Emilio Colombo

Davide Furceri

Pietro Pizzuto

Patrizio Tirelli

This paper investigates the role of informality in affecting the magnitude of the fiscal multiplier in a panel of 141 countries, using the local projections method. We find a strong negative relationship between the degree of informality and the size of the fiscal multiplier. This result holds irrespective of the levels of economic development and institutional quality and is robust to additional country characteristics such as trade, financial openness and exchange rate regime. In a two-sector new- Keynesian model, we rationalize this result by showing that fiscal shocks raise the relative price of official goods, shifting demand towards the informal sector. This reallocation effect increases with the level of informality, because a larger informal sector is associated with a stronger appreciation of relative prices in response to fiscal shocks. Thus, informality raises the size of the unofficial multiplier. A higher degree of non-separability between public and private goods also contributes to rationalize the lower multipliers in high-informality countries.

Fiscal Multipliers and Informality

Mr. Yan Carriere-Swallow

Melih Firat

Daniel Jimenez

We estimate how the rate of pass-through from the exchange rate to domestic prices varies across states of the economy and depending on the shocks that drive fluctuations in the exchange rate. We confirm several results from the literature and uncover new facts. Drawing on the experience of a large sample of advanced and emerging market economies over the past 30 years, we document that exchange rate pass-through significantly larger during periods of high inflation and elevated uncertainty. Using a novel identification strategy, we also show that pass-through is higher when exchange rate fluctuations are driven by U.S. monetary policy.

State-Dependent Exchange Rate Pass-Through

Mr.Haonan Qu

Ms.Aleksandra Zdzienicka

Mr.Shekhar Aiyar

Yi Ji

Mr.Romain A Duval

Daniel Garcia-Macia

Mr.John C Bluedorn

Davide Malacrino

Jesse Siminitz

Cross-country differences in economic resilience—in an economy’s ability to withstand and adjust to shocks—remain significant in the euro area. In part, the differences reflect the lack of a national nominal exchange rate as a mechanism to adjust to shocks. The IMF staff has argued that union-wide architectural changes such as the banking union, the capital markets union, and a central fiscal capacity can help foster greater international risk sharing. Yet even these changes cannot insure against all shocks. National policies thus have a vital role to play. This IMF staff discussion note analyzes how national structural policies can help euro area countries better deal with economic shocks. Using a mix of empirical and modeling approaches, the note finds that growth-enhancing reforms to labor and product market regulations, tailored to country-specific circumstances, would help individual euro area economies weather adverse shocks. Higher-quality insolvency regimes are associated with more efficient factor reallocation following a shock. The note also finds that structural and cyclical policies interact. Greater rigidities make economies more fragile, putting a higher burden on fiscal policy. This is especially true for members of a monetary union. Countries should build fiscal space in good times and tackle rigidities, reducing their need for countercyclical policies in bad times while making countercyclical policies more effective when deployed.

The Role of National Structural Reforms in Building Resilience

Strengthening the Euro Area

Ksenia Koloskova

Gustavo Adler

Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro

Sinem Kiliç Çelik

Productivity growth—the key driver of living standards—fell sharply following the global financial crisis and has remained sluggish since, adding to a slowdown already in train before. Building on new research, this note finds that the productivity slowdown reflects both crisis legacies and structural headwinds. In advanced economies, the global financial crisis has led to “productivity hysteresis”—persistent productivity losses from a seemingly temporary shock. Behind this are balance sheet vulnerabilities, protracted weak demand and elevated uncertainty, which jointly triggered an adverse feedback loop of weak investment, weak productivity and bleak income prospects. Structural headwinds—already blowing before the crisis—include a waning ICT boom and slowing technology diffusion, partly reflecting an aging workforce, slowing global trade and weaker human capital accumulation. Reviving productivity growth requires addressing remaining crisis legacies in the short run while pressing ahead with structural reforms to tackle longer-term headwinds.

Global Productivity

Gone with the Headwinds

Bin Grace Li

This paper provides new empirical evidence of the macroeconomic effects of public investment in developing economies. Using public investment forecast errors to identify unanticipated changes in public investment, the paper finds that increased public investment raises output in the short and medium term, with an average short-term fiscal multiplier of about 0.2. We find some evidence that the effects are larger: (i) during periods of slack; (ii) in economies operating with fixed exchange rate regimes; (iii) in more closed economies; (iv) in countries with lower public debt; and (v) in countries with higher investment efficiency. Finally, we show that increases in public investment tend to lower income inequality.

