Public Debt and Growth

Public Debt and Growth
Author: Jaejoon Woo
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 49
Release: 2010-07-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 145520157X

This paper explores the impact of high public debt on long-run economic growth. The analysis, based on a panel of advanced and emerging economies over almost four decades, takes into account a broad range of determinants of growth as well as various estimation issues including reverse causality and endogeneity. In addition, threshold effects, nonlinearities, and differences between advanced and emerging market economies are examined. The empirical results suggest an inverse relationship between initial debt and subsequent growth, controlling for other determinants of growth: on average, a 10 percentage point increase in the initial debt-to-GDP ratio is associated with a slowdown in annual real per capita GDP growth of around 0.2 percentage points per year, with the impact being somewhat smaller in advanced economies. There is some evidence of nonlinearity with higher levels of initial debt having a proportionately larger negative effect on subsequent growth. Analysis of the components of growth suggests that the adverse effect largely reflects a slowdown in labor productivity growth mainly due to reduced investment and slower growth of capital stock.

The Harper Factor

The Harper Factor
Author: Jennifer Ditchburn
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2016-10-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0773548726

Political legacy is a concept that is often tossed around casually, hastily defined by commentators long before a prime minister leaves office. In the case of the polarizing Stephen Harper, clear-eyed analysis of his tenure is hard to come by. The Harper Factor offers a refreshingly balanced look at the Conservative decade under his leadership. What impact did Harper have on the nation’s finances, on law and order, and on immigration? Did he accomplish what he promised to do in areas such as energy and intergovernmental affairs? How did he change the conduct of politics, the workings of the media, and Parliament? A diverse group of contributors, including veteran economists David Dodge and Richard Dion, immigration advocate Senator Ratna Omidvar, Stephen Harper’s former policy director Paul Wilson, award-winning journalists such as Susan Delacourt, and vice-provost of Aboriginal Initiatives at Lakehead University Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, make reasoned cases for how Harper succeeded and how he fell short in different policy domains between 2006 and 2015. Stephen Harper’s record is decidedly more nuanced than both his admirers and detractors will concede. The Harper Factor provides an authoritative reference for Canadians on the twenty-second prime minister’s imprint on public policy while in office, and his political legacy for generations to come.

Canada

Canada
Author: International Monetary Fund. Monetary and Capital Markets Department
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 85
Release: 2019-06-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498321119

This Financial System Stability Assessment paper discusses that Canada has enjoyed favorable macroeconomic outcomes over the past decades, and its vibrant financial system continues to grow robustly. However, macrofinancial vulnerabilities—notably, elevated household debt and housing market imbalances—remain substantial, posing financial stability concerns. Various parts of the financial system are directly exposed to the housing market and/or linked through housing finance. The financial system would be able to manage severe macrofinancial shocks. Major deposit-taking institutions would remain resilient, but mortgage insurers would need additional capital in a severe adverse scenario. Housing finance is broadly resilient, notwithstanding some weaknesses in the small non-prime mortgage lending segment. Although banks’ overall capital buffers are adequate, additional required capital for mortgage exposures, along with measures to increase risk-based differentiation in mortgage pricing, would be desirable. This would help ensure adequate through-the cycle buffers, improve mortgage risk-pricing, and limit procyclical effects induced by housing market corrections.

The Liquidation of Government Debt

The Liquidation of Government Debt
Author: Ms.Carmen Reinhart
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2015-01-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1498338380

High public debt often produces the drama of default and restructuring. But debt is also reduced through financial repression, a tax on bondholders and savers via negative or belowmarket real interest rates. After WWII, capital controls and regulatory restrictions created a captive audience for government debt, limiting tax-base erosion. Financial repression is most successful in liquidating debt when accompanied by inflation. For the advanced economies, real interest rates were negative 1⁄2 of the time during 1945–1980. Average annual interest expense savings for a 12—country sample range from about 1 to 5 percent of GDP for the full 1945–1980 period. We suggest that, once again, financial repression may be part of the toolkit deployed to cope with the most recent surge in public debt in advanced economies.

Canadian Public Budgeting in the Age of Crