Newly developed historical time series on public debt, along with data on external debts, allow a deeper analysis of the debt cycles underlying serial debt and banking crises. We test three related hypotheses at both “world” aggregate levels and on an individual country basis. First, external debt surges are an antecedent to banking crises. Second, banking crises (domestic and those in financial centers) often precede or accompany sovereign debt crises; we find they help predict them. Third, public borrowing surges ahead of external sovereign default, as governments have “hidden domestic debts” that exceed the better documented levels of external debt.

/pdf/from-financial-crash-to-debt-crisis-wjncu74ikp.pdf

From Financial Crash to Debt Crisis

Emerging market business cycles exhibit strongly countercyclical current accounts, consumption volatility that exceeds income volatility, and â€œsudden stopsâ€ in capital inflows. These features contrast with developed small open economies. Nevertheless, we show that a standard model characterizes both types of markets. Motivated by the frequent policy regime switches observed in emerging markets, our premise is that these economies are subject to substantial volatility in trend growth. Our methodology exploits the information in consumption and net exports to identify the persistence of productivity. We find that shocks to trend growthâ€”rather than transitory fluctuations around a stable trendâ€”are the primary source of fluctuations in emerging markets. The key features of emerging market business cycles are then shown to be consistent with this underlying income process in an otherwise standard equilibrium model.

Emerging market business cycles: the cycle is the trend

We investigate the nature of selection and productivity growth in industries where we observe producer-level quantities and prices separately. We show there are important differences between revenue and physical productivity. Because physical productivity is inversely correlated with price while revenue productivity is positively correlated with price, previous work linking (rev- enue-based) productivity to survival confounded the separate and opposing effects of technical efficiency and demand on survival, understating the true impacts of both. Further, we find that young producers charge lower prices than incumbents. Thus the literature understates new producers' productivity advantages and entry's contribution to aggregate productivity growth. (JEL D24, L11, L25)

/pdf/reallocation-firm-turnover-and-efficiency-selection-on-36snbx8c6c.pdf

Reallocation, Firm Turnover, and Efficiency : Selection on Productivity or Profitability?

Emerging market business cycles exhibit strongly countercyclical current accounts, consumption volatility that exceeds income volatility, and “sudden stops” in capital inflows. These features contrast with developed small open economies. Nevertheless, we show that a standard model characterizes both types of markets. Motivated by the frequent policy regime switches observed in emerging markets, our premise is that these economies are subject to substantial volatility in trend growth. Our methodology exploits the information in consumption and net exports to identify the persistence of productivity. We find that shocks to trend growth—rather than transitory fluctuations around a stable trend—are the primary source of fluctuations in emerging markets. The key features of emerging market business cycles are then shown to be consistent with this underlying income process in an otherwise standard equilibrium model.

/pdf/emerging-market-business-cycles-the-cycle-is-the-trend-5cyto88qsy.pdf

Emerging Market Business Cycles: The Cycle is the Trend

http://www.fperri.net/papers/neuperri.pdf

Business Cycles in Emerging Economies: The Role of Interest Rates

Recent sovereign defaults in emerging countries are accompanied by interest rate spikes and deep recessions. This paper develops a small open economy model to study default risk and its interaction with output, consumption, and foreign debt. Default probabilities and interest rates depend on incentives for repayment. Default occurs in equilibrium because asset markets are incomplete. The model predicts that default incentives and interest rates are higher in recessions, as observed in the data. The reason is that in a recession, a risk averse borrower finds it more costly to repay non-contingent debt and is more likely to default. In a quantitative exercise the model matches various features of the business cycle in Argentina such as: high volatility of interest rates, higher volatility of consumption relative to output, a negative correlation of interest rates and output and a negative correlation of the trade balance and output. The model can also predict the recent default episode in Argentina.

Default risk and income fluctuations in emerging economies

Recent sovereign defaults in emerging countries are accompanied by interest rate spikes and deep recessions. This paper develops a small open economy model to study default risk and its interaction with output, consumption, and foreign debt. Default probabilities and interest rates depend on incentives for repayment. Default occurs in equilibrium because asset markets are incomplete. The model predicts that default incentives and interest rates are
higher in recessions, as observed in the data. The reason is that in a recession, a risk averse borrower finds it more costly to repay non-contingent debt and is more likely to default. In a quantitative exercise the model matches various features of the business cycle in Argentina
such as: high volatility of interest rates, higher volatility of consumption relative to output, a negative correlation of interest rates and output and a negative correlation of the trade balance and output. The model can also predict the recent default episode in Argentina.

/pdf/default-risk-and-income-fluctuations-in-emerging-economies-3uwetnmpe6.pdf

Default Risk and Income Fluctuations in Emerging Economies

This paper studies the maturity composition and the term structure of interest rate spreads of government debt in emerging markets. In the data, when interest rate spreads rise, debt maturity shortens and the spread on short-term bonds rises more than the spread on long-term bonds. We build a dynamic model of international borrowing with endogenous default and multiple debt maturities. Long-term debt provides a hedge against future fluctuations in spreads, whereas short-term debt is more effective at providing incentives to repay. The trade-off between these hedging and incentive benefits is quantitatively important for understanding the maturity structure in emerging markets.

/pdf/default-and-the-maturity-structure-in-sovereign-bonds-1g7mi8yiai.pdf

Default and the Maturity Structure in Sovereign Bonds

The paper examines the effects of aid and its volatility on consumption, investment, and the structure of production in the context of an intertemporal two-sector general equilibrium model. A permanent flow of aid finances mainly consumption, a result consistent with the historical failure of aid inflows to translate into sustained growth. Shocks to aid are reflected mainly in investment fluctuations, as a result of consumption smoothing. Aid shocks result in substantial welfare losses, suggesting that aid variability should be taken into account in designing aid architecture. These results are consistent with the evidence from cross-country regressions of manufactured exports.

The Dynamic Implications of Foreign Aid and Its Variability

During the recent U.S. financial crisis, the large decline in economic activity and credit was accompanied by a large increase in the dispersion of growth rates across firms. However, even though aggregate labor and output fell sharply during this period, labor productivity did not. These features motivate us to build a model in which increased volatility at the firm level generates a downturn but has little effect on labor productivity. In the model, hiring inputs is risky because financial frictions limit firms’ ability to insure against shocks that occur between the time of production and the receipt of revenues. Hence, an increase in idiosyncratic volatility induces firms to reduce their inputs to reduce such risk. We find that our model can generate about 67% of the decline in output of the Great Recession of 2007—2009.

/pdf/financial-frictions-and-fluctuations-in-volatility-1zpm67fpij.pdf

Cristina Arellano

Papers

Default risk and income fluctuations in emerging economies

Default Risk and Income Fluctuations in Emerging Economies

Default and the Maturity Structure in Sovereign Bonds

The Dynamic Implications of Foreign Aid and Its Variability

Financial Frictions and Fluctuations in Volatility