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We evaluate the dynamics of a small and open economy under simple rules for alternative monetary-policy instruments, in a model with imperfectly anchored expectations. The inflation-targeting consensus indicates that interest-rate rules are preferred, instead of using either a monetary aggregate or the exchange rate as the main instrument; with arguments usually presented under rational expectations and full credibility. In contrast, we assume agents use econometric models to form inflation expectations, capturing limited credibility. In particular, we emphasize the exchange rate's role in shaping medium- and long-term inflation forecasts. We compare the dynamics after a shock to external-borrowing costs (arguably one of the most important sources of fluctuations in emerging countries) under three policy rules: a Taylor-type rule for the interest rate, a constant-growth-rate rule for monetary aggregates, and a fixed exchange rate. The analysis identifies relevant trade-offs in choosing among alternative instruments, showing that the relative merits of each of them is indeed influenced by how agents form inflation-related expectations.

We build an equilibrium model of a small open economy with labor market frictions and imperfectly enforced regulations. Heterogeneous firms sort into the formal or informal sector. We estimate the model using data from Brazil, and use counterfactual simulations to understand how trade affects economic outcomes in the presence of informality. We show the following: 1) Trade openness unambiguously decreases informality in the tradable sector but has ambiguous effects on aggregate informality. 2) The productivity gains from trade are understated when the informal sector is omitted. 3) Trade openness results in large welfare gains even when informality is repressed. 4) Repressing informality increases productivity but at the expense of employment and welfare. 5) The effects of trade on wage inequality are reversed when the informal sector is incorporated in the analysis. 6) The informal sector works as an "unemployment buffer" but not a "welfare buffer" in the event of negative economic shocks.

A DSGE (Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium) model is used to report the empirical behavior of the Argentine economy during the administration of the Cambiemos government coalition. Two main aspects have been taken into account: on the one hand, the debate on the economic policy of the 2016-2019 period, and on the other hand the requirement of microeconomic foundations that support the debate and the empirical results. Two alternative macro models are estimated obtaining statistically significant parameters to illuminate confusing aspects of the policy debate, and to help future research on modeling Argentina macro dynamics. The empirical results obtained for Argentina indicate that the small open economy models used in the state-space specification can also be useful for modeling other small open economies that suffer from Fiscal Dominance.

This paper builds a DSGE model for a small open economy (SOE) in which the central bank systematically intervenes both the domestic currency bond and the FX markets using two policy rules: a Taylor-type rule and a second rule in which the operational target is the rate of nominal currency depreciation. For this, the instruments used by the central bank (bonds and international reserves) must be included in the model, as well as the institutional arrangements that determine the total amount of resources the central bank can use. The 'corner' regimes in which only one of the policy rules is used are particular cases of the model. The model is calibrated and implemented in Dynare for 1) simple policy rules, 2) optimal simple policy rules, and 3) optimal policy under commitment. Numerical losses are obtained for ad-hoc loss functions for different sets of central bank preferences (styles). The results show that the losses are systematically lower when both policy rules are used simultaneously, and much lower for the usual preferences (in which only inflation and/or output stabilization matter). It is shown that this result is basically due to the central bank's enhanced ability, when it uses the two policy rules, to influence capital flows through the effects of its actions on the endogenous risk premium in the (risk-adjusted) interest parity equation.

This paper analyzes the impact of financial openness on the size of the government in a stochastically growing small open economy when public spending is productive and volatility-reducing using a portfolio approach. The main result of the model is that economies that are more open are associated with a smaller productive public sector. The lower risk associated with more open economies due to risk diversification implies that the government is less inclined to increase the scale of its activity to maximize welfare when productive spending is also volatility-reducing. The empirical evidence based on a sample of 16 OECD countries for the period 1970–2004 broadly supports the main results of the model, even though some results are mixed.

In a number of countries a substantial proportion of mortgage loans is denominated in foreign currency. In this paper we demonstrate how their presence affects economic policy and agents' welfare. To this end we construct a small open economy model with housing loans denominated in domestic or foreign currency. The model is calibrated for Poland - a typical small open economy with a large share of foreign currency loans (FCL). We show that FCLs negatively affect the transmission of monetary policy. In contrast, their impact on the effectiveness of macroprudential policy is much weaker but positive. We also demonstrate that FCLs increase welfare when domestic interest rate shocks prevail and decrease it when risk premium (exchange rate) shocks dominate. Under a realistic calibration of the stochastic environment FCLs are welfare reducing. Finally, we show that regulatory policies that correct the share of FCLs may cause a short term slowdown.

The recent debt crises in Europe and the U.S. states feature similar sharp increases in spreads on government debt but also show important differences. In Europe, the crisis occurred at high government indebtedness levels and had spillovers to the private sector. In the United States, state government indebtedness was low, and the crisis had no spillovers to the private sector. We show theoretically and empirically that these different debt experiences result from the interplay between differences in the ability of governments to interfere in private external debt contracts and differences in the flexibility of state fiscal institutions.

