Volume 17, Issue 2 - Special Issue on Nutrition and Poverty

In this paper, the hypothesis that microfinance is an effective tool for reducing poverty at the macro level is tested using a unique cross-country panel data set from 106 countries for the period 1998–2013. Taking into account the potential problem of sample selection bias and endogeneity, this paper shows that microfinance has a negative effect on poverty. The results are robust to the choice of microfinance measures and poverty indicators. They suggest that in developing and emerging countries, the establishment of more MFIs should be encouraged, and more funds should be directed from development agencies and governments into MFIs, to reduce poverty.

This paper uses a DSGE model of two small open economies to explain certain features of real exchange rate cyclical fluctuations in countries with fixed and flexible exchange rates, focusing on the role of traded and non-traded goods prices. In particular, the model illustrates why the relative price of non-traded goods and the relative price between domestic and foreign traded goods are more volatile than the real exchange rate under a fixed exchange rate but not under a flexible exchange rate, why deviations from purchasing power parity for traded goods prices can be more volatile under a fixed exchange rate than under a flexible exchange rate, and why there is no correlation between the volatility of the real exchange rate and its variance decomposition.

This paper investigates the relationship between income and democracy using common correlated effects (CCE) extended estimators which take into account the fact that democracy variables are highly correlated across countries and the possibility of heterogeneous effects of income on democracy in different countries. Using a wider database than ever, covering annual data from 1804 to 2010 for almost all countries, we show that overall, the effect of income on democracy is significantly negative when the time-series features of the data are taken into account, a result that comes from the low-income countries. This calls back into question the controversy about the empirical effect of income on democracy.

Motivated by stylized facts pointing to a dominant role of imported inputs in transmitting external price shocks to domestic prices, this paper zooms in to study the pass-through of imported input costs to domestic producer prices. Our approach constructs effective input price indices from sector-level price data combined with sector-level information on input-output linkages. Applying an error correction model specification to sector-level output and input prices, the long-run pass-through rate of effective imported input costs to domestic producer prices is estimated to be around 70 percent in Korea and almost 100 percent in selected European countries.

How does uncertainty about economic policy translate into uncertainty about macroeconomic outcomes, in particular inflation? New measures of consumer inflation uncertainty are compared to the economic and monetary policy uncertainty indices of [Baker, S., N. Bloom, and S. Davis. 2016. “Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty.” Quarterly Journal of Economics .]. Economic policy uncertainty is more strongly correlated with uncertainty about shorter-run inflation than with uncertainty about longer-run inflation, while monetary policy uncertainty is more correlated with uncertainty about longer-run than shorter-run inflation. Both economic and monetary policy uncertainty Granger cause inflation uncertainty. Consumer inflation uncertainty can be computed for demographic subgroups. High income and high education consumers have the lowest inflation uncertainty, but their short-run inflation uncertainty is most strongly correlated with policy uncertainty. The long-run inflation uncertainty of the top income quintile is less correlated with policy uncertainty, possibly reflecting stronger anchoring of inflation expectations for this group. Policy uncertainty appears to reflect the expectations of consumers more than professional forecasters or financial markets.

We study the effects of bureaucratic corruption on fiscal policy and economic growth, where corruption (i) reduces the tax revenue raised from households, (ii) inflates the volume of government spending, and (iii) reduces the productivity of “effective” government expenditure. We distinguish between the policies pursued by (a) a non-optimizing, and (b) an optimizing government. For both cases, corruption leads to higher income tax and inflation rates and a lower level of government spending, thus hindering growth. In the circumstances, an activist government could allocate its resources in attempting to reduce the type of corruption that harms growth the most. Finally, the findings from our unified framework could rationalize the sometimes conflicting empirical evidence on the impact of corruption on growth in the literature.

A New Keynesian framework with endogenous energy production is proposed to investigate the role of monetary policy in addressing disturbances in energy markets. The novelty of the model lies in the endogenous production of energy with convex costs, explicit modeling of goods with different degrees of energy-dependency and sectoral price rigidities. Our analyses prescribe the desirable monetary responses to four types of energy price shocks, highlighting the distinct characteristics of each shock and affirming the need for diverse policy considerations. We also found several points of divergence in relation to previous studies on addressing energy supply shocks. In addition, we shed light on the role of sectoral price rigidities in the shocks’ propagation.

Using a sample of 237 estimates drawn from 29 primary studies, we conduct a hierarchical meta-regression analysis that examines the association between economic growth and government expenditure on education. We find that the effect of government education expenditure on growth is positive for developed countries. However, when the evidence pertains to less developed countries (LDCs), we find a statistically insignificant association. We also examine the heterogeneity in empirical results and found that factors such as econometric specifications, publication characteristics as well as data characteristics explain the heterogeneity in the literature. We find no evidence of publication selectivity.

