{"title":"The Case for Reform of the RBA's Policy and Communication Strategy","authors":"Bruce Preston","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3521009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3521009","url":null,"abstract":"At any time, the public should be able to evaluate whether the Reserve Bank of Australia’s interest rate decisions are consistent with achieving statutory mandates. The current policy and communication strategy makes this difficult. The mandates, as interpreted by the RBA, fail to provide a clearly identifiable performance benchmark. And the supporting communication strategy falls short of a commitment to explain the economic basis of why and how interest-rate decisions achieve mandated objectives. Examples of both concerns are given from various public documents. Basic reforms would improve the accountability and effectiveness of monetary policy.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114908498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chuling Chen, Era Dabla‐Norris, Jay Rappaport, A. Zdzienicka
{"title":"Political Costs of Tax-Based Consolidations","authors":"Chuling Chen, Era Dabla‐Norris, Jay Rappaport, A. Zdzienicka","doi":"10.5089/9781513521534.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513521534.001","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies the impact of tax-based consolidations on reelection outcomes. Using a granular database of tax-based consolidations for a panel of 10 OECD countries over the last 40 years, we find that tax reforms are politically costly but some reforms are costlier than others. Measures aimed primarily at reducing existing deficits and debt are costlier than tax consolidation policies for improving long-term growth prospects. Electoral costs are particularly high for broad-based indirect tax and corporate tax reforms. Voters tend to penalize governments less if tax consolidations are announced early in the government’s term or if the government has a strong political mandate. Favorable economic conditions increase public support for tax-based consolidations. Personal income tax reforms are electorally salient if the reforms are frontloaded, announced during recessions, and in less progressive tax systems.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129768049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Text Mining Analysis of Central Bank Monetary Policy Communication in Nigeria","authors":"M. Tumala, Babatunde S. Omotosho","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3545508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3545508","url":null,"abstract":"This paper employs text-mining techniques to analyse the communication strategy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) during the period 2004-2019. Since the policy communique released after each meeting of the CBN’s monetary policy committee (MPC) represents an important tool of central bank communication, we construct a corpus based on 87 policy communiques with a total of 123, 353 words. Having processed the textual data into a form suitable for analysis, we examined the readability, sentiments, and topics of the policy documents. While the CBN’s communication has increased substantially over the years, implying increased monetary policy transparency; the computed Coleman and Liau readability index shows that the word and sentence structures of the policy communiques have become more complex, thus reducing its readability. In terms of monetary policy sentiments, we find an average net score of -10.5 per cent, reflecting the level of policy uncertainties faced by the MPC over the sample period. In addition, our results indicate that the topics driving the linguistic contents of the communiques were influenced by the Bank’s policy objectives as well as the nature of shocks hitting the economy per period.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131555918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Worldwide Network of Tax Evasion: Evidence from the Panama Papers","authors":"Fernando Garcia Alvarado, A. Mandel","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3527765","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3527765","url":null,"abstract":"This paper builds on recent insights from network theory and on the rich dataset made available by the Panama Papers in order to investigate the micro-economic dynamics of tax-evasion. We model offshore financial entities documented in the Panama Papers as links between jurisdictions in the global network of tax evasion. A quantitative analysis shows that the resulting network, far from being a random collection of bilateral links, has key features of complex networks such as a core-periphery structure and a fat-tail degree distribution. We argue that these structural features imply that policy must adopt a systemic perspective on the matter. We offer three sets of insights from this perspective. First, we identify through centrality measures tax havens that ought to be priority policy targets. Second, we show that efficient tax treaties must contain exchange information clauses and link tax-havens to non-haven jurisdictions. Third, we show that the optimal deterrence strategies for a social-planner facing a strategic tax-evader in a Stackelberg competition can be characterized using the notion of Bonacich centrality.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128600514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"German Bond Yields and Debt Supply: Is There a 'Bund Premium'?","authors":"Anne-Charlotte Paret, A. Weber","doi":"10.5089/9781513518329.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513518329.001","url":null,"abstract":"Are Bunds special? This paper estimates the “Bund premium” as the difference in convenience yields between other sovereign safe assets and German government bonds adjusted for sovereign credit risk, liquidity and swap market frictions. A higher premium suggests less substitutability of sovereign bonds. We document a rise in the “Bund premium” in the post-crisis period. We show that there is a negative relationship of the premium with the relative supply of German sovereign bonds, which is more pronounced for higher maturities and when risk aversion proxied by bond market volatility is high. Going forward, we expect German government debt supply to remain scarce, with important implications for the ECB’s monetary policy strategy.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114138519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pricing Sovereign Debt in Resource-Rich Economies","authors":"T. Mcgregor","doi":"10.5089/9781513516431.