This paper determines the relative importance of technical efficiency and reallocation for aggregate productivity growth in a small open European economy. To this end we use a dataset containing all Belgian firms active in the private sector, both services and manufacturing. We observe at the firm level a number of factors that have been shown to be drivers of productivity differences across firms. More precisely, we have information on human capital such as the level of education and the amount of on-the-job training received by the employees. Moreover we observe the international activities of the firms such as imports and exports. This allows us to make a careful analysis of the micro foundations of aggregate productivity growth by applying the decomposition introduced by Petrin and Levinsohn (2012). The outcome of this exercise will not only provide us with a better understanding of the slowdown of productivity growth in Europe over the past decades, but also give an indication on the role of different productivity drivers in this process.

In this paper we analyse to what extent the Nordic economies are vulnerable to external shocks. Specifically, we assess the conventional wisdom that the Nordic countries are small open economies that are significantly engaged in international trade, specialised in only few specific industries and, as a consequence, extremely dependent on the competiveness of their tradable sector and exposed to external shocks. To study this conventional wisdom, we employ a comprehensive set of indicators about trade openness, specialisation and vulnerability. While we do find that the Nordic countries are open economies, though not to an exceptional degree, we also find significant heterogeneity across these countries with respect to their vulnerability.

This paper studies the effects of discretionary fiscal policy shocks under different exchange rate regimes within a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model. We first suggest that by estimating the effects of fiscal policy shocks in two structurally similar small open economies that have opted for different monetary policy regimes (Finland and Sweden), we may control for the economic environment and study the effect of exchange rate regime on fiscal policy transmission. Second, we propose to augment the baseline model with quarterly fiscal forecasts and study fiscal policy shocks under fiscal foresight, i.e., when economic agents may anticipate and respond to fiscal policy measures prior to their implementation. Our findings suggests that discretionary fiscal policy is more effective under a fixed exchange rate regime than under a floating exchange rate regime. This is consistent with the conventional wisdom inherited from the Mundell-Fleming framework and with recent evidence that suggests the effectiveness of fiscal policy depends on the degree of monetary policy accommodation. We also find evidence that unanticipated (as opposed to standard SVAR) fiscal policy shocks have a larger expansionary effect on output than in the baseline.

While the impact of exchange rate changes on economic growth has long been an issue of key importance in international macroeconomics, it has received renewed attention in recent years, owing to weaker growth rates and the debate on "currency wars". However, in spite of its prevalence in the policy debate, the connection between real exchange rates and growth remains an unsettled question in the academic literature. We fill this gap by providing an empirical assessment based on a broad sample of emerging and advanced economies. We assess the impact of appreciations, productivity booms and capital flow surges using a propensity-score matching approach to address causality issues. We show that appreciations associated with higher productivity have a larger impact on growth than a ppreciations associated with capital inflows. Furthermore, the appreciation per se tends to have a negative impact on growth. We provide a simple theoretical model that delivers the contrasted growth-appreciation pattern depending on the underlying shock. The model also implies adverse effects of shocks to international capital flows, so concerns about an appreciation are not inconsistent with concerns a bout a depreciation. The presence of an externality through firms´ destruction leads to inefficient allocations. Nonetheless, addressing them does not require a dampening of exchange rate movements.

In this paper we study the incentives for basic-research investments by governments in a globalized world. For this purpose, we develop a two-country Schumpeterian growth model in which each country chooses its basic-research investments. We find that a country’s basic-research investments increase with the country’s level of human capital and decline with its ownmarket size. This may explain the large basic-research investments by small open economies. Compared with the optimal investments achievable when countries coordinate their basic-research policies, a single country may over-invest in basic research. However, in the decentralized case the total amount of basic-research investments is always below the socially optimal investment level, which justifies policy coordination in this area., Economics Working Paper Series, 13/175

This paper builds a model of sovereign debt in which default risk, interest rates, and debt depend not only on current fundamentals but also on news about future fundamentals. News shocks affect equilibrium outcomes because they contain information about the likelihood that the government repays its debt in the future. First, in the model with news shocks not all defaults occur in bad times, bringing the model closer to the data. Second, the news shocks help account for key differences between developing and more developed economies: as the precision of news improves, the model predicts lower variability of consumption, less countercyclical trade balance and interest rate spreads, as well as a higher level of debt more in line with the characteristics of more developed economies. Third, the model also captures the hump-shaped relationship between default rates and the precision of news obtained from the data. Finally, the news shocks have a nonmonotonic effect on the welfare.

