Constantino Hevia

Privatization and nationalization cycles

This paper studies the cycles of nationalization and privatization in resource-rich economies as a prime instance of unstable institutional reform. The authors discuss the available evidence on the drivers and consequences of privatization and nationalization, review the existing literature, and present illustrative case studies. This leads to the main contribution of the paper: a static and dynamic model of the choice between private and national regimes for the ownership of natural resources. In the model, the basic tradeoff is given by equality (national ownership) versus efficiency (private ownership). The connection between resource ownership and the equality-efficiency tradeoff is given by the incentives for effort that each regime elicits from workers. The resolution of the tradeoff depends on external and domestic conditions that affect the value of social welfare under each regime. This leads to a discussion of how external conditions—such as the commodity price—and domestic conditions—such as the tax system-- affect the choice of private vs. national regimes. In particular, the analysis identifies the determinants of the observed cycles of privatization and nationalization.

Saving and Growth in Egypt

This study illustrates the mechanisms linking national saving and economic growth, with the purpose of understanding the possibilities and limits of a saving-based growth agenda in the context of the Egyptian economy. This is done through a simple theoretical model, calibrated to fit the Egyptian economy, and simulated to explore different potential scenarios. The main conclusion is that if the Egyptian economy does not experience progress in productivity — stemming from technological innovation, improved public management, and private-sector reforms — , then a high rate of economic growth is not feasible at current rates of national saving and would require a saving effort that is highly unrealistic. For instance, financing a constant 4% growth rate of GDP per capita with no TFP improvement would require a national saving rate of around 50% in the first decade and 80% in 25 years! However, if productivity rises, sustaining and improving high rates of economic growth becomes viable. Following the previous example, a 2% growth rate of TFP would allow a 4% growth rate of GDP per capita with national saving rate in the realistic range of 20—25% of GDP.

Saving and growth in Sri Lanka

In the aftermath of its long-standing civil war, Sri Lanka is keen to reap the social and economic benefits of peace. Even in the middle of civil conflict, the country was able to grow at rates that surpassed those of its neighbors and most developing countries. It is argued, then, that the peace dividend may bring about even higher rates of economic growth. Is this possible? And if so, under what conditions? To be sure, Sri Lankas high growth rate in the past three decades did not come for free. It took an increasing effort of resource mobilization in the country, with a rise in national saving from 15 percent of gross domestic product in the mid-1970s to 25 percent in 2010. This rise in national saving was fundamentally fueled and sustained by the private sector. In the future, however, the private saving rate is likely to decline because the demographic transition experienced in the country is bound to produce higher old dependency rates in the next two decades. However, the public sector has much room for reducing its deficits and increasing public investment. Similarly, external investors are likely to encounter attractive and profitable investment projects in the coming years in a reformed and peaceful environment. The government of Sri Lank has two goals regarding these issues. First, increasing public saving to 1.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2013; and second, increasing international investment in the country by letting the current account deficit increase to 4-5 percent of gross domestic product in the coming years. If these goals are achieved, what can be expected for growth of gross domestic product in the country? To answer this question, this paper presents a neoclassical growth model with endogenous private saving, calibrates it to fit the Sri Lankan economy, and simulates the behavior of growth rates of gross domestic product and related variables under different scenarios. In what the authors call the Reform Scenario, total factor productivity would increase from 1 to 1.75 percent per year. This would produce a gross domestic product growth rate of about 6.5 percent in the next 5 years, 4.6 percent by 2020, and 3.5 percent by 2030, the end of the simulation period. This robust growth performance would be supported at the beginning mostly by capital accumulation but later on mainly by productivity improvements.

Using pooled information and bootstrap methods to assess debt sustainability in low income countries

Conventional assessments of debt sustainability in low income countries are hampered by poor data and weaknesses in methodology. In particular, the standard International Monetary Fund-World bank debt sustainability framework relies on questionable empirical assumptions: its baseline projections ignore statistical uncertainty, and its stress tests, which are performed as robustness checks, lack a clear economic interpretation and ignore the interdependence between the relevant macroeconomic variables. This paper proposes to alleviate these problems by pooling data from many countries and estimating the shocks and macroeconomic interdependence faced by a generic, low income country. The paper estimates a panel vector autoregression to trace the evolution of the determinants of debt, and performs simulations to calculate statistics on external debt for individual countries. The methodology allows for the value of the determinants of debt to differ across countries in the long run, and for additional heterogeneity through country-specific exogenous variables. Results in this paper suggest that ignoring the uncertainty and interdependence of macroeconomic variables leads to biases in projected debt trajectories, and consequently, the assessment of debt sustainability.

Industrial policies vs public goods under asymmetric information

This paper presents an analytical framework that captures the informational problems and trade-offs that policy makers face when choosing between public goods (for example, infrastructure) and industrial policies (for example, firm- or sector-specific subsidies). After a discussion of the literature, the paper sets up the model economy, consisting of a government and a set of heterogeneous firms. It then presents the first-best allocation (under full information) of government resources among firms. Next, uncertainty is introduced by restricting information on firm productivity to be private to the firm. The paper develops an optimal contract (which replicates the first best), consisting of a tax-based mechanism that induces firms to reveal their true productivity. As this contract requires high government capacity, other, simpler policies are considered. The paper concludes that providing public goods is likely to dominate industrial policies under most scenarios, especially when government capacity is low.

Risk Premia and Seasonality in Commodity Futures

​We develop and estimate a multifactor affine model of commodity futures that allows for stochastic variations in seasonality. We show conditions under which the yield curve and the cost-of-carry curve adopt augmented Nelson and Siegel functional forms. This restricted version of the model is parsimonious, does not suffer from identification problems, and matches well the yield curve and futures curve over time. We estimate the model using heating oil futures prices over the period 1984–2012. We find strong evidence of stochastic seasonality in the data. We analyse risk premia in futures markets and discuss two traditional theories of commodity futures: the theory of storage and the theory of normal backwardation. The data strongly supports the theory of storage.

Partial Consumption Insurance and Financial Openness Across the World

This paper examines the extent of international consumption risk sharing for a group of 50 industrial and developing countries. The analysis is based on the empirical implementation of a model of partial consumption insurance whose parameters have the natural interpretation of coefficients of partial risk sharing even when the null hypothesis of perfect risk sharing is rejected. Estimation results show that rich countries exhibit higher degrees of risk sharing than developing countries, and that the gap between both country groups appears to have widened over the period of financial globalization. Moreover, the pattern of consumption risk sharing is related to the degree of financial openness: countries with larger stocks of foreign assets or liabilities exhibit larger degrees of risk sharing. Furthermore, countries whose foreign asset stocks are more tilted towards foreign direct investment assets also show higher degrees of consumption risk sharing.