Business and Economics > Investments: Stocks

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Andrew M. Warner
The assumption behind popular data on national capital stocks, and therefore total factor productivity, is that countries were in a steady state in the first year that investment data became available. This paper argues that this assumption is highly implausible and is necessarily responsible for implausible data on the ratio of capital to output and productivity growth. It is not credible that countries with similar incomes had huge differences in their capital stocks. This paper claims, with evidence, that implausible features of the data can be greatly reduced by using data on electricity usage or national stocks of road vehicles.
Bruno Casella
,
Maria Borga
, and
Mr. Konstantin Wacker
In a complex global production landscape, the quest for measures of economic activity by multinational enterprises (MNEs) has become more pressing. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) statistics, which capture financing aspects of MNEs, have often been used as a proxy for multinational production given their wide availability and cross-country comparability, but concerns that multinational production occurs in different countries than where financial positions are recorded call this practice into question. This paper revisits the main objections to the use of FDI as a proxy for multinational production, explores counterarguments, and provides guidance on the use of FDI statistics to measure multinational production.
Mr. Javier Kapsoli
,
Ms. Tewodaj Mogues
, and
Ms. Genevieve Verdier
With limited financing options, increasing investment efficiency will be a critical avenue to building infrastructure for many countries, particularly in the context of post-pandemic recovery and rising debt emanating from higher energy costs and other pressures. Estimating investment efficiency, however, presents many methodological pitfalls. Using various methods—–stochastic frontier analysis, data envelopment analysis (DEA), and bootstrapped DEA—this paper estimates efficiency scores for a wide range of countries employing metrics of infrastructure quantity and utilization. We find that efficiency scores are relatively robust across methodologies and data used. A considerable efficiency gap exists: Removing all inefficiencies could increase infrastructure output by 55 percent overall, when averaging across 12 estimation approaches—in particular, by 45 percent for advanced economies, 54 percent for emerging countries, and 65 percent for low income countries. Infrastructure output would increase by a still-sizeable 30 percent if instead of eliminating all efficiency, countries achieved the efficiency level of their income group’s 90th percentile.
Mr. Tanai Khiaonarong
and
David Humphrey
The use of cash for payments is not well measured. We view the value of cash withdrawn from ATMs, or as a share of all payments, as a more accurate and timely measure of cash use compared to the standard measure of currency in circulation, or as a ratio to GDP. These two measures are compared for 14 advanced and emerging market economies. When aggregated, the trend in cash use for payments is currently falling for half the world’s population. Such a measure can help inform policy decisions regarding CBDC and regulatory decisions concerning access to and use of cash.
Maddalena Ghio
,
Linda Rousova
,
Dilyara Salakhova
, and
German Villegas Bauer
During the March 2020 market turmoil, euro area money-market funds (MMFs) experienced significant outflows, reaching almost 8% of assets under management. This paper investigates whether the volatility in MMF flows was driven by investors’ liquidity needs related to derivative margin payments. We combine three highly granular unique data sources (EMIR data for derivatives, SHSS data for investor holdings of MMFs and Refinitiv Lipper data for daily MMF flows) to construct a daily fund-level panel dataset spanning from February to April 2020. We estimate the effects of variation margin paid and received by the largest holders of EURdenominated MMFs on flows of these MMFs. The main findings suggest that variation margin payments faced by some investors holding MMFs were an important driver of the flows of EUR-denominated MMFs domiciled in euro area.
Martina Hengge
,
Ugo Panizza
, and
Richard Varghese
Understanding the impact of climate mitigation policies is key to designing effective carbon pricing tools. We use institutional features of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) and high-frequency data on more than 2,000 publicly listed European firms over 2011-21 to study the impact of carbon policies on stock returns. After extracting the surprise component of regulatory actions, we show that events resulting in higher carbon prices lead to negative abnormal returns which increase with a firm's carbon intensity. This negative relationship is even stronger for firms in sectors which do not participate in the EU ETS suggesting that investors price in transition risk stemming from the shift towards a low-carbon economy. We conclude that policies which increase carbon prices are effective in raising the cost of capital for emission-intensive firms.
International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept.
The remote technical assistance (TA) mission provided guidance to the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus (BelStat) on the preliminary estimates of the Financial Accounts and Balance Sheets (FABS) for 2017. The TA mission assisted with compiling the revaluation and the other changes in volume accounts to give better consistency to the financial flows and stocks and improve the reconciliation process of the FABS. BelStat is in charge of compiling the current accounts for all the institutional sectors and is starting to compile the financial accounts for which important progress has been made. To regularly compile FABS, the mission recommended that BelStat addresses the discrepancies between the net lending/borrowing from the capital and the financial account by incorporating more data sources such as government’s financial stocks and business accounting data. The TA mission also provided guidance on compiling the Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured (FISIM) to get a more consistent estimate. The mission highlighted the progress made and encouraged BelStat to continue working on compiling FABS for 2017 and onwards.
International Monetary Fund. Statistics Dept.
The remote technical assistance (TA) mission provided guidance to the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus (BelStat) on the preliminary estimates of the Financial Accounts and Balance Sheets (FABS) for 2017. The TA mission assisted with compiling the revaluation and the other changes in volume accounts to give better consistency to the financial flows and stocks and improve the reconciliation process of the FABS. BelStat is in charge of compiling the current accounts for all the institutional sectors and is starting to compile the financial accounts for which important progress has been made. To regularly compile FABS, the mission recommended that BelStat addresses the discrepancies between the net lending/borrowing from the capital and the financial account by incorporating more data sources such as government’s financial stocks and business accounting data. The TA mission also provided guidance on compiling the Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured (FISIM) to get a more consistent estimate. The mission highlighted the progress made and encouraged BelStat to continue working on compiling FABS for 2017 and onwards.
Matteo Ghilardi
and
Roy Zilberman
We analyze the effects of dividend taxation in a general equilibrium business cycle model with an occasionally-binding investment credit limit. Permanent dividend tax reforms distort capital investment decisions in the binding long-run equilibrium, but are neutral otherwise. Temporary unexpected tax cuts stimulate shortterm real activity in the credit-constrained economy, yet produce contractionary macroeconomic outcomes in the slack regime. The occasionally-binding constraint reconciles the `traditional' and `new' views of dividend taxation, and highlights the importance of measuring the firm's initial borrowing position before enacting tax reforms. Finally, permanently lower dividend taxes dampen financial business cycles, and help to explain macroeconomic asymmetries.
Mr. Johannes Wiegand
In the early 1870s, the global monetary system transitioned from bimetallism—a regime in which gold and silver currencies were tied at quasi-fixed exhange ratios—to the gold standard that was characterized by the use of (only) gold as the main currency metal by the largest and most advanced economies. The transition ocurred against the backdrop of both large supply shifts in global bullion markets in the 1850s and 60s and momentous political events, such as the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71 and the subsequent foundation of the German empire. The causes for the transition have long been a matter of intense debate. This article discusses three separate but interrelated issues: (i) assessing the robustness of the pre-1870 bimetallic system to shocks—which includes a discussion of the appropriate use of Flandreau’s (1996) reference model; (ii) analyzing the transition from bimetallism to gold as a multi-stage currency game played by France and Germany; and (iii) evaluating the monetary debates at the German Handelstag conferences in the 1860s, to present a more complete narrative of the German discussion in the run-up to the transition.