We investigate how the forecasting performance of the Federal Reserve Greenbooks has changed relative to commercial forecasters between 1974 and 2009. To this end, we analyze time-variation in the Greenbook coefficients in forecast encompassing regressions. Assuming that model coefficients change continuously, we estimate unobserved components models using Bayesian inference techniques. To verify that our results do not depend on the specific way change is modeled, we also allow the coefficients to change discretely rather than continuously and test for structural breaks using classical inference techniques. We find that the Greenbook forecasts have been consistently superior to the commercial forecasts at all horizons throughout our sample period. Although the forecasting performance gap has narrowed at more distant horizons after the early-to-mid 1980s, it remains significant.

This paper presents an integrated model of household consumption behavior and examines its testable implications for various theories of consumption, using panel data on Korean households. The model is framed with an extended Euler equation by incorporating aggregate/idiosyncratic and anticipated/unanticipated income changes with aggregate and idiosyncratic income risk measures. The model can test seven restricted but competing hypotheses such as life-cycle and precautionary saving with and without liquidity constraints, complete risk sharing, and incomplete risk sharing with and without precautionary saving. Each alternative hypothesis is rejected in favor of the integrated model to explain households’ consumption behavior in the panel.

The maximum amount of earnings in a calendar year that can be taxed by Social Security is currently set at $118,500. In this paper, I examine if removing this cap can solve Social Security’s future budgetary problems. I find that when this cap is removed, benefits need to decline by less than 4% to keep Social Security solvent, compared to by almost 12% when the cap is held fixed at its current level. Households for whom the cap expires respond by working and saving less, which reduces labor supply, capital stock, and output, and also reverses some of the initial expansion in Social Security’s revenues. Elimination of the cap alters the pattern of redistribution implicit in Social Security, and also imposes larger distortions on labor supply and saving, which reduces overall welfare.

A small amount of fixed-interest public debt may raise economic growth, if the financial sector is monopsonistic. We show that there are also redistributive gains favouring financial outsiders, defined by their lack of access to a stock exchange. The requirements are that issuing public debt raises the monopsony interest rate, thus reduces the value of financial sector equity, which, like public debt, is another source of crowding-out.

This paper discusses the empirical challenges associated with the estimation of the New Keynesian IS curve and provides an estimate of the forward looking IS curve by pooling macro data from 31 countries, delivering over 4000 observations on which to test the specification. The main finding of the paper is that it is possible to recover the theory-consistent IS curve from macro data when the sample size is large enough and the intrument is valid and strong. I also test the validity of the instruments by comparing estimates in countries which have or do not have an independent monetary policy reaction function. Another relevant finding is that the slope of the IS curve appears to have steepened over time since the 1990s, probably reflecting financial liberalisation.

Empirical evidence suggests that the differences in rates of technical progress across sectors are time-variant, implying that the bias in technological change is not constant. In this paper, we analyze the implications of this non-constant sectoral biased technical change for structural change and we assess whether this is an important factor behind structural transformations. To this end, we develop a multi-sectoral growth model where TFP growth rates across sectors are non-constant. We calibrate our model to match the development of the U.S. economy during the twentieth century. Our findings show that, by assuming non-constant biased technical change, a purely technological approach is able to replicate the sectoral transformations in the U.S. economy not only after but also prior to World War II.

The empirical evidence on the causal relationship between international trade and economic growth is inconclusive. While some studies show that trade leads to growth, others have pointed to a reverse causation. In this paper, we develop a model of international trade and productivity growth in the presence of a misallocation of resources. Misallocation in a country arises as a result of lobbying by firms to establish barriers to the competitive allocation of labor. Misallocation prevents the country from exploiting its technological comparative advantage and leads to a reduction in the volume of trade in the absence of any explicit trade barriers. In the model, whether barriers diminish or worsen with productivity growth depends on the extent of the initial resource misallocation. If the initial resource misallocation is not severe, then productivity growth leads to diminishing barriers and vice versa. In either case, productivity growth strengthens the comparative advantage over time and therefore increases the volume of trade.

This paper investigates the impact of output and credit market shocks on R&D spending in advanced economies and builds on the commonly accepted view that credit constraints lead to procyclical R&D spending. A theoretical model is developed where output and credit shocks are treated separately, though these shocks may be highly correlated. The estimation procedure utilizes a panel vector autoregression (VAR) in order to empirically identify the role of credit market shocks separately from the output shocks more commonly studied in the existing literature. The primary empirical findings can be summarized as follows: (1) R&D responds pro-cyclically to output shocks at the macroeconomic level, and (2) R&D co-moves positively with credit. More concretely, the results indicate that negative output shocks induce a simultaneous and subsequent contraction in credit and R&D consistent with a model where credit constraints drive cyclical adjustments to R&D. The impact of output and credit shocks on R&D are economically significant and a simulation exercise suggests the shocks associated with the global financial crisis have reduced US R&D by 10% relative to the pre-crisis path.