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513516431.001","url":null,"abstract":"How do oil price movements affect sovereign spreads in an oil-dependent economy? I develop a stochastic general equilibrium model of an economy exposed to co-moving oil price and output processes, with endogenous sovereign default risk. The model explains a large proportion of business cycle fluctuations in interest-rate spreads in oil-exporting emerging market economies, particularly the countercyclicallity of interest rate spreads and oil prices. Higher risk-aversion, more impatient governments, larger oil shares and a stronger correlation between domestic output and oil price shocks all lead to stronger co-movements between risk premiums and the oil price.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125114842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reasons for the Demise of Interest: Savings Glut and Secular Stagnation or Central Bank Policy?","authors":"G. Schnabl","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3478451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3478451","url":null,"abstract":"This article compares the Keynesian, neoclassical and Austrian expla-nations for low interest rates and sluggish growth. From a Keynesian and neoclassical perspective, low interest rates are attributed to aging societies, which save more for the future (global savings glut). Low growth is linked to slowing population growth and a declining marginal efficiency of investment as well as to declining fixed capital investment due to digitalization (secular stagnation). In contrast, from the perspective of Austrian business cycle theory, interest rates were decreased step by step by central banks to stimulate growth. This paralyzed investment and lowered growth in the long term. This study shows that the ability of banks to extend credit ex nihilo and the requirement of time to produce capital goods invalidates the permanent IS identity assumed in the Keynesian theory. Furthermore, it is found that there is no empirical evidence for the hypotheses of a global savings glut and secular stagnation. Instead, low growth can be explained by the emergence of quasi “soft budget constraints” as a result of low interest rates, which reduce the incentive for banks and enterprises to strive for efficiency.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121719320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sustainable Debt","authors":"G. Bloise, H. Polemarchakis, Yiannis Vailakis","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3273449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3273449","url":null,"abstract":"We show that debt is sustainable at a competitive equilibrium based solely on the reputation for repayment; that is, even without collateral or legal sanctions available to creditors. In an incomplete asset market, when the rate of interest falls recurrently below the rate of growth of the economy, self‐insurance is more costly than borrowing, and repayments on loans are enforced by the implicit threat of loss of the risk‐sharing advantages of debt contracts. Private debt credibly circulates as a form of inside money, and it is not valued as a speculative bubble. Competitive equilibria with self‐enforcing debt exist under a suitable hypothesis of gains from trade.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126250737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Creditor Rights, Debt Capacity and Securities Issuance: Evidence from Anti-Recharacterization Laws","authors":"Daniel Tut","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3541924","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3541924","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines the effects of improvement in creditors’ rights protection on firms’ \u0000financing choices and securities issuance. To address these issues, I exploit exogenous variation \u0000in creditors’ rights protection induced by the staggered adoption of anti-recharacterization laws \u0000by some U.S. states. The laws enhance the ability of creditors to repossess collateral during \u0000bankruptcy. Using a difference-in-difference methodology to estimate the causal impacts, I find \u0000that: [1] the laws are positively related to debt capacity and debt maturity. Firms increase \u0000market leverage and substitute away from costly short-term debt financing into long-term \u0000debt financing [2] the laws are positively related to debt issuance [3] the laws are negatively \u0000related to equity issuance. My analysis further demonstrates that proactive securities issuers \u0000are significantly more responsive to the adoption of anti-recharacterization laws than passive \u0000securities issuers","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126526100","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Possible Impact of Accounting Income Method (AIM) on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in New Zealand","authors":"Frank Tsuzuki, John Sun, Kevin Chiv","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3472175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3472175","url":null,"abstract":"Accounting income method (AIM) has been introduced as a provisional income tax payment method in April 2018 in New Zealand. One of the concerns from the taxpayer side is that the provisional tax payment amount and timing is not necessarily consistent with that of actual income and profit of taxpayers. AIM utilises advanced technologies of accounting software, MYOB, Reckon APS or Xero, to address issues including this. The major purpose of this research was to evaluate possible impacts of AIM on New Zealand small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) based on available information related to AIM. In addition to the publicly available information on the provisional income tax payment methods and AIM, an official information request to Inland Revenue (IR) and hearing/inquiry surveys to IR officer was conducted as well as internal communications in the authors’ affiliation accounting firms. Estimations of hypothetical cases showed there would be difference in income tax payment amounts, 0.16–0.3% of annual revenue, between the Standard method and AIM when the time value of money is considered. AIM would have significant impacts on New Zealand SMEs under such conditions that accounting software would be more proliferated, or conventional accounting software would incorporate data available from existing merchandise, EFTPOS, bank accounts and cashing systems.","PeriodicalId":119398,"journal":{"name":"Political Economy - Development: Fiscal & Monetary Policy eJournal","volume":"174 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124197560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}