Mary Keeney
- 14 September 2021
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 262Details
- Abstract
- The global recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting deterioration in many countries’ public finances have increased the risk of sovereign debt crises. Although crisis prevention remains paramount, these developments have made it imperative to re-examine the adequacy of the current toolkit for crisis management and resolution, in a context where changes in the creditor base and in the composition of public debt instruments have brought about new challenges in terms of reduced transparency and additional barriers to achieving inter-creditor equity. This report focuses on the international architecture for sovereign debt restructurings (SODRs), as seen through the lenses of the International Monetary Fund (IMF or “the Fund”) and with a special attention to the role that the Fund can play in facilitating orderly restructuring processes. It provides a set of findings and recommendations in relation to certain key elements of the Fund’s lending framework that have important ramifications on SODR processes, namely debt sustainability assessments (DSAs), the exceptional access policy (EAP) for financing above normal access limits, and the criteria for lending to countries with payments arrears to private creditors (LIA) or official bilateral creditors (LIOA). It also considers other indirect channels through which the Fund can affect SODRs, including its support for enhancing the transparency and public disclosure of sovereign debt information, its collaboration with the Paris Club and the G20 debt-related initiatives, the promotion of contractual standards for sovereign debt, and the monitoring of relevant legislative developments.
- JEL Code
- F34 : International Economics→International Finance→International Lending and Debt Problems
F55 : International Economics→International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy→International Institutional Arrangements
H63 : Public Economics→National Budget, Deficit, and Debt→Debt, Debt Management, Sovereign Debt
- 15 September 2016
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 178Details
- Abstract
- Global trade has been exceptionally weak over the past four years. While global trade grew at approximately twice the rate of GDP prior to the Great Recession, the ratio of global trade to GDP growth has declined to about unity since 2012. This paper assesses to what extent the change in the relationship between global trade and global economic activity is a temporary phenomenon or constitutes a lasting change. It finds that global trade growth has been primarily dampened by two factors. First, compositional factors, including geographical shifts in economic activity and changes in the composition of aggregate demand, have weighed on the sensitivity of trade to economic activity. Second, structural developments, such as waning growth in global value chains, a rise in non-tariff protectionist measures and a declining marginal impact of financial deepening, are dampening the support from factors that boosted global trade in the past. Notwithstanding the particularly pronounced weakness in 2015 that is assessed to be mostly a temporary phenomenon owing to a number of country-specific adverse shocks, the upside potential for trade over the medium term appears to be limited. The
- JEL Code
- F10 : International Economics→Trade→General
F13 : International Economics→Trade→Trade Policy, International Trade Organizations
F14 : International Economics→Trade→Empirical Studies of Trade
F15 : International Economics→Trade→Economic Integration
- 30 January 2015
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 158Details
- Abstract
- The International Monetary Fund has significantly improved its surveillance of the EU and the euro area, along the lines suggested by the Fund
- JEL Code
- F42 : International Economics→Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance→International Policy Coordination and Transmission
F53 : International Economics→International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy→International Agreements and Observance, International Organizations
- 21 April 2010
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1181Details
- Abstract
- This paper investigates the wage-setting behaviour of Irish firms. We place particular emphasis on the use of flexible pay components and examine how these allow firms to deal with shocks requiring a reduction in costs without having to cut base wages. The results presented in this paper are based on a survey of Irish firms undertaken as part of the Wage Dynamics Network (WDN), which is a Euro-system research network. Our main findings are that almost two-thirds of firms applied at least some elements of the national wage agreement in place at the time of the survey (Towards 2016). Wage cuts or freezes were reported by a very small percentage of firms but changes in bonuses and other flexible pay components were relatively common if the firm needed to reduce labour costs. When asked about the relevance of different explanations for avoiding cuts in base wages, worker morale and loss of experienced workers were the main concerns. Regulatory or collective bargaining obstacles to wage cuts were the lowest ranked.
- JEL Code
- J3 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs
E24 : Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics→Consumption, Saving, Production, Investment, Labor Markets, and Informal Economy→Employment, Unemployment, Wages, Intergenerational Income Distribution, Aggregate Human Capital
J4 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Particular Labor Markets - Network
- Wage dynamics network
- 23 February 2010
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1153Details
- Abstract
- This paper uses information from a rich firm-level survey on wage and price-setting procedures, in around 15,000 firms in 15 European Union countries, to investigate the relative importance of internal versus external factors in the setting of wages of newly hired workers. The evidence suggests that external labour market conditions are less important than internal pay structures in determining hiring pay, with internal pay structures binding even more often when there is labour market slack. When explaining their choice firms allude to fairness considerations and the need to prevent a potential negative impact on effort. Despite the lower importance of external factors in all countries there is significant cross-country variation in this respect. Cross-country differences are found to depend on institutional factors (bargaining structures); countries in which collective agreements are more prevalent and collective agreement coverage is higher report to a greater extent internal pay structures as the main determinant of hiring pay. Within-country differences are found to depend on firm and workforce characteristics; there is a strong association between the use of external factors in hiring pay, on the one hand, and skills (positive) and tenure (negative) on the other.
- JEL Code
- J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials
J41 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Particular Labor Markets→Labor Contracts - Network
- Wage dynamics network
- 9 January 2009
- OCCASIONAL PAPER SERIES - No. 100Details
- Abstract
- The first part of this paper provides a brief survey of the recent literature that employs survey data on household finance and consumption. Given the breadth of the topic, it focuses on issues that are particularly relevant for policy, namely: i) wealth effects on consumption, ii) housing prices and household indebtedness, iii) retirement income, consumption and pension reforms, iv) access to credit and credit constraints, v) financial innovation, consumption smoothing and portfolio selection and vi) wealth inequality. The second part uses concrete examples to summarise how results from such surveys feed into policy-making within the central banks that already conduct such surveys.
- JEL Code
- C42 : Mathematical and Quantitative Methods→Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics→Survey Methods
D12 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
D14 : Microeconomics→Household Behavior and Family Economics→Household Saving; Personal Finance - Network
- Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network