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Jocelyn Boussard
,
Chiara Castrovillari
,
Tomohide Mineyama
,
Marta Spinella
, and
Maxwell Tuuli
This paper investigates the consequences of global shocks on a sample of low- and lower-middle-income countries with a particular focus on fragile and conflict-affected states (FCS). FCS are a group of countries that display institutional weakness and/or are negatively affected by active conflict, thereby facing challenges in macroeconomic policy management. Examining different global shocks associated with commodity prices, external demand, and financing conditions, this paper establishes that FCS economies are more vulnerable to these shocks compared to non-FCS peers. The higher sensitivity of FCS economies is mainly driven by procyclical fiscal responses, aggravated by the lack of effective spending controls and timely access to financial sources. External financing serves as a source of stability, partially mitigating the adverse impact of global shocks. This paper contributes to a better understanding of how conditions of fragility, which are on the rise in many parts of the world today, can amplify the effects of negative exogenous shocks. Its results highlight the diverse nature of underlying sources of vulnerabilities, spanning from fiscal and external buffers to institutional quality and economic structure, with lessons applicable to a broader set of countries. Efficient and timely external financial support from external partners, including international financial institutions, should help countries’ counter-cyclical responses to mitigate adverse shocks and achieve macroeconomic stability.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
This Selected Issues paper on Solomon Island discusses big data and high frequency surveillance for Pacific Islands countries (PICs). Big data can be used to fill data gaps for PICs and the IMF can serve as a capacity-building and innovation hub. The estimators computed based on AIS data have been used as part of the surveillance dashboard by the Solomon Islands team and have been discussed with the authorities. Initiatives like the Arslanalp, Koepke, and Verschuur estimation exploit cross-country synergies and technical expertise available at the IMF to provide valuable inputs for both internal and external use. Other potential applications of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) can expand on this effort, for example, some single-country applications are monitoring of fishing vessels to estimate fishing rents from daily vessel schemes, monitoring export-related ships to monitor for piracy/exports misreporting, track tourism in real time, etc. Given the global nature of the AIS data, it can also be used to analyze global supply chains, trade disruptions from natural disasters, the effect of trade policies, etc.
Diego A. Cerdeiro
,
Andras Komaromi
,
Yang Liu
, and
Mamoon Saeed
Maritime data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) have emerged as a potential source for real time information on trade activity. However, no globally applicable end-to-end solution has been published to transform raw AIS messages into economically meaningful, policy-relevant indicators of international trade. Our paper proposes and tests a set of algorithms to fill this gap. We build indicators of world seaborne trade using raw data from the radio signals that the global vessel fleet emits for navigational safety purposes. We leverage different machine-learning techniques to identify port boundaries, construct port-to-port voyages, and estimate trade volumes at the world, bilateral and within-country levels. Our methodology achieves a good fit with official trade statistics for many countries and for the world in aggregate. We also show the usefulness of our approach for sectoral analyses of crude oil trade, and for event studies such as Hurricane Maria and the effect of measures taken to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus. Going forward, ongoing refinements of our algorithms, additional data on vessel characteristics, and country-specific knowledge should help improve the performance of our general approach for several country cases.
International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
It has been two years since the trade tensions erupted and not only captured policymakers’ but also the research community’s attention. Research has quickly zoomed in on understanding trade war rhetoric, tariff implementation, and economic impacts. The first article in the December 2019 issue sheds light on the consequences of the recent trade barriers.
Mr. Serkan Arslanalp
,
Mr. Marco Marini
, and
Ms. Patrizia Tumbarello
Vessel traffic data based on the Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a big data source for nowcasting trade activity in real time. Using Malta as a benchmark, we develop indicators of trade and maritime activity based on AIS-based port calls. We test the quality of these indicators by comparing them with official statistics on trade and maritime statistics. If the challenges associated with port call data are overcome through appropriate filtering techniques, we show that these emerging “big data” on vessel traffic could allow statistical agencies to complement existing data sources on trade and introduce new statistics that are more timely (real time), offering an innovative way to measure trade activity. That, in turn, could facilitate faster detection of turning points in economic activity. The approach could be extended to create a real-time worldwide indicator of global trade activity.
Ms. Dalia S Hakura
and
Ms. Florence Jaumotte
Research shows that international trade is an important channel for the transfer of technology. Building on this evidence, this paper examines the effects of inter- and intraindustry trade on technology transfer. The paper develops and tests the hypothesis that intraindustry trade stimulates more technology transfer than interindustry trade because countries are likely to absorb foreign technologies more easily when their imports are from the same sectors as their production and export sectors. The results of empirical tests for 87 countries during 1970–93 support this hypothesis.
International Monetary Fund
In recent years, the IMF has released a growing number of reports and other documents covering economic and financial developments and trends in member countries. Each report, prepared by a staff team after discussions with government officials, is published at the option of the member country.