The Macroeconomic (and Distributional) Effects of Public Investment in Developing Economies

Ms.Stefania Fabrizio

Mrs.Sandra V Lizarazo Ruiz

Adrian Peralta-Alva

Mr.Futoshi Narita

Mr.Rodrigo Garcia-Verdu

Ms.Marina Mendes Tavares

Despite sustained economic growth and rapid poverty reductions, income inequality remains stubbornly high in many low-income developing countries. This pattern is a concern as high levels of inequality can impair the sustainability of growth and macroeconomic stability, thereby also limiting countries’ ability to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. This underscores the importance of understanding how policies aimed at boosting economic growth affect income inequality. Using empirical and modeling techniques, the note confirms that macro-structural policies aimed at raising growth payoffs in low-income developing countries can have important distributional consequences, with the impact dependent on both the design of reforms and on country-specific economic characteristics. While there is no one-size-fits-all recipe, the note explores how governments can address adverse distributional consequences of reforms by designing reform packages to make pro-growth policies also more inclusive.

Macro-Structural Policies and Income Inequality in Low-Income Developing Countries

Ernesto Crivelli

Mr.Joël Toujas-Bernate

The aim of this paper is to provide new estimates of employment-output elasticities and assess the effect of structural and macroeocnomic policies on the employment-intensity of growth. Using an unbalanced panel of 167 countries over the period 1991 - 2009, the results suggest that structural policies aimed at increasing labor and product market flexibility and reducing government size have a significant and positive impact on employment elasticities. In addition, the results also suggest that in order to maximize the positive impact on the responsiveness of employment to economic activity, structural policies have to be complemented with macroeconomic policies aimed at increasing macroeconomic stability.

Can Policies Affect Employment Intensity of Growth? A Cross-Country Analysis

Michael Ganslmeier

Mr. Jonathan David Ostry

Are policies designed to avert climate change (Climate Change Policies, or CCPs) politically costly? Using data on governmental popular support and the OECD’s Environmental Stringency Index, we find that CCPs are not necessarily politically costly: policy design matters. First, only market-based CCPs (such as emission taxes) generate negative effects on popular support. Second, the effects are muted in countries where non-green (dirty) energy is a relatively small input into production. Third, political costs are not significant when CCPs are implemented during periods of low oil prices, generous social insurance and low inequality.

Are Climate Change Policies Politically Costly?

Sangyup Choi

Mr.Prakash Loungani

Central bankers often assert that low inflation and anchoring of inflation expectations are good for economic growth (Bernanke 2007, Plosser 2007). We test this claim using panel data on sectoral growth for 22 manufacturing industries for 36 advanced and emerging market economies over the period 1990-2014. Inflation anchoring in each country is measured as the response of inflation expectations to inflation surprises (Levin et al., 2004). We find that credit constrained industries—those characterized by high external financial dependence and R&D intensity and low asset tangibility—tend to grow faster in countries with well-anchored inflation expectations. The results are robust to controlling for the interaction between these characteristics and a broad set of macroeconomic variables over the sample period, such as financial development, inflation, the size of government, overall economic growth, monetary policy counter-cyclicality and the level of inflation. Importantly, the results suggest that it is inflation anchoring and not the level of inflation per se that has a significant effect on average industry growth. Finally, the results are robust to IV techniques, using as instruments indicators of monetary policy transparency and independence.

Inflation Anchoring and Growth: Evidence from Sectoral Data

João Tovar Jalles

Until recently, China has been the leading contributor to global economic growth and—since the recent global financial crisis—a stabilizing driver of its evolution. However, as China recently began to rebalance its economy away from investment and exports and toward consumption, its GDP growth slowed significantly—partly reversing the country’s contribution to global output and trade growth—and is expected to continue to decline gradually over the medium term. There is little consensus regarding the consequences of a China’s growth slowdown for the rest of the world, with some arguing that a significant slowdown in China may have large implications and possibly lead to a worldwide recession if the “rebalancing” process is not well managed, and others suggesting that even a significant slowdown in China is unlikely to have large global effects, as its role in the world economy is still limited This note contributes to the ongoing debate by analyzing how growth shocks in China affect particular regions and country groups and how the impact and key transmission channels of these growth shocks have increased over time. It finds that historically, the average impact of growth shocks in China on global output has been statistically significant but limited, but since the early 2000s, the magnitude of spillovers has significantly increased. Trade linkages remain the main transmission channels, with larger effects for net commodity exporters and countries mostly exporting manufacturing goods. Also, spillover effects tend to be larger during periods of high global uncertainty and have been positively associated with an increase in the share of industry in total value in China, which suggests an important role of the “rebalancing” process.

New Evidence From Time-Varying Estimates

China Spillovers

Davide Furceri

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