Mathilde Maurel

Exchange Rate Regimes and Supply Shocks Asymmetry: The Case of the Accession Countries

This paper reviews the pros and cons of an early EU enlargement towards Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs hereafter). Firstly, the Maastricht criteria, which cannot be literally assessed during the catching up process, but that nevertheless mirror the huge efforts undertaken in order to (i) stabilise the economies, (ii) converge towards the EU, and then (iii) participate in the EMU, are analysed. Secondly, real convergence is observed to occur at different rates, depending upon the initial conditions faced and the productivity gains realised by each country. Thirdly, computing the correlation of demand and supply shocks in a sample of Euro countries, such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain, at the time when they were entering the EU and the CEECs, gives some indication of the similarity of the business cycles and economic structures of the CEECs on the one hand, and the EU on the other. However, we argue that looking at static correlation only (averaged over the last decade) is too simplistic, as these averages will be blurred by the transition process. Using the Kalman filter, we are able to compute time varying correlation, hence differentiating between the transition and the most recent period. Our results emphasise an ongoing process of demand shocks convergence, but supply shocks divergence. Various exchange rate strategies are then discussed.

The New Geography of Eastern European Trade

This paper estimates the cost of the disintegration of the former Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA). It asks whether the reorientation of trade flows towards Western markets has been large enough to compensate for the huge destruction of trade flows between former CMEA countries. Given the severe recession and the reduction in export and import capacities, the answer to this question is not obvious. Furthermore, particular features of CMEA functioning imply that the decrease in regional trade flows is not necessarily welfare-increasing. Two gravity equations are estimated on a panel of 14 years to give a picture of CMEA trade before and after the disintegration. Trade reorientation from 1990 onwards and the penetration of foreign markets are assessed, and two conclusions emerge. First, despite the collapse of eastern trade, the increasing volume of trade flows with the West has not been large enough to compensate for the loss of regional markets. This is increasing, however, thanks to commercial policies which favour trade cooperation and liberalization. The contrast here between the 1990s and the 1920s, when a similar episode – the disintegration of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire – occurred, is striking. The second conclusion stresses the weakness of the regional market in the East, and the perverse effect of hub and spoke bilateralism, reinforced by the Europe Agreements. Similar regional eastern agreements have been signed as a result. They aim to limit the diverting effect of hub and spoke trade and to exploit the important potential seen to lie in the further development of eastern trade.

Short‐ and Long‐Term Growth Effects of Exchange Rate Adjustment

The European sovereign debt crisis revived the discussion concerning pros and cons of exchange rate adjustment in the face of asymmetric shocks. In the spirit of keynes, exit from the euro area is to regain rapidly international competitiveness. In the spirit of Schumpeter, exhange rate stability with structural reforms would be beneficial towards the long-run growth performance. Previous literature has estimated the average growth of countries with different degrees of exchange rate flexibility. We augment this literature by analyzing short-and long-term growth effects of exchange rate flexibility in a panel-cointegration framework for a sample of 60 countries clustered in five country groups. The estimations show that countries with a high degree of exchange rate stability exhibit a higher long-term growth performance. In line with Mundell (1961), we show that the degree of business cycle synchronization with the (potential) anchor country matters for the impact of exchange rate flexibility on growth.

Weather Shocks, Agricultural Production and Migration: Evidence from Tanzania

Abstract We analyse whether Tanzanian rural households engage in internal migration as a response to weather-related shocks. We hypothesise that, when exposed to such shocks and a consecutive crop yield reduction, rural households use migration as a risk management strategy. Our findings confirm that for an average household, a 1 per cent reduction in agricultural income induced by weather shock increases the probability of migration by 13 percentage points on average within the following year. However, this effect is significant only for households in the middle of wealth distribution, suggesting that the choice of migration as an adaptation strategy depends on initial endowment. What is more, the proposed mechanism applies to households whose income is highly dependent on agriculture, but is not important for diversified livelihoods.

Investment, Efficiency, and Credit Rationing: Evidence from Hungarian Panel Data

Relying upon a rich and unique panel of Hungarian firms over 7 years, from 1992 up to 1998, this paper estimates simultaneously TFP, Total Factor Productivity, identified as efficiency, and the parameters of a model where investment depends upon internal funds, wages, and sales, as in Prasnikar J. and Svejnar J. (2000). It shows that while real investment is higher in foreign firms, the improvement in efficiency due to investment is significantly higher in Hungarian domestic firms. We test the possibility that this higher than average foreign investment may exacerbate other firms credit constraints by crowding them out of domestic capital markets. Of course one must control for that foreign firms may simply be more profitable and have access to more collateral, hence be a better investment for lending institutions. All firms (foreign, private and domestically owned, and State-owned) are credit rationed, including foreign firms. State-owned firms do not have an investment behaviour compatible with profit maximisation, a result which emphasises the soft budget constraint persistence (but not through the providing with soft credit). For these firms, wages increase together with investment.

The effect of remittances prior to an election

The objective of the article is to assess whether remittances have an influence on political manipulation, which may occur prior to an election, through an increase in the government consumption-to-GDP ratio. We combine data from the National Elections across Democracy and Autocracy data set compiled and discussed in Hyde and Marinov (2012) and the World Development Indicators data set. We focus on 70 developing countries over the period 1990–2010. It appears that the political budget cycle is reduced up to the point where it is fully cancelled out at a remittance threshold of 10.7% of GDP. Those findings are robust to different robustness checks.

Financial Integration, Exchange Rate Regimes in CEECs, and Joining the EMU: Just Do It. . .

Candidate countries of central and eastern Europe (CEECs) are suppose to join the EU in 2004, June, which imply that they will face important challenges in the conduct of macroeconomic policy, in order to be able to enter the ERM-II system and eventually enter the EMU (European Monetary Union). Abandoning an independent monetary policy might entail significant costs for countries, which have succeeded in recovering and are in a process of catching-up. However those costs have probably been exaggerated, and their estimation biased by the traditional optimal currency area criteria. The main criticism against a too strong emphasis on the latter rests on two arguments. The first one is that assessing the trade-off for joining the EMU does not deliver the same conclusion ex ante and ex post. Meanwhile, the degree of financial integration will likely increase dramatically, which in turns will decrease the opportunity cost of loosing the monetary policy for absorbing country specific shocks. In a world of capital mobility, the room left for an independent monetary policy is very narrow, maybe close to zero in small, emerging countries, more vulnerable to speculative attacks than countries in the core. The second argument is more empirical. While the link between the exchange rate regime and the fundamentals is rather weak, the political agenda of joining the EU and subsequently the EMU seems to explain the choice of the exchange rate regime.

The Feldstein-Horioka Puzzle Revisited: An European-Regional Perspective

The purpose of this paper consists in assessing the extent of financial integration in European Union using the Feldstein-Horioka criterion. More precisely, we test the cross-correlation of savings and investment rates across European Union regions, using NUTS 2 data coming from Eurostat regional database, over the period 1995-2000. Several important outcomes are reported by our article: if financial integration seems to be realized across all the regions forming European Union, the Feldstein-Horioka criterion keeps emphasizing differences between small and big countries, the later being less integrated at the regional level. Furthermore, the testing of the relationship between savings and investment in consistent sub-groups of regions (designed according to geographical, historical or economic criteria) emphasize that financial integration can be higher at the regional level.

Adaptation to climate change in Bangladesh

ABSTRACT Climate change is expected to disproportionately affect agriculture in Bangladesh; however, there is limited information on smallholder farmers’ overall vulnerability and adaptation needs. This article estimates the impact of climatic shocks on the household agricultural income and, subsequently, on farmers’ adaptation strategies. Relying on data from a survey conducted in several communities in Bangladesh in 2011 and based on an IV probit approach, the results show that a 1 percentage point (pp) climate-induced decline in agricultural income pushes Bangladeshi households to adapt by almost 3 pp. Moreover, Bangladeshi farmers undertake a variety of adaptation options. However, several barriers to adaptation were identified, noticeably access to electricity and wealth. In this respect, policies can be implemented in order to assist the Bangladeshi farming community to adapt to climate change. Policy relevance This study contributes to the literature of adaptation to climate change by providing evidence of existing risk-coping strategies and by showing how a household’s ability to adapt to weather-related risk can be limited. This study helps to inform the design of policy in the context of increasing climatic stress on the smallholder farmers in Bangladesh.

The Impact of Crisis on Firm Creation and Regeneration in Russia: Regional Panel Data Analysis

The aim of this chapter is to provide an econometric assessment of the impact of the European crises on the Russian economy through the lens of firm creation and regeneration. In Russia, after the 2008 global financial shock, there was a sharp downward shift in the firm creation rate measured by the number of newly established firms per 1000 organizations, and a continuous fall in the firm regeneration rate defined as the excess of newly established firms over liquidated firms per 1000 organizations. Paying special attention to the heavy dependence of the Russian economy on the oil sector, we argue that the shock of the European crises may strongly affect the decision-making of Russian entrepreneurs who consider the startup of new businesses and the survivability of existing firms during the great depreciation in the world oil price and the sharp increase in its volatility. To empirically examine this hypothesis, we employ regional-level panel data for the period from 2008 to 2015 and estimate a regression equation that takes the annual average and the coefficient of variation of world oil price as independent variables while controlling for other potentially explanatory factors of firm entry and turnover. As a result, we found a statistically significant and economically meaningful impact of the world oil price on firm creation and regeneration, suggesting that the Russian regional economies became more sensitive to the fluctuations in an increasingly integrated world economy.