This paper builds a DSGE model for a SOE in which the central bank systematically intervenes both the domestic currency bond and the FX markets using two policy rules: a Taylor-type rule and a second rule in which the operational target is the rate of nominal currency depreciation. For this, the instruments used by the central bank (bonds and international reserves) must be included in the model, as well as the institutional arrangements that determine the total amount of resources the central bank can use. The 'corner' regimes in which only one of the policy rules is used are particular cases of the model. The model is calibrated and implemented in Dynare for 1) simple policy rules, 2) optimal simple policy rules, and 3) optimal policy under commitment. Numerical losses are obtained for ad-hoc loss functions for different sets of central bank preferences (styles). The results show that the losses are systematically lower when both policy rules are used simultaneously, and much lower for the usual preferences (in which only inflation and/or output stabilization matter). It is shown that this result is basically due to the central bank's enhanced ability, when it uses the two policy rules, to influence capital flows through the effects of its actions on the endogenous risk premium in the (risk-adjusted) interest parity equation.

I provide a framework for understanding debt deleveraging in a group of _nancially integrated countries. During an episode of international deleveraging world consumption demand is depressed and the world interest rate is low, reecting a high propensity to save. If exchange rates are allowed to oat, deleveraging countries can depreciate their nominal exchange rate to increase production and mitigate the fall in consumption associated with debt reduction. The key insight of the paper is that in a monetary union this channel of adjustment is shut o_, and therefore the falls in consumption demand and in the world interest rate are ampli_ed. Hence, monetary unions are especially prone to hit the zero lower bound on the nominal interest rate and enter a liquidity trap during deleveraging. In a liquidity trap deleveraging gives rise to a union-wide recession, which is particularly severe in high-debt countries. The model suggests several policy interventions that mitigate the negative impact of deleveraging on output in monetary unions.

This thesis consists of an introductory chapter and three essays, all of which aim to study the functioning of a small open economy. The thesis starts with an investigation of export and import price determination and moves to a small open economy DSGE model framework in order to study the role of financial factors in economic fluctuations. In all three essays, theoretical small open economy models are used for quantitative analysis of the small open economy of Finland. The first essay develops a model for aggregate trade price inflation that takes into account two price setting conventions: local currency pricing (LCP) and producer currency pricing (PCP). In our empirical work, we confront our model with Finnish data and estimate the relative shares of LCP and PCP firms in the economy. In the estimation period 1980 1998, the share of local currency pricing was 40 percent in the export sector and 60 percent in the import sector, implying a limited pass-through from exchange rate to destination-country prices in both sectors. The second essay builds a small open economy DSGE model with the BGG financial accelerator and financial market shocks. In our empirical work covering the period 1995 2008, we provide evidence of an operative financial accelerator in Finland. The financial accelerator acts as an amplifying mechanism for many disturbances hitting the Finnish economy. Our main result is that financial market disturbances have contributed significantly to Finnish cyclical fluctuations between 1995 and 2008. Even allowing for several shocks stemming from both domestic sources and the international economy, domestic financial market shocks emerge as key drivers of recent business cycle fluctuations in Finland. The third essay studies the boom-bust period in Finland in the late 1980s and early 1990s, focusing on the role of financial factors and investment behaviour. We construct a small open economy DSGE model with the BGG financial accelerator and an unconventional shock structure that captures the key events of the episode. In this model framework, we study the role of financial market deregulation in the boom, the negative impact of the collapse of Soviet-Finnish trade in 1991, and the effect of the collapse of the fixed exchange rate regime in 1992. We argue that the financial accelerator mechanism is a key amplifying mechanism that helps the model to match, in particular, the large and persistent swings of investment first above and later below its trend. This essay demonstrates that the shocks Finland encountered combined with financial frictions are able to produce a boom and a severe depression, matching key salient features of the actual boom-bust cycle experienced in Finland in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Väitöskirja koostuu johdannosta ja kolmesta tutkimusluvusta, joiden tutkimuskohteena on pienen avoimen talouden toiminta. Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan ensin vienti- ja tuontihintojen määräytymistä, minkä jälkeen tarkastellaan rahoitustekijöiden merkitystä reaalitalouden vaihteluissa. Kaikissa kolmessa tutkimusluvussa teoreettisia pientä avotaloutta kuvaavia malleja käytetään Suomen talouskehityksen kvantitatiiviseen analyysiin. Ensimmäisessä tutkimusluvussa kehitetään kansainvälisesti kaupattavien hyödykkeiden inflaatiokehitystä kuvaava malli, jossa ulkomaankaupan hinnat voivat olla jäykkiä joko ostajan valuutassa (hinnoittelu paikallisen valuutan määräisenä) tai myyjän valuutassa (hinnoittelu tuottajan valuutan määräisenä). Empiirisessä työssä estimoidaan Suomen tilastotietoja käyttäen ostajan ja myyjän valuutassa hinnoittelevien yritysten suhteellinen osuus taloudessa. Estimointiajanjaksona 1980 1998 ostajan valuutassa hinnoittelevien yritysten estimoitu osuus oli 40 % vientisektorilla ja 60 % tuontisektorilla. Näin ollen valuuttakurssin läpimeno kohdemaan tuontihintoihin oli estimointiajanjaksolla epätäydellinen sekä vienti- että tuontisektorilla. Toisessa tutkimusluvussa rakennetaan pienen avotalouden makromalli, jossa rahoitusmarkkinoiden toiminta vaikuttaa reaalitalouteen erityisesti investointien kautta. Ajanjaksoa 1995-2008 koskevien tulosten mukaan Suomen taloudessa toimii ns. rahoitusakseleraattori, jonka takia investointeja varten tarvittavan ulkoisen rahoituksen hinta riippuu lainanottajien taseiden vahvuudesta. Rahoitusakseleraattori voimistaa monien Suomen talouteen kohdistuvien sokkien vaikutuksia. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa osoitetaan, että yllättävät muutokset lainanottajien rahoituskustannuksissa (ns. rahoitusmarkkinasokit) selittävät suuren osan investointien ja sitä kautta kokonaistuotannon suhdannevaihteluista Suomessa vuosina 1995-2008. Kolmannessa tutkimusluvussa tutkitaan Suomen talouden ylikuumenemista 1980-luvun lopulla sekä 1990-luvun alun lamaa keskittymällä erityisesti rahoitustekijöiden ja investointien merkitykseen. Työssä rakennetaan pienen avotalouden makromalli, jossa on rahoitusakseleraattori sekä sokkirakenne, joka formalisoi aikakauden keskeiset tapahtumat. Tässä mallikehikossa arvioidaan rahoitusmarkkinoiden vapauttamisen merkitystä 1980-luvun talouden ylikuumenemisessa, vuoden 1991 Suomen Neuvostoliiton-kaupan romahduksen epäsuotuisia vaikutuksia sekä vuoden 1992 kiinteästä valuuttakurssijärjestelmästä luopumisen vaikutuksia. Keskeinen tutkimustulos on, että rahoitusakseleraattorilla on tärkeä sokkien seurauksia voimistava vaikutus, mikä auttaa mallia toistamaan erityisesti investointien suuret ja pitkäaikaiset vaihtelut trendinsä ylä- ja alapuolelle. Tässä tutkimusluvussa osoitetaan, että Suomeen kohdistuneet sokit yhdistettynä rahoitustekijöihin pystyvät aikaansaamaan talouden ylikuumenemisen ja syvän laman ja toistamaan Suomen 1980-luvun lopun ja 1990-luvun alun toteutuneen talouskehityksen keskeiset piirteet.

