Milan Nedeljkovic

Does Pension Privatization Increase Economic Growth? Evidence from Latin America and Eastern Europe

Analyses of pension funding effects on economic growth need to differentiate between ‘carve-out’ pension privatization in Latin America and Eastern Europe and typical ‘add-on’ pension funding in Western Europe and North America. We find no evidence that pension privatization in Latin America and Eastern Europe was associated with higher economic growth. The result is robust across both continents and several alternative econometric specifications. Positive growth effects are particularly unlikely in countries resorting to debt-financed privatization. Furthermore, we note the lack of positive pension privatization effects on savings in Eastern Europe, with limited evidence of positive savings effects in Latin America. These findings suggest that cost-containment parametric reforms should be given priority over carve-out pension privatization when considering options for restoring financial sustainability of public Pay-As-You-Go systems.

The Relative Effectiveness of Spot and Derivatives Based Intervention; The Case of Brazil

This paper studies the relative effectiveness of foreign exchange intervention in spot and derivatives markets. We make use of Brazilian data where spot and non-deliverable futures based intervention have been used in tandem for more than a decade. The analysis finds evidence in favor of a significant link between both modes of intervention and the first two moments of the real/dollar exchange rate. As predicted by theory for the case of negligible convertibility risk, the impact of spot market intervention in our baseline sample is strikingly similar to that achieved through futures based intervention worth an equivalent amount in notional principal.

The Relative Effectiveness of Spot and Derivatives Based Intervention

This paper studies the relative effectiveness of foreign exchange intervention in spot and derivatives markets. We make use of Brazilian data where spot and non-deliverable futures based intervention have been used in tandem for more than a decade. The analysis finds evidence in favor of a significant link between both modes of intervention and the Real/Dollar exchange rate return. In line with theory, the impact of spot market intervention is strikingly similar to that achieved through futures based intervention worth an equivalent amount in notional principal when convertibility risk is limited. We show that both types of interventions also affect the level and the price of hedging risk in the foreign exchange market.

What Slice of the Pie? The Corporate Bond Market Boom in Emerging Economies1

This paper studies the determinants of shifts in debt composition among EM non-financial corporates. We show that institutions and macro fundamentals create an enabling environment for bond market development. During the recent boom episode, however, global cyclical factors accounted for most of the variation of bond shares in total corporate debt. The sensitivity to global factors appears to vary with relative bond market size - which we interpret to be associated with liquidity and easy entry and exit - rather than local fundamentals. Foreign bank linkages help explain why bond markets increasingly substituted for banks in channeling liquidity to EMs. Our results highlight the risk of capital flow reversal in EMs that benefited from the upturn in the global financial cycle mostly due to their liquid markets rather than strong fundamentals.