Salvatore Dell'Erba

The Impact of Debt Sustainability and the Level of Debt on Emerging Markets Spreads

How do financial markets respond to concerns over debt sustainability and the level of public debt in emerging markets? We introduce a measure of debt sustainability – the difference between the debt stabilizing primary balance and the primary balance–in an otherwise standard spread regression model applied to a panel of 26 emerging market economies. We find that debt sustainability is an important determinant of spreads. In addition, using a panel smooth transition regression model, we find that the sensitivity of spreads to debt sustainability doubles as public debt increases above 45 percent of GDP. These results suggest that market interest rates react more to debt sustainability concerns in a country with a high level of debt compared to a country with a low level of debt.

Global Factors in the Term Structure of Interest Rates

This paper introduces global factors within a FAVAR framework in an empirical affine term structure model. We apply our method to a panel of international yield curves and show that global factors account for more than 80 percent of term premia in advanced economies. In particular they tend to explain long-term dynamics in yield curves, as opposed to domestic factors which are instead more relevant to short-run movements. We uncover the key role for global curvature in shaping term premia dynamics. We show that this novel factor precedes global economic and financial instability. In particular, it coincides with immediate expectations of permanent expansionary monetary policy during the recent crisis.

Pressure or Prudence? Tales of Market Pressure and Fiscal Adjustment

We study whether multiyear fiscal adjustment plans in 17 OECD countries during 1980–2011 have been associated with market pressure. We find that only a fraction of the consolidations occurred under market pressure, suggesting that market pressure is important but not the main element associated with consolidation plans. Many adjustments under market pressure were also clustered around external shocks, and entailed larger median fiscal adjustments than other multiyear consolidations. In contrast, we find that virtually all multiyear consolidations aimed at reducing budget deficits occurred with initially weak macro-fiscal fundamentals.

Does Fiscal Policy Affect Interest Rates? Evidence from a Factor-Augmented Panel

This paper reconsiders the effects of fiscal policy on long-term interest rates employing a Factor Augmented Panel (FAP) to control for the presence of common unobservable factors. We construct a real-time dataset of macroeconomic and fiscal variables for a panel of OECD countries for the period 1989-2012. We find that two global factors—the global monetary and fiscal policy stances—explain more than 60 percent of the variance in the long-term interest rates. Compared to the estimates from models which do not account for global factors, we find that the importance of domestic variables in explaining long-term interest rates is weakened. Moreover, the propagation of global fiscal shocks is larger in economies characterized by macroeconomic and institutional weaknesses.

Medium-Term Fiscal Multipliers during Protracted Recessions

The paper examines the consequences of fiscal consolidation in times of persistently low growth and high unemployment by estimating medium-term fiscal multipliers during protracted recessions (PR) in a sample of 17 OECD countries. Based on Jorda’s (2005) local projection methodology, we find that cumulative fiscal multipliers related to output, employment and unemployment at five-year horizons are significantly above one during PR episodes. These results suggest that medium-term fiscal consolidation plans to reduce public debt burdens should proceed gradually if economic activity remains below trend for a prolonged period.

Not All Capital Waves are Alike: A Sector-Level Examination of Surges in FDI Inflows

We examine episodes of large gross foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows - surges - at the sectoral level in emerging market economies. We find that surges in the financial sector, unlike surges in the non-financial sectors, are associated with boom-bust cycles in GDP and expansions of credit in foreign currency. In terms of the determinants of surges, we find that global and contagion factors have a stronger effect in the financial than the non-financial sectors. We also document a role for policies related to capital account openness: restrictions on other forms of capital inflows tend to increase the likelihood of surges in financial sector FDI.

Financial Dollarization and Currency Substitution: An Empirical Study for Bolivia

The Bolivian puzzle is high and persistent financial dollarization notwithstanding deep macroeconomic stabilization that achieved stable and low inflation and the regulations encouraging domestic currency deposits. We analyze traditional and new approaches to explain dollarization in Bolivia. We first assess the currency substitution approach and then assess the empirical evidence for the financial dollarization approach. The results show that the macroeconomic variables capture only partially the phenomenon and a better assessment relies on other explanations such as the peso problem and the analysis of specific characteristics of the financial markets in Bolivia.