In this paper we present an analysis of the impact of the great recession of the years 2008 and 2009 on the Austrian economy. For this purpose, we utilize the new estimated DSGE model of the OeNB for the Austrian economy within the Euro area. This model is a small open-economy version of Smets & Wouters (2003), where the domestic economy is linked to a highly stylized representation of the rest of the Euro area via trade and financial flows. The model identifies foreign demand and confidence shocks as the main transmission channels. Moreover the risk premium shock contributed significantly to the downturn of the Austrian economy. In contrast price shocks (price markup and raw material shocks) were supportive throughout the crisis. The strong resilience of the Austrian labour market during the crisis and the subsequent upswing is reected in a series of negative technology shocks.

This article reconsiders the role of dividend taxation and its effect on the cost of capital of small firms. Using a simple portfolio model for small open economies, we show that a decrease in dividend taxes on large companies unambiguously increases the required rate of return for small companies. A dividend tax cut for both, large and small companies may however lead to the counter-intuitive result of increasing cost of capital for small firms. For different small open economies, we further provide statistics on the correlation between the return of large and small firms that drives the counter-intuitive result. Our results suggest that mitigating payout taxes in small open economies can have ambiguous effects on the cost of capital of small, domestically owned firms. This is particularly relevant when tax reforms are designed to stimulate investments by small firms scarce in internal funds.

We sketch a model that shows how skill-biased technological change may reverse the classic Balassa-Samuelson effect, leading to a negative relationship between productivity in the tradable sector and the real exchange rate. In a small open economy, export goods are produced with high-skilled labor, in conjunction with capital and low-skilled labor, and are traded for imported consumption goods. Non-tradable services are produced with low-skilled labor only. A rise in the productivity of capital has two effects: (1) It may reduce the demand for labor in the tradable sector if the substitutability of low-skilled labor and capital in the tradable sector is high; and (2) it increases the demand for non-tradables and associated labor input. Overall demand for low-skilled labor declines if the labor force of the tradable sector is large relative to the labor force of the non-tradable sector. This leads to lower wages and thus to lower prices and real exchange rate depreciation.

