Bianca De Paoli

Output Costs of Sovereign Crises: Some Empirical Estimates

Avoiding the broader output losses to their economy is likely to be the key reason why governments avoid debt crises. Despite this, there has been little work that seeks to quantify output losses associated with such crises. This paper seeks to fill this gap. We find that debt crisis episodes last for long - on average by about ten years - and are associated with large output losses (of at least 5% per year). Sovereign crises rarely occur in isolation - more often than not they are associated with currency crises or banking crises or both. It is the occurrence of a potent cocktail of twin or triple crises that is strongly associated with output losses rather than sovereign crisis per se.

Capital Controls: a Normative Analysis

Countries concerns with the value of their currency have been extensively studied and documented in the literature. Capital controls can be (and often are) used as a tool to manage exchange rate Aiuctuations. This paper investigates whether countries can benefit from using such tool. We develop a welfare based analysis of whether (or, in fact, how) countries should tax international borrowing. Our results suggest that restricting international capital flows with the use of these taxes can be beneficial for individual countries although it would limit cross-border pooling of risk. This is because while consumption risk-pooling is important, individual countries also care about domestic output Aiuctuations. Moreover, the results show that countries decide to restrict the international flow of capital exactly when this flow is crucial to ensure cross-border risk-sharing. Our findings point to the possibility of costly capital control wars and, thus, significant gains from international policy coordination.

Why do Risk Premia Vary over Time? A Theoretical Investigation under Habit Formation

Empirical evidence suggests that risk premia are higher at business cycle troughs than they are at peaks. Existing asset pricing theories ascribe moves in risk premia to changes in volatility or risk aversion. Nevertheless, in a simple general equilibrium model, risk premia can be procyclical even though the volatility of consumption is constant and despite a countercyclically varying risk aversion coefficient. We show that agents expectations about future prospects also influence premium dynamics. In order to generate countercyclically varying premia, as found in the data, one requires a combination of hump-shaped consumption dynamics or highly persistent shocks and habits. Our results, thus, suggest that factors which help match activity data may also help along the asset pricing dimension.

Foreign exchange rate risk in a small open economy

Resolving the forward premium puzzle requires a volatile foreign exchange rate risk premium that covaries negatively with the expected depreciation rate. Earlier work has shown how models featuring consumption habits can generate such premia when either trade costs or deep habits are assumed. We show that as long as consumption habits are slow-moving and shocks are highly persistent, a standard small open endowment economy - without any additional features - can address the puzzle. Moreover endogenising the labour supply decision in the small open economy can improve the models ability to match risk premia observations so long as it makes business cycles less synchronised.

Monetary Policy Rules and Foreign Currency Positions

Using an endogenous portfolio choice model, this paper examines how different monetary policy regimes can lead to different foreign currency positions by changing the cyclical properties of the nominal exchange rate. We find that strict inflation-targeting regimes are associated with a short position in foreign currency, while the opposite is true for non inflation targeting regimes. We also explore how these different external positions affect the international transmission of monetary shocks through the valuation channel. When central banks follow inflation-targeting Taylor-type rules, valuation effects of monetary expansions are beggar-thy-self, but they are beggar-thy-neighbour in a money growth targeting regime (or when monetary policy puts weight on output stabilisation).