Mr.Jonathan David Ostry

Mr.Andrew Berg

This note raises the IMF’s profile on a number of issues related to inequality, unemployment, governance, etc. It builds on earlier empirical work that examined correlations between growth downbreaks/duration of growth spells and a range of macro/policy/institutional factors. This paper is designed to be more accessible, more policy oriented, and focused squarely on the issue of inequality and the sustainability of growth. It will reference the literature that has gained prominence in the wake of the global crisis, and the possible links between the crisis and rising inequality in countries at the epicenter of the crisis. The analytical findings will also be connected to real world policy narratives in certain countries, to provide texture to the results and enhance policy relevance. The paper will argue that, based on the empirical findings, more equality in the income distribution is associated with longer-lived growth spells. Broad redistributive policies are not necessarily pro-growth, however, as these can have strong disincentive effects. The paper’s policy discussion is appropriately cautious, therefore, offering only tentative ideas, for example, active labor market policies and more attention to human capital investments designed to avoid conflicts between efficiency and equity perspectives.

Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Inequality and Unsustainable Growth

Jun I. Kim

Noting that the aftermath of the global financial crisis has left many advanced economies with very high sovereign debt ratios and some emerging markets with high debt, this report considers whether there are ways to expand fiscal space that do not involve countries paying down debt or promising to do so in the future, to make fiscal consolidation more growth-friendly. It explains that policymakers argue that their fiscal space is limited and that it would be difficult to take advantage of the opportunity of low interest rates to undertake fiscal expansion, and it considers a ways to raise fiscal space that does not require contractionary fiscal policy and whether there is a way to make fiscal consolidation more growth-friendly to produce larger gains in fiscal space. It argues that debt management policies may provide an answer to expanding fiscal space for a given path of primary fiscal balances by reducing the risk that a sovereign may default in bad states and generate a payoff in terms of reduced to real borrowing costs. It describes two debt management policies: issuance of GDP-linked debt and issuance of longer maturity bonds, as opposed to short-term debt. It focuses on the effect of these debt management policies on real borrowing costs and default risk for the sovereign and details the literature on GDP-linked debt and the maturity structure and how the report fills gaps in the literature; how uncertainty affects fiscal space and how debt management can play a role in increasing it, with estimates and simulations of potential gains in fiscal space flowing from debt management; and the sensitivity of the findings to underlying assumptions and policy implications.

The Roles of GDP-Linked Debt and Longer Maturities

Boosting Fiscal Space

Mr.Atish R. Ghosh

This paper proposes a methodology for testing whether capital flows to developing countries are determined by economic fundamentals or by purely speculative forces. We use the intertemporal optimizing approach to current account determination as our benchmark for judging the behavior of capital flows. According to this approach, capital flows should act as a buffer to smooth consumption in the face of temporary shocks to national cash flow, defined as output less investment less government expenditures. The results are encouraging. For a large sample of developing countries, economic fundamentals are indeed found to be the most important determinant of capital flows.

Do Capital Flows Reflect Economic Fundamentals in Developing Countries?

Mr.Charalambos G Tsangarides

The Fund has recognized in recent years that one cannot separate issues of economic growth and stability on one hand and equality on the other. Indeed, there is a strong case for considering inequality and an inability to sustain economic growth as two sides of the same coin. Central to the Fund’s mandate is providing advice that will enable members’ economies to grow on a sustained basis. But the Fund has rightly been cautious about recommending the use of redistributive policies given that such policies may themselves undercut economic efficiency and the prospects for sustained growth (the so-called “leaky bucket” hypothesis written about by the famous Yale economist Arthur Okun in the 1970s). This SDN follows up the previous SDN on inequality and growth by focusing on the role of redistribution. It finds that, from the perspective of the best available macroeconomic data, there is not a lot of evidence that redistribution has in fact undercut economic growth (except in extreme cases). One should be careful not to assume therefore—as Okun and others have—that there is a big tradeoff between redistribution and growth. The best available macroeconomic data do not support such a conclusion.

Mr.Jonathan David Ostry

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