Empirical evidence shows that sovereign defaults are associated with significant downturns in economic activity in defaulting countries. However, the existing literature on sovereign debt and default mainly analyzes endowment economies and, therefore, does not address the relationship between default risk and macroeconomic dynamics. This paper develops a general equilibrium small open economy model with financial frictions that allows to simultaneously examine the behavior of output, investment and borrowing dynamics and its interaction with sovereign default. When calibrated to match the business cycles properties of an average emerging market economy, the model is able to reproduce the countercyclicality of net exports and sovereign spreads and the negative correlation between investment and net exports observed in the data. Furthermore, when analyzing its behavior around sovereign default, the model successfully captures the declines in output, consumption and investment that are actually associated with these episodes.

This paper examines the optimal entry policy towards oligopoly in a globalized world. In an open economy free entry is socially suboptimal, but corrective tax policy to curb entry proves insufficient unless internationally harmonized. Thus, while conferring the gains from trade, globalization prevents countries from pursuing the optimal entry policy. When countries are small, the gains from trade dominate the losses from a suboptimal entry policy, but as markets grow the result is reversed, making trade inferior to autarky. Therefore, the need for tax harmonization grows as the world economy grows. This paper also contributes to the international tax competition literature through the discovery of the reverse home market effect.

In the last decades, international trade has increased between industrialised countries and between high- and low-wage countries. This important change has raised questions on how international trade affects the labour market. In this spirit, this paper aims to investigate the impact of international trade on wage dispersion in a small open economy. It is one of the few to: i) use detailed matched employer-employee data to compute industry wage premia and disaggregated industry level panel data to examine the impact of changes in international trade on changes in wage differentials, ii) simultaneously analyse both imports and exports, and iii) examine the impact of imports according to the country of origin. Looking at the export side, we find (on the basis of the system GMM estimator) a positive effect of exports on industry wage premia. The results also show that import penetration has a significant and negative impact on industry wage differentials whatever the country of origin. However, the country of origin appears to matter quite a lot. Indeed, the detrimental effect of imports on wages is found to be significantly bigger when the latter come from low-income countries than from high-income countries., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

The paper develops a simple general equilibrium framework for calculating the marginal deadweight loss from taxation in a small open economy. The framework allows a decomposition of the deadweight loss from each tax instrument into the losses stemming from the contraction of the different tax bases. The paper describes a method of calibrating the model which exploits the links between the various factor supply elasticities implied by the standard life cycle model. It also develops a method of estimating effective tax rates that is consistent with optimising household and firm behaviour. To illustrate how the model works, it is calibrated to a data set for Sweden. The quantitative results highlight the importance of accounting for the interaction between the major tax bases when estimating deadweight loss.

In an article in International Tax and Public Finance, Peter Birch Sørensen (2005) gives an in-depth account of the new Norwegian Shareholder Tax, which allows the shareholders a deduction for an imputed risk-free rate of return. Sørensen's positive evaluation appears as reasonable for a closed economy where the deduction for the imputed return is capitalized into the market prices of corporate shares. We show that in a small open economy where no capitalization occurs, the Norwegian shareholder tax is likely to leave the distortions caused by the corporate income tax unaffected, and to add new distortions to shareholders' portfolio decisions.

We study the optimal combination of corporate tax rate and tax base in a model of a small open economy with heterogeneous firms. We show that it is optimal for the small country's government to effectively subsidize capital inputs by granting a tax allowance in excess of the true costs of capital. Economic integration reduces the optimal capital subsidy and drives low-productivity firms from the small country's home market, replacing them with high-productivity exporters from abroad. This endogenous policy response creates a selection effect that increases the average productivity of home firms when trade barriers fall, in addition to the well-known direct effects.

We examine monetary policy options for a small open economy where sovereign default might occur due to intertemporal insolvency. Under interest rate policy and floating exchange rates the equilibrium is indetermined. Under a fixed exchange rate the equilibrium is uniquely determined and independent of sovereign default., Discussion Paper / SFB 823 ; 07/2011

This paper simulates the impact of a short-term shock originating from the global financial system on small open economies in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The simulation uses empirically estimated general equilibrium models for Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. The study finds that the impact of a pure international financial shock on aggregate domestic price inflation and on output gap for each of the four ASEAN countries tends to be relatively small but long-lasting, placing challenges in the medium- to long-term management of economic volatility.

This study investigates the implications of risk premium shocks for aggregate fluctuations in a small open economy with financial and informational frictions. A dynamic, stochastic, general equilibrium framework is developed, where the informational asymmetries among the agents in the model and the uncertainty in the production process necessitate financial intermediation in the economy. The Holmstrom-Tirole type of uncertainty in the production process also leads to collateralized borrowing by firms, with the physical capital stock of firms serving as the collateral as well as the factor of production. There is also a government sector in the economy that borrows domestically with a partial default risk. In order to compensate the lenders for the default risk included in the government bonds, the government has to offer them some risk premium in addition to the exogenously given world interest rate offered by the foreign bond issuers. It is shown that, under certain circumstances, it is possible for the government to reduce its debt and increase its spending in response to a positive, temporary risk premium shock.

