domestic and external economic conditions all matter for the continuation of an acceleration, and changes in any single policy condition have less of an impact.
Digitalization and Inclusive Growth : A Review of the Evidence (October 2024)
This paper summarizes the evidence on the growth and distributional effects of digitalization through four channels: average productivity growth, employment and wages, access to markets, and government finances. First, digitalization has increased average productivity growth by better matching demand and supply, improving the efficiency of business processes, and boosting the accumulation of intangible capital. For developing economies, the productivity gains from “smart” automation and artificial intelligence that reduce labor costs may be lower than from the previous wave of information and communications technologies, which improved the matching of sellers to buyers by reducing search and coordination costs. Second, there is little evidence that use of information and communications technologies has reduced aggregate employment or resulted in job polarization in developing economies, unlike the experience of advanced economies. However, distributional challenges within countries might increase to the extent that “smart” robots and artificial intelligence need complementary skills. Third, digitalization has enhanced market access for rural households, small firms, and unbanked populations in developing economies through improving information flows. Fourth, digitalization has improved the efficiency of government spending on, and revenue mobilization for, public services and welfare programs through its effect on transparency, accountability, simplification of bureaucratic processes, and adoption of new delivery models.
Fiscal Challenges in Small States: Weathering Storms, Rebuilding Resilience (September 2024)
The COVID-19 pandemic and the global shocks that followed have worsened fiscal and debt positions in small states, intensifying their already substantial fiscal challenges—especially the need to manage more frequent climate change–related natural disasters. Forty percent of the 35 emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) that are small states are at high risk of debt distress or already in it, roughly twice the share for other EMDEs. Larger fiscal deficits since the pandemic reflect increased spending to support households and firms, and weaker revenues. To improve their fiscal sustainability and resilience to future shocks, small states need to strike a balance between maintaining adequate fiscal buffers and increasing investments in human capital and climate change–resilient infrastructure. Comprehensive fiscal reforms are essential. First, small states’ revenues, which are highly volatile and dependent on sometimes unreliable sources, should be drawn from a more stable and secure tax base. Second, spending efficiency needs to be improved, especially on transfers to public enterprises, subsidies, and the public wage bill. Third, these changes should be complemented by reforms to fiscal frameworks, including better utilization of fiscal rules and sovereign wealth funds. Finally, to help these countries stay on sustainable fiscal paths, well-coordinated and targeted global policies are also needed. Policies supported by the global community can help to improve fiscal policy management, provide technical assistance, address debt challenges, and bolster funding for small states to invest in climate change resilience and adaptation, and other priority areas.
Rate Cycles (August 2024)
This paper analyzes cycles in policy interest rates in 24 advanced economies over 1970–2024, combining a new application of business cycle methodology with rich time-series decompositions of the shocks driving rate movements. “Rate cycles” have gradually evolved over time, with less frequent cyclical turning points, more moderate tightening phases, and a larger role for global shocks. Against this backdrop, the 2020–24 rate cycle has been unprecedented in many dimensions: it features the fastest pivot from active easing to a tightening phase, followed by the most globally synchronized tightening, and an unusually long period of holding rates constant. It also exhibits the largest role for global shocks—with global demand shocks still dominant, but an increased role for global supply shocks in explaining interest rate movements. Inflation and the growth in output and employment have, on average, largely returned to historical norms for this stage in a tightening phase. Any recalibration of interest rates going forward should be gradual, however, and account for the interactions between increasingly important global factors and domestic circumstances, combined with uncertainty as to whether rate cycles have reverted to pre-2008 patterns.
Last Updated: Nov 20, 2024
