Browse

You are looking at 161 - 170 of 23,646 items for

  • Type: Journal Issue x
Clear All Modify Search
Mr. Serhan Cevik
This paper uses an augmented gravity model framework to investigate the historical impact of infectious diseases on international tourism and develops an out-of-sample prediction model. Using bilateral tourism flows among 38,184 pairs of countries during the period 1995–2017, I compare the forecasting performance of alternative specifications and estimation methods. These computations confirm the statistical and economic significance of infectious-disease episodes in forecasting international tourism flows. Including infectious diseases in the model improves forecast accuracy by an average of 4.5 percent and as much as 7 percent relative to the standard gravity model. The magnitude of these effects, however, is likely to be much greater in the case of COVID-19, which is a highly contagious virus that has spread fast throughout populations across the world.
Antoine Cornevin
,
Mr. Juan C Flores
, and
Juan Pablo Angel
This paper provides new empirical evidence on tax buoyancy (tax revenues responsiveness to changes in economic activity) over the period 1990-2020 using a large panel of 185 countries. This study compares short-term and long-term buoyancy coefficients for total tax revenues and different individual taxes by reviewing and contrasting a range of estimators. Our results broadly confirm the main body of the literature on long-term buoyancy hovering around one. We find evidence of lower estimates for short-term buoyancy relative to previous literature, suggesting a limited automatic stabilization power of taxes. As a robustness exercise, in addition to changes in tax rates, we introduce novel control variables for tax exemptions and bases to disentangle discretionary from automatic tax revenue changes. The marginal changes in the results when controlling for policy actions suggest that, on average, the economic cycle does not necessarily influence tax reforms.
Vybhavi Balasundharam
,
Olivier Basdevant
,
Dalmacio Benicio
,
Andrew Ceber
,
Yujin Kim
,
Luca Mazzone
,
Hoda Selim
, and
Yongzheng Yang
Surges in public debt in many countries since the COVID-19 pandemic have rekindled interest in fiscal consolidations, which often entail difficult policy choices in the face of economic and political constraints. This paper presents findings from a survey of the literature on fiscal consolidations, focusing on the pre-existing conditions, impact and design aspects of past consolidation episodes. These findings provide insight into factors that influence the chance of successful consolidations, their growth and distributional impact, the pace, phasing, duration and policy mix of reforms to mitigate the impact, and the role of fiscal institutions and capacity development in successful consolidations.
Apoorv Bhargava
,
Romain Bouis
,
Annamaria Kokenyne
,
Manuel Perez-Archila
,
Umang Rawat
, and
Ms. Ratna Sahay
This paper provides an analysis of the use and effects of capital controls in 27 AEs and EMDEs which experienced at least one financial crisis between 1995 and 2017. Countries often turn to using capital controls in crisis: some ease inflow controls while others tighten controls on outflows. A key finding is that countries with pervasive controls before the start of the crisis are shielded compared to countries with more open capital accounts, which see a significant decline in capital flows during crises. In contrast, the effectiveness of capital controls introduced during crises appears to be weak and difficult to identify. There is also some evidence that the introduction of outflow controls during crises is negatively associated with sovereign debt ratings, but that investors may actually forgive with time.
Mr. Sakai Ando
,
Mr. Giovanni Dell'Ariccia
,
Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas
,
Guido Lorenzoni
,
Adrian Peralta
, and
Mr. Francisco Roch
This paper explores the feasibility of an idea proposed first by the German Council of Economic Experts in 2011 and revisited by Italian and French authorities in 2021: the one-off mutualization of some European legacy debt through the creation of a European Debt Management Agency (EDMA). The paper does not argue in favor or against these proposals or make a proposal of its own. Rather it outlines a conceptual framework that can be used to quantify the contours of mutualization proposals and draws lessons from the debt assumption in the United States in 1790. The framework suggests that by capitalizing the convenience yield on European-wide safe assets, the EDMA could issue up to 15 percent of euro area GDP, helping to put national debts on a sounder trajectory. The analysis suggests that, without mutualization, some euro area countries are likely to experience decreasing debt-to-GDP ratios over the forecast period. This is not the case for Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, and Spain, where further fiscal consolidation would be needed. For these countries, we consider the effects of a debt mutualization equivalent to 26 percent of their GDP. For Italy, this operation alone is enough to ensure a decreasing debt-to-GDP path. For the others, the news is more mixed: while the additional fiscal consolidation is smaller, 1.3 to 2.3 percent of GDP are still required to reduce debt with 95 percent probability.
Alfred Schipke
,
Jarkko Turunen
,
Nada Choueiri
, and
Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf

Abstract

This book has not been published yet and can only be found as an excerpt at the moment.

International Monetary Fund. Strategy, Policy, & Review Department
,
International Monetary Fund. Legal Dept.
, and
International Monetary Fund. Finance Dept.
The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved changes to the Fund’s financing assurances policy. The changes apply in situations of exceptionally high uncertainty, involving exogenous shocks that are beyond the control of country authorities and the reach of their economic policies, and which generate larger than usual tail risks. The changes adopted could enable the design of a Fund Upper Credit Tranche (UCT) program in situations of exceptionally high uncertainty, in particular by modifying the Fund’s financing assurances policies in two ways. The first change allows official bilateral creditors to provide an upfront credible assurance about delivering debt relief and/or financing with the delivery of a contingent second-stage element of debt relief and/or financing once the exceptionally high uncertainty has been resolved. This would help establish that medium-term viability is being restored. The second change extends the use of a capacity-to-repay assurances from official bilateral creditors/donors from emergency financing to a UCT arrangement context. This would help establish adequate safeguards. These changes and their application to any specific country case in a situation of exceptionally high uncertainty would require the Fund to weigh whether it is prepared to accept the enterprise risks that such arrangement would entail.
Alfred Schipke
,
Jarkko Turunen
,
Nada Choueiri
, and
Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf

Abstract

This book has not been published yet and can only be found as an excerpt at the moment.

Alfred Schipke
,
Jarkko Turunen
,
Nada Choueiri
, and
Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf

Abstract

This book has not been published yet and can only be found as an excerpt at the moment.

Alfred Schipke
,
Jarkko Turunen
,
Nada Choueiri
, and
Anne-Marie Gulde-Wolf

Abstract

This book has not been published yet and can only be found as an excerpt at the moment.