This paper contributes to the literature by documenting labor income share fluctuations in emerging economies and proposing an explanation for them. We show that emerging markets differ from developed markets in terms of changes in the labor share over the business cycle. Labor share is more volatile in emerging markets and is pro-cyclical with output, especially in countries facing counter-cyclical interest rates. On the contrary, labor share in developed markets is more stable and slightly counter-cyclical with output. A frictionless RBC model cannot account for these facts. We introduce working capital into an RBC model, which generates liquidity need for labor payments. The main result is that the behavior of the cost of borrowing along with working capital mechanisms can predict the right sign of the comovement between labor share and output, and can partly be responsible for the volatility of labor share. We also show that imperfect financial markets in the form of credit restrictions not only amplify the results for the variability of labor share but also help better explain some of the striking business cycle regularities in emerging markets such as strongly pro-cyclical investment and counter-cyclical net exports.

This paper assesses the role of sovereign risk in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations in Turkey. We estimate two versions of a simple New Keynesian small open economy model on quarterly data for the period 1994Q3-2008Q2: A basic version and a version augmented by a default premium on government debt due to a perceived risk of sovereign debt default. Model comparisons clearly support the augmented version since it leads to stronger internal propagation and hence smaller shocks are required in order to reconcile the observed dynamics of nominal and real variables, leading to better forecasting performance. The estimated default probability is highly debt-elastic, indicating that default fears are a relevant concern. The results suggest that the augmented model may lead to a better understanding of macroeconomic fluctuations in emerging market economies that are subject to sovereign risk. In terms of policy implications, counterfactual experiments show that both more active monetary policy and stronger fiscal feedbacks from debt on taxes can lead to less volatile inflation and debt dynamics, but higher debt feedbacks on taxation additionally reduce expected default rates. JEL classification: E10; E30; E63; H30, Discussion Paper / SFB 823 ; 49/2010

We provide an analysis of the 2008-2009 trade collapse using microdata from a small open economy, Belgium. First, we find that changes in firm-country-product exports and imports occurred mostly at the intensive margin: the number of firms, the average number of destination and origin markets per firm, and the average number of products per market changed only very little. Second, econometric analysis reveals some composition effects in the intensive margin fall along firm, product and country characteristics. The most important factor explaining changes in exports is the destination country's growth rate of GDP. Had growth rates in 2008-2009 been the same as in 2007-2008, Belgian exports would have fallen by about 57% less than what we observe. Trade in consumer durables and capital goods fell more severely than trade in other product categories, which explains another 22% of the observed fall. Financial variables and involvement in global value chains have some explanatory power on the exports and imports fall respectively, but appear to have affected domestic operations in equal proportion. More generally, exports-to-turnover and imports-to-intermediates ratios at the firm level did neither systematically decrease nor reveal strong firm- or sector-specific patterns. Overall, our results point to a demand-side explanation: the fall in trade was mostly driven by the fall in economic activity. It is not a trade crisis - just a trade collapse.

This paper uses the EAGLE, a multi-country dynamic general equilibrium model, to illustrate dynamic adjustments in a small open economy undergoing real convergence. We consider the effects of productivity catch-up and misperceptions about future productivity developments. Our results indicate that even if real convergence takes the form of a gradual process, the dynamic responses of key macrovariables can be far from smooth. We also find that overly optimistic expectations about productivity shifts can generate sizable boom-bust cycles and so be relevant in accounting for cyclical deviations from a sustainable real convergence path. Our comparisons across alternative monetary regimes reveal that a flexible exchange rate helps to smooth real convergence processes and misperceptions associated with tradable sector productivity, while the opposite usually holds true for scenarios based on nontradable sector developments.

The curse of dimensionality, a problem associated with analyzing the interaction of a relatively large number of endogenous macroeconomic variables, is a prevailing issue in the open economy macro literature. The most common practise to mitigate this problem is to apply the so-called Small Open Economy Framework (SOEF). In this paper, we aim to review under which conditions the SOEF is a justifiable approximation and how severe the consequences of violation of key conditions might be. Thereby, we use a multicountry general equilibrium model as a laboratory. First, we derive the conditions that ensure the existence of the equilibrium and study the properties of the equilibrium using large N asymptotics. Second, we show that the SOEF is a valid approximation only for economies (i) that have a diversified foreign trade structure and if (ii) there is no globally dominant economy in the system. Third, we illustrate that macroeconomic interdependence is primarily related to the degree of trade diversification, and not to the extent of trade openness. Furthermore, we provide some evidence on the pattern of global macroeconomic interdependence by calculating probability impulse response functions in our calibrated multicountry model using data for 153 economies.

