Christine Richmond

Duration of Capital Market Exclusion: An Empirical Investigation

We document the time countries are excluded from international capital markets after resolving a default and examine why some countries are able to regain access to international capital markets immediately after resolving a default, whereas other countries are punished for longer periods. We develop a methodology to determine when market access occurs after default settlement, distinguishing between partial and full access. Our main findings from examining the duration of exclusion from international capital markets between 1980-2005 by sovereign defaulters are: i) countries regain partial market access after 5.7 years on average (median of 3.0 years) while it takes 8.4 years on average (median of 7.0 years) to regain full market access; ii) partial market access depends mostly on external financial markets conditions; iii) full market access depends primarily on long term market expectations and the size of the losses inflicted to creditors; iv) the occurrence of a natural disaster reduces the period of exclusion for both partial and full access; and v) there are regional differences, with African and Middle Eastern defaulters taking substantially longer to regain market access than other regions.

Investing Volatile Oil Revenues in Capital-Scarce Economies: An Application to Angola

Natural resource revenues are an increasingly important financing source for public investment in many developing economies. Investing volatile resource revenues, however, may subject an economy to macroeconomic instability. This paper applies to Angola the fiscal framework developed in Berg et al. (forthcoming) that incorporates investment inefficiency and absorptive capacity constraints, often encountered in developing countries. The sustainable investing approach, which combines a stable fiscal regime with external savings, can convert resource wealth to development gains while maintaining economic stability. Stochastic simulations demonstrate how the framework can be used to inform allocations between capital spending and external savings when facing uncertain oil revenues. An overly aggressive investment scaling-up path could result in insufficient fiscal buffers when faced with negative oil price shocks. Consequently, investment progress can be interrupted, driving up the capital depreciation rate, undermining economic stability, and lowering the growth benefits of public investment.

Investing Volatile Resource Revenues in Capital-Scarce Economies

Natural resource revenues are an important financing source for public investment in many developing economies. Investing volatile resource revenues, however, may subject an economy to macroeconomic instability. This paper studies fiscal approaches to investing resource revenues, using Angola as an example. With spend‐as‐you‐go, resource revenues are spent as received, resulting in little external saving; public investment can be interrupted, driving up the capital depreciation rate and undermining stability. Gradual scaling‐up, instead, allows countries to build up external saving to shield investment from revenue volatility. The framework adopted here can be used as a planning tool to define a medium‐term fiscal strategy.

A Tale of Two Sectors; Why is Misallocation Higher in Services than in Manufacturing?

Recent empirical studies document that the level of resource misallocation in the service sector is significantly higher than in the manufacturing sector. We quantify the importance of this difference and study its sources. Conservative estimates for Portugal (2008) show that closing this gap, by reducing misallocation in the service sector to manufacturing levels, would boost aggregate gross output by around 12 percent and aggregate value added by around 31 percent. Differences in the effect and size of productivity shocks explain most of the gap in misallocation between manufacturing and services, while the remainder is explained by differences in firm productivity and age distribution. We interpret these results as stemming mainly from higher output price rigidity, greater labor adjustment costs and more informality in the service sector.

What Happens after Default? Stylized Facts on Access to Credit

In this paper we investigate what happens to firms after they default on their bank loans. We approach this question by establishing a set of stylized facts concerning the evolution of default and its resolution, focusing on access to credit after default. Using a unique dataset from Portugal, we observe that half of the default episodes last 5 quarters or less and that larger firms have shorter default periods. Most firms continue to have access to credit immediately after default, though only a minority has access to new loans. Firms have more difficulties in regaining access to credit if they are small, if their default was long and severe, if they borrow from only one bank or if they default with their main lender. Further, half of the defaulting firms record another default in the future. We observe that firms with repeated defaults are, on average, smaller and have experienced longer and more severe defaults.

Sovereign Debt Restructuring and Growth

This paper studies the effect of sovereign debt restructurings with external private creditors on growth during the period 1970-2010. We find that there are bad and good (or not so bad) debt restructurings for growth. While growth generally declines in the aftermath of a sovereign debt restructuring, agreements that allow countries to exit a default spell (final restructurings) are associated with improving growth. The impact can be significant. In general, three years after restructuring, growth is about 5 percent lower compared to countries that did not face restructuring over the same period. The exception is for final restructurings, which result in positive growth in the years immediately after the restructuring. Final restructurings tend to be better for growth because they reduce countries’ debt, with the strongest effect for countries that exit restructurings with relatively low debt levels.