Ilian Mihov

The Case for Restricting Fiscal Policy Discretion

This Paper studies how discretionary fiscal policy affects output volatility and the rate of economic growth. Using data on fifty-one countries we isolate five empirical regularities: (1) Governments that use often fiscal policy make their economies volatile; (2) The use of fiscal policy is explained to a large extent by the presence of political constraints and other political and institutional variables; (3) The volatility of output induced by discretionary fiscal policy lowers economic growth by 0.6 percentage points for every percentage point increase in volatility; (4) There is evidence that the increase in volatility is in part due to electoral cycles; nevertheless, we do find that political constraints restrain fiscal policy beyond their impact on the traditional election-year volatility; (5) Rules-based fiscal policy identified by the degree of automatic stabilizers in the economy helps to stabilize business cycles. The evidence in the Paper argues in favour of imposing institutional restrictions on governments as a way of reducing output volatility and increasing the rate of economic growth.

Government size and automatic stabilizers: international and intranational evidence

This paper studies the role of automatic stabilizers using a sample of OECD countries and US states. We find that there is a strong and robust negative correlation between measures of government size and the volatility of output. This correlation is robust to the inclusion of a large set of controls as well as to alternative methods of detrending and estimation. The economic significance of this relationship is larger for the US states.

Policy Volatility, Institutions and Economic Growth

In this paper, we present evidence that policy volatility exerts a strong and direct negative impact on growth. Using data for 93 countries, we construct measures of policy volatility based on the standard deviation of the residuals from country-specific regressions of government consumption on output. Undisciplined governments that implement frequent and large changes in government spending unrelated to the state of the business cycle generate lower economic growth. We employ both instrumental variables and panel estimation to address concerns of omitted variables and endogeneity. A 1 standard deviation increase in policy volatility reduces long-term economic growth by about 0.74% in the panel regressions and by more than 1 percentage point in the cross-section.

The Liquidity Effect and Long-Run Neutrality

The propositions that monetary expansion lowers short-term nominal interest rates (the liquidity effect), and that monetary policy does not have long-run real effects (long-run neutrality), are widely accepted, yet to date the empirical evidence for both is mixed. We reconsider both propositions simultaneously in a structural VAR context, using a model of the market for bank reserves due to Bernanke and Mihov (forthcoming). We find little basis for rejecting either the liquidity effect or long-run neutrality. Our results are robust over the space of admissible model parameter values, and to the use of long-run rather than short-run identifying restrictions.

Monetary policy implementation and transmission in the European Monetary Union

I discuss possible problems engendered by loss of national monetary policies, and study them from three empirical perspectives. First, are business cycles sufficiently synchronized across EMU member countries? The evidence suggests that economic activity in those countries has become increasingly correlated in the 1990s, and that policy co-ordination has played a role in generating that outcome. Second, are there asymmetries in the mechanisms through which policy affects economic activity? The paper documents that policy transmission was indeed heterogeneous in the member countries, and that structural and financial factors were sensibly related to cross-country differences in the response of output to a monetary policy shock. Third, how is policy implemented in an environment of diverse business cycle fundamentals and transmission mechanisms? Estimation of monetary policy reaction functions finds that the European Central Bank is closer to an aggregate of the central banks in Germany, France, and Italy than to the Bundesbank alone. Copyright CEPR, CES, MSH, 2001.

Does WTO Matter for the Extensive and the Intensive Margins of Trade

We use 6-digit bilateral trade data to document the effect of WTO/GATT membership on the extensive and intensive product margins of trade. We construct gravity equations for the two product margins where the specifications of these gravity equations are motivated by the model of Eaton and Kortum (2002). The data show that the puzzle of no significant impact of WTO membership on trade documented by Rose (2004) manifests itself differently at the product margins of trade. We show that the impact of the WTO is almost exclusively on the extensive product margin of trade, i.e. trade in goods that were not previously traded. In our preferred specification, WTO membership increases the extensive margin of exports by 31%. At the same time, WTO membership has a negligible or even a negative impact on the intensive margin (the volume of already-traded goods). Incidentally, we also document that standard gravity variables provide good explanatory power for bilateral trade on both margins.

The effect of WTO on the extensive and the intensive margins of trade

We use 6-digit bilateral trade data to document the effect of WTO/GATT membership on the extensive and intensive product margins of trade.We construct gravity equations for the two product margins motivated by Chaney (2008). The empirical results show that standard gravity variables provide good explanatory power for bilateral trade on both margins. Importantly, we show that the impact of the WTO is concentrated almost exclusively on the extensive product margin of trade, i.e. trade in goods that were not previously traded. In our preferred specification, WTO membership increases the extensive margin of exports by 25%. At the same time, WTO membership has a negative impact on the intensive margin. Based on novel comparative statics results about how fixed and variable trade costs impact the product margins of trade, our results suggest that WTO membership works by reducing primarily the fixed rather than the variable costs of trade.

Fiscal Policy as a Stabilization Tool

Abstract We analyze empirically the cyclical behavior of fiscal policy among a group of 23 OECD countries. We introduce a framework to capture the fiscal policy stance in a way that brings together automatic stabilizers and discretionary fiscal policy. We show that, for most countries, automatic changes in the budget balance play a stronger role in stabilizing output than discretionary fiscal policy. When compared across countries, changes in fiscal policy stance are predominantly linked to differences in government size. Tax revenues are close to being proportional to GDP and, combined with a relatively stable government spending, this leads to a countercyclical budget balance, which in turn helps stabilize aggregate demand. Furthermore, countries with less responsive automatic stabilizers, like the United States, tend to use countercyclical discretionary fiscal policy more aggressively. For all countries discretionary policy has become more aggressive in recent decades.

Credibility and Flexibility with Monetary Policy Committees

We consider independent monetary policy committees as a simple way of attaining relatively low inflation without completely sacrificing the stabilization role of monetary policy. If central bankers types are unknown, then for a wide range of parameters an independent monetary policy committee is better than either a mandated zero-inflation rule or discretionary policy conducted by an opportunistic central banker.

Is Old Money Better than New? Duration and Monetary Regimes

We compare the duration and performance of different monetary regimes, especially the contrast between countries those that fix exchange rates and those that target inflation. Inflation targeting is a more durable policy; no country has yet been forced to abandon an inflation target, while many have abandoned fixed exchange rates. Indeed, even though inflation targeting began only in 1990, the duration of inflation targeting regimes is at least as long as, or longer than all alternative monetary regimes for comparable countries. Regime duration also matters in monetary policy; older regimes are typically more successful than younger ones in achieving low inflation.