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Working Paper
Macroprudential Policy Interlinkages
Emerging markets are concerned about sudden stops in international capital flows, which may lead to severe recessions associated with vicious spirals of currency depreciations and tightening borrowing constraints. A common prescription is to impose macroprudential policies, including prudential capital controls, to limit international borrowing especially in foreign currency. This paper analyzes the supportive role of macroprudential policies geared toward the domestic financial market, suggesting that emerging markets should resort to a wide mix of policies, even when the domestic financial ...
Working Paper
Seigniorage and Sovereign Default: The Response of Emerging Markets to COVID-19
Monetary policy affects the tradeoffs faced by governments in sovereign default models. In the absence of lump-sum taxation, governments rely on both distortionary taxes and seigniorage to finance expenditure. Furthermore, monetary policy adds a time-consistency problem in debt choice, which may mitigate or exacerbate the incentives to accumulate debt. A deterioration of the terms-of-trade leads to an increase in sovereign-default risk and inflation, and a reduction in growth, which are consistent with the empirical evidence for emerging economies. An unanticipated shock resembling the ...
Working Paper
Domestic Policies and Sovereign Default
This paper incorporates fiscal and monetary policies into a model of sovereign default. In addition to the standard present-bias vs default-risk tradeoff faced by governments when choosing debt, distortionary policy instruments introduce an intertemporal tradeoff, which may mitigate or exacerbate the incentives to accumulate debt. Taxation, the money growth rate and currency depreciation all increase with the level of debt. The model reproduces standard business cycle statistics, the response of spreads, inflation and growth to terms-of-trade shocks, and the cyclical properties of fiscal and ...
COVID-19's Economic Effects on Poor and Emerging Markets
Large amounts of liquidity are needed to deal with the economic consequences of COVID-19. How can the increased demand for liquidity be covered in poor and emerging markets?
Working Paper
Domestic Policies and Sovereign Default
This paper incorporates fiscal and monetary policies into a model of sovereign default. In addition to the standard present-bias vs default-risk tradeoff faced by governments when choosing debt, distortionary policy instruments introduce an intertemporal tradeoff, which may mitigate or exacerbate the incentives to accumulate debt. Taxation, the money growth rate and currency depreciation all increase with the level of debt. The model reproduces standard business cycle statistics, the response of spreads, inflation and growth to terms-of-trade shocks, and the cyclical properties of fiscal and ...
Working Paper
Seigniorage and Sovereign Default: The Response of Emerging Markets to COVID-19
Monetary policy affects the tradeoffs faced by governments in sovereign default models. In the absence of lump-sum taxation, governments rely on both disortionary taxes and seigniorage to finance expenditure. Furthermore, monetary policy adds a time-consistency problem in debt choice, which may mitigate or exacerbate the incentives to accumulate debt. A deterioration of the terms-of-trade leads to an increase in sovereign-default risk and inflation, and a reduction in growth, which are consistent with the empirical evidence for emerging economies. An unanticipated shock resembling the ...
Working Paper
Domestic Policies and Sovereign Default
A model with two essential elements, sovereign default and distortionary fiscal and monetary policies, explains the interaction between sovereign debt, default risk and inflation in emerging countries. We derive conditions under which monetary policy is actively used to support fiscal policy and characterize the intertemporal tradeoffs that determine the choice of debt. We show that in response to adverse shocks to the terms of trade or productivity, governments reduce debt and deficits, and increase inflation and currency depreciation rates, matching the patterns observed in the data for ...
Working Paper
Redistributive Fiscal Policies and Business Cycles in Emerging Economies
Government expenditures are pro-cyclical in emerging markets and counter-cyclical in developed economies. We show this pattern is driven by differences in social transfers. Transfers are more counter-cyclical and comprise a larger portion of spending in developed economies compared to emerging. In contrast, government expenditures on goods and services are quite similar across the two. In a small open economy model, we find disparate social transfer policies can account for more than a half of the excess volatility of consumption relative to output in emerging economies. We analyze how ...
Working Paper
The Politics of Debt in the Era of Rising Rates
We examine how the post-pandemic trajectory of risk-free rates—from historically low levels in 2020 to a steep rise in 2022—affects sovereign debt management and default risk in emerging markets (EMs). Using a dynamic political economy model, we show that weak institutional environments with political incentives to engage in corruption spending lead to over-borrowing and increased default risk, especially during low-rate periods. As rates rise, EMs face high risks of default or the need for austerity programs, depending on the severity of productivity shocks. While International Financial ...