Rational expectations model for simulation (REMS) is a state-of-the-art DynamicStochastic General Equilibrium model (DSGE model) of the kind used in many pol-icy institutions throughout the world. It shares a number of common features withstandard models along this line of research, but also displays a number of specificfeatures that makes it appealing for fiscal policy simulations. Indeed, among otherparticular features REMS encompasses: (i) a wider coverage of fiscal variables thanin standard DSGE models, and (ii) a labour market specified along the lines of the“search”framework.WhileIthinkthatthemodelis,ingeneral,arelevantcontributionto the literature, in my discussion I will hinge upon some weaknesses and problemswith the modelling approach and the interpretation of the results that can be identified.For the sake of brevity I will focus on just a few points, grouped in two blocks. First, Iwill comment on non-standard features of REMS, as any critique to features standardin the relevant literature will make no justice to this particular model. Second, I willdiscuss some additional issues.

The paper holds that the country risk premium is the triggering factor of the business cycle in a small, financially open and highly volatile economy like that of Argentina. A rise of the premium determines a capital outflow, an aggregate demand contraction and a recession; a fall of the premium determines a capital inflow, an aggregate demand expansion and a boom. We build a model where country risk plays a central role in macroeconomic equilibrium. We evaluate the empirical relationship between country risk and GDP, consumption, investment, and the current account balance. We compare our country-risk model with those of various schools of macroeconomic thought. Main conclusions are: a) Country-risk perceptions of foreign and local investors determine the fraction of world income they like to spend in the small country and the country's GDP adjusts passively to that fraction. b) Country risk causes a sort of labor unemployment that resembles involuntary unemployment. c) Openness softens the impact of a rise in country risk. d) Argentine time series for the period 1985-97 show a strong negative correlation between country risk and those aggregate variables, with causality going from the former to the latter.

A highly skilled immigration can be growth enhancing if the positive contribution of the imported brains to the host economy's human capital stock outweighs the immigration-induced adverse effect on educational incentives for natives, or growth depleting if the latter effect dominates.

This paper develops a theory in which households prepare for future education by adjusting the number of children they intend to raise. Income inequality lowers output per worker only if the inequality is attributed in some part to unexpected disturbances after childbirth.

This paper attempts at characterising South Korean monetary policy in the period of explicit inflation targeting started in 1999. We explain Korean interest rates in relation to an estimated macro-model, assuming that monetary policy is set optimally. This allows us to obtain the central bank’s parameters in the policy objective function. During the IT regime, the data support that the Bank of Korea pursued optimal policy geared towards achieving price stability, with the degree of interest rate smoothing being estimated to be considerable. In addition, the central bank loss function is estimated to include negligible weights on output and exchange rate variability.

This paper studies the transmission of shocks and the trade-offs between stabilizing CPI inflation and alternative measures of the output gap in Ramses, the Riksbank's empirical dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of a small open economy. The main results are, first, that the transmission of shocks depends substantially on the conduct of monetary policy, and second, that the trade-off between stabilizing CPI inflation and the output gap strongly depends on which concept of potential output in the output gap between output and potential output is used in the loss function. If potential output is defined as a smooth trend this trade-off is much more pronounced compared to the case when potential output is defined as the output level that would prevail if prices and wages were flexible.

This paper discusses the choice of an optimal external anchor for oil exporting economies, using optimum currency area criteria and simulations of a simple model of a small open economy pegging to a basket of two currencies. Oil exporting countries - in particular those of the Gulf Cooperation Council - satisfy a number of key optimum currency area criteria to adopt a peg. However, direction of trade and synchronisation of business cycle of oil exporters suggest that there is no single "ideal" external anchor among the major international currencies. Model simulations - parameterised for an oil exporting economy - indicate that a currency basket is generally preferable to a single currency peg, especially when some weight is placed by the policy maker on output stabilisation. Only when inflation becomes the only policy objective and external trade is mostly conducted in one currency that a peg to a single currency becomes optimal.

This paper aims to address the issue of public pension reforms under demographic ageing that is likely to occur in Europe over the next 50 years. Three possible scenarios are analysed in a Blanchard OLG framework. These include: i) a decrease both in public pensions and the lump sum labour income tax, ii) a decrease both in public pensions and the distortionary corporate tax, iii) an increase in the retirement age. The analysis focuses on the effects of these fiscal policies on key economic variables such as consumption, private and public debt, output and wages. Quantitative experiments assess the impact of different fiscal policies in terms of public debt sustainability but most importantly suggest policies that smooth the transition of the economy to the new equilibrium. The main results suggest that the adverse effects of pension reforms on consumption are moderated when they are accompanied by appropriate taxation policies. In particular, when the tax response is rapid most of the adverse movement in consumption is avoided while public and national debt reach lower equilibrium levels.

The paper addresses two related issues: the optimal intergenerational sharing of laborproductivity risks, through a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) social security, and the mix ofPAYG and savings for retirement provision in a small open economy. It shows that partial contingency of the social security on the stochastic labor productivity is ex ante optimal,when the interest rate is above the expected growth rate of the economy and when thegovernment has a lifetime perspective of the risk exposure. The paper also provides acondition for partial displacement of savings by the PAYG, which is in line with vastempirical evidence.

This paper studies stabilisation policies in a multi-country currency union of small open economies. It abstracts from key factors favouring currency union formation, such as reduced transaction costs and enhanced credibility, which are exogenous to the factors studied here. Demand-side shocks hamper monetary union stabilisation unless members face identical output-inflation tradeoffs and their business cycles are perfectly synchronised. Under supply shocks, welfare implications from joining a currency union are less clear cut. In particular, when these shocks are common across participating countries a tradeoff arises whereby the latter benefit if they are relatively open but are at a disadvantage in case they are of small size. Monetary-fiscal interaction leads to a free rider problem, with area-wide supply shocks eliciting higher interest rate variability. Compared with the case of real wage rigidity, increased real wage flexibility mitigates the free rider problem. Higher trade union decentralisation overall favours a currency union. The present multi-country currency union setup should not be seen as an attempt at settling the sharp differences that exist in the literature. Our model could be modified in order to derive results that are valid in more realistic environments. These include the analysis of public debt considerations in the case of fiscal policies, and both institutional and (further) macroeconomic aspects in the area of wage determination.

In this paper, we provide evidence on the nature and the relative importance of domestic and foreign shocks in Slovak economy based on block-restriction vector autoregression model in 1999-2007. We document well-functioning monetary transmission mechanism in Slovakia. Subject to various sensitivity checks, we find that contractionary monetary policy shock has a temporary negative effect on the degree of economic activity and price level. We find that using output gap instead of GDP alleviates the price puzzle. In general, prices are driven mainly by foreign factors and the European Central Bank monetary policy shock on Slovak prices is more powerful than that of the National Bank of Slovakia. Slovak central bank interest rate policy seems to follow the ECB's interest rates. On the other hand, spectacular Slovak economic growth is primarily driven by domestic factors suggesting the positive role of recently undertaken Slovak economic reforms.

We study the transmission of monetary shocks and monetary policy with a behavioral model, corrected for potential misspecification using the DSGE-VAR framework elaborated by DelNegro and Schorfheide (2004). In particular, we investigate if the central bank should react to movements in the nominal exchange rate. We contribute to the empirical literature as we use Swiss data, which is very rarely used in that context.

Which are the main frictions and driving forces of business cycle dynamics in a small open economy? To answer this question we extend what is becoming the standard new Keynesian model in three dimensions. First, we incorporate frictions in the financing of the capital stock. Second, we model employment frictions in the labor market using a search and matching framework, allowing for endogenous job separations. Third, we extend the model into a small open economy setting. We estimate the model using Bayesian techniques on Swedish data. Our main results are: i) A financial shock to entrepreneurial wealth is pivotal for explaining business cycle fluctuations accounting for substantial amounts of the variance in investment and GDP. ii) The marginal efficiency of investment shock has very limited importance when we match financial market data. iii) Our model does not need any high frequency wage markup shocks to match the data. Furthermore, the labor supply shock is unimportant in explaining GDP. iv) The data indicates that there are costs of hiring, but no costs of vacancy postings per se.

Since the introduction of the euro in January 1999, exchange rate stability at the periphery of the euro area is growing. The paper investigates the impact of exchange rate stability on growth for a sample of 41 mostly small open economies at the EMU periphery. It identifies international trade, international capital flows and macroeconomic stability as important transmission channels from exchange rate stability to more growth. It is argued that fixed exchange rates provide a more stable framework for the adjustment of asset and labour markets of countries in the economic catchup process thereby accelerating growth. Panel estimations reveal a robust negative relationship between exchange rate volatility and growth for countries in the economic catch-up process with open capital accounts.

This paper develops a flexible price, two-sector nominal growth model, in order to study the role of the exchange rate regime in capital accumulation (convergence). We adopt a standard model of a small open economy with traded and nontraded goods, and enrich its structure with costly investment and a preference for real money holdings. We find that (i) the choice of exchange rate regime influences the transition dynamics of a small open economy, (ii) a one-sector model does not adequately capture the channels through which the nominal side interacts with real variables, and (iii) as a consequence, sectoral asymmetries are important for understanding the effects of the exchange rate regime on capital accumulation.

This paper studies the effects and the transmission mechanism of unexpected monetary policy shocks in an open economy setting within the context of a VAR frame- work. It considers an economy with two sectors, a tradable sector and a non-tradable sector. For a given country, economic sectors are defined according to the proportion of output that is exported to other countries. This paper departs from the standard literature in that it tries to isolate the differential effects that monetary policy shocks may have on these two distinct sectors of the economy. The results show that the behavior of these two sectors varies whithin a country, with the tradable sector showing a higher degree of responsiveness to policy shocks than the non-tradable. This result is robust across the different countries in the sample and for a synthetic aggregate. The evidence presented gives an indication that industrial structure may be an important component for the analysis of monetary policy.