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International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
Thailand’s cyclical recovery is underway, though it has yet to become broad-based. Growth is projected to accelerate moderately, reaching 2.7 percent in 2024 and 2.9 percent in 2025, supported by the rebound of tourism-related activities and fiscal stimulus. The slow recovery, weaker than in ASEAN peers, is rooted in Thailand’s longstanding structural weaknesses and emerging headwinds that also contribute to a muted inflation trajectory. Significant uncertainty in the external environment and downside risks cloud the outlook.
Luciana Juvenal
and
Ivan Petrella
We examine the impact of commodity price changes on the business cycles and capital flows in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), distinguishing between their role as a source of shock and as a channel of transmission of global shocks. Our findings reveal that surges in export prices, triggered by commodity price shocks, boost domestic GDP, an effect further amplified by the endogenous decline of country spreads. However, the effects on capital flows appear muted. Shifts in U.S. monetary policy and global risk appetite drive the global financial cycle in EMDEs. Eased global credit conditions, attributed to looser U.S. monetary policy or lower global risk appetite, lead to a rise in export prices, higher output, a decrease in government borrowing costs, and stimulate greater capital flows. The endogenous response of export prices amplifies the output effects of a more accommodative U.S. monetary policy while country spreads magnify the impact of shifts in global risk appetite.
Bada Han
,
Rashad Ahmed
,
Joshua Aizenman
, and
Yothin Jinjarak
We explore the role of sectoral debt dynamics in shaping business cycles in a sample of 52 Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) and Frontier Market Economies (FMEs) from 2005 to 2021. Higher household debt levels and growth are associated with significantly slower GDP growth in more developed EMEs but not in less developed EMEs and FMEs. We also examine the relationship between US dollar cycles, sectoral debt levels and growth, and economic activity. Among developed EMEs, higher expected household debt growth magnifies the impact of US dollar fluctuations on economic activity, with significant but less persistent effects on consumption and more persistent effects on investment. Our empirical findings highlight the important role of household debt dynamics in relatively developed EMEs.
Mr. Dong He
,
Annamaria Kokenyne
,
Mr. Tommaso Mancini Griffoli
,
Mr. Marcello Miccoli
,
Mr. Thorvardur Tjoervi Olafsson
,
Gabriel Soderberg
, and
Hervé Tourpe
This fintech note looks at how capital flow measures (CFMs) could be implemented with central bank digital currency (CBDC), and what benefits, risks and complexities could arise. There are several implications of the analysis. First, CBDC ecosystems should generally be designed such that they can accommodate the introduction of CFMs. Second, thanks to the programmability of the payment infrastructure given by the new digital technologies, certain CFMs could likely be implemented more efficiently and effectively with CBDC compared to the traditional system. Third, implementing CFMs requires central banks to collaborate on practices and standards. Finally, CFMs on CBDC need to operate alongside traditional CFMs.
Nuri Baek
,
Kaustubh Chahande
,
Kodjovi M. Eklou
,
Mr. Tidiane Kinda
,
Vatsal Nahata
,
Umang Rawat
, and
Ara Stepanyan
The ASEAN-5 region, which comprises Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, has benefited substantially from its integration to the world economy, particularly through trade. Rising risks of geoeconomic fragmentation could reverse some gains reaped from globalization over the past decades. In this context, advancing regional integration among ASEAN-5 members has the potential to enhance the region’s resilience against external headwinds. This paper shows that despite sizeable progress, particularly in regional trade integration, there is room to advance financial integration, which also lags trade integration in ASEAN-5. Empirical findings from the paper illustrate that a higher degree of regional financial integration could generate sizeable output gains for the region. Using firm-level data, the paper highlights that digitalization, an area where the region is thriving, can support regional integration by helping firms better integrate into global value chains, with the benefits being stronger for small and medium sized enterprises. The results also suggest that digitalization can help firms move up the value chain through the production of more sophisticated products, often coined as higher export sophistication.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
Thailand’s economy is recovering from an unprecedented crisis emanating from multiple waves of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ample policy space has allowed a swift and bold policy response and vaccine rollout has accelerated. However, the recovery is weak and uneven across sectors, with inflation rapidly rising driven by energy prices. Downside risks dominate the outlook, sharpening policy tradeoffs. The pandemic has also brought to the fore the urgency for Thailand to identify new growth drivers to reverse the pre-pandemic trend of declining productivity growth and meet the challenges of the post-pandemic world.
Philipp Harms
,
Mathias Hoffmann
,
Miriam Kohl
, and
Tobias Krahnke
In this paper, we present empirical evidence that higher income inequality is associated with a greater equity share in countries' external liabilities, and we develop a theoretical model that can explain this observation: In a small open economy with traded and nontraded goods, entry barriers depress entrepreneurial activity in nontraded industries and raise income inequality. The small number of domestic nontraded-goods firms leaves room for foreign firms to operate on the domestic market, and it reduces external borrowing. The model suggests that barriers to entrepreneurial activity could be conducive to attract equity-type capital inows. Our empirical results lend some support to this conjecture.
International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
This issue of the IMF Research Perspective looks at the inter-connectedness of the world economic system and how diverse shocks can affect global supply chains. The articles in this issue track the way COVID-19 triggered disruptions in the supply chain and explains why trade networks are so difficult to disentangle. However, the pandemic is not the only event affecting global supply chains; cross-border spillovers of technology wars and natural disasters are other factors to consider. The overarching message from these articles is clear: there is a need for international cooperation to deal with the consequences of these shocks—whether it is ending the COVID-19 pandemic or mitigating climate change.
Mr. Tobias Adrian
,
Vitor Gaspar
, and
Mr. Francis Vitek
This paper jointly analyzes the optimal conduct of monetary policy, foreign exchange intervention, fiscal policy, macroprudential policy, and capital flow management. This policy analysis is based on an estimated medium-scale dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model of the world economy, featuring a range of nominal and real rigidities, extensive macrofinancial linkages with endogenous risk, and diverse spillover transmission channels. In the pursuit of inflation and output stabilization objectives, it is optimal to adjust all policies in response to domestic and global financial cycle upturns and downturns when feasible—including foreign exchange intervention and capital flow management under some conditions—to widely varying degrees depending on the structural characteristics of the economy. The framework is applied empirically to four small open advanced and emerging market economies.
International Monetary Fund. Asia and Pacific Dept
A nascent recovery is underway in Thailand following the COVID-19 downturn. Ample policy buffers, underpinned by judicious management of public finances, allowed the authorities to implement a multipronged package of fiscal, monetary, and financial policies to mitigate the COVID-19 impact on households, businesses, and the financial system. This, together with rigorous containment measures, led to a successful flattening of the infection curve during most of 2020. Nevertheless, the pandemic has taken a large toll on the economy, potentially inducing long-term scarring and increasing inequality.