Oral Williams

Caribbean Offshore Financial Centers: Past, Present, and Possibilities for the Future

The paper reviews the development of offshore financial activities in the English-speaking Caribbean islands and takes stock of the size and status of these sectors today. In view of the heightened concerns of the international community about money laundering, the costs and risks to countries of having or establishing offshore sectors have risen considerably.

Reserve Pooling in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union and the CFA Franc Zone : A Comparative Analysis

The paper presents a comparison of the gains from the pooling of reserves, and hence reserve variability, in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU) and the CFA franc zone. The results indicate that countries within the ECCU area have achieved greater balance of payments protection than the CFA zone countries from the pooling of reserves. Unanticipated changes in the terms of trade lowered reserves in the CFA relative to the ECCU, which may reflect a greater reliance on primary commodities in the CFA compared with services in the ECCU.

Inflation Dynamics in the Dominican Republic

This paper investigates the determinants of inflation in the Dominican Republic during 1991-2002, a period characterized by remarkable macroeconomic stability and growth. By developing a parsimonious and empirically stable error-correction model using quarterly observations, the paper finds that inflation is explained by changes in monetary aggregates, real output, foreign inflation, and the exchange rate.

Global and Regional Spillovers to GCC Equity Markets

This paper analyzes the impact of global and regional spillovers to GCC equity markets. GCC equity markets were impacted by spillovers from U.S. equity markets despite varying degrees of foreign participation. Spillovers from regional equity markets were also important but the magnitude of the effects were on average smaller than that from mature markets. The results also illustrated episodes of contagion in particular during the recent global financial crisis. The findings suggest that given the degree of openness, and open capital accounts the financial channel is an important source through which volatility is transmitted. In this regard, GCC equity markets are not immune from global and regional financial shocks. These findings refute the notion of decoupling between the GCC equity and global equity markets.

A Statistical Analysis of Banking Performance in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union in the 1990s

Private foreign banks dominate the banking system although their market share declined in the 1990s while that of private indigenous banks increased. The banking system was not concentrated either within or across countries. Stigler’s survivor test indicated that large banks tended to reduce their scale over time. Private foreign and private indigenous banks exhibited similar distributions with respect to operating expenses but private foreign banks were most profitable. High interest rate spreads appeared attributable to higher average costs related to market size and geographic peculiarities.

Inflation Differentials in the GCC: Does the Oil Cycle Matter?

This paper uses a pairwise approach to investigate the main factors that have been driving inflation differentials in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region for the past two decades. The results suggest that inflation differentials in the GCC are largely influenced by the oil cycle, mainly through the credit and fiscal channels. This implies that in order for the proposed monetary union to be successful, closer coordination of fiscal policies will be critical. The results also indicate that after controlling for cyclical factors, convergence increased even during the recent oil boom.

Banana price shocks and adjustment within a unified currency area

The paper traces the impact of a shock to banana prices on key macroeconomic variables for the Windward Islands and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) Monetary Union as a whole. Net foreign assets of Dominica are expected to show the largest decline while those for Grenada the least. The impact on the net foreign assets of the subregion may be mitigated by other foreign exchange inflows. In addition there was little variation in the growth in M1 with the exception of Dominica suggesting money-output neutrality. Government revenues were not adversely affected suggesting that the terms of trade shock may be viewed as being temporary and agents borrow to maintain existing tastes and preferences. This result hinged on the nexus between government revenue and the reliance on trade taxes on imports suggesting some ambiguity in the explanation of the Harberger-Laursen-Meltzer effect.

Inflation dynamics in a small emerging market

This study investigates the determinants of inflation in the Dominican Republic during 1991 to 2002, a period characterized by remarkable macroeconomic stability and growth. By developing a parsimonious and empirically stable error correction model using quarterly observations, the study finds that inflation is explained by changes in monetary aggregates, real output, foreign inflation and the exchange rate. Long-run relationships in the money and traded goods markets are found to exist, but only the disequilibrium from the money market exerts a significant impact on inflation.

Cointegration: implications for the market efficiencies of the high fructose corn syrup and refined sugar markets

The dynamic relationship between the prices of refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup is investigated using cointegration econometrics. The analysis is based on observational data, and although results indicate cointegration between 1984 and 1991 for the most part, alternative explanations for empirical regularities may exist and should be the subject of future research.

Effectiveness of intervention in a small emerging market: an event study approach

This article addresses the effectiveness of intervention using daily data from a small open economy for which intervention constituted an integral part of policy making. A matched-sample test of equality of means before and after intervention events, shows that the sterilized interventions by the central bank were effective for both purchases and sales of US dollars, but with associated fiscal costs. These results, which are robust to alternative event-window definitions and to alternative criteria for measuring ‘success’, suggest that the authorities were successful in keeping the exchange rate within a ‘target’ corridor. With many small emerging market economies seeking to balance the twin objectives of maintaining competitiveness while containing imported inflation, these results present an interesting case study which suggests that intervention can be an appropriate policy tool in some small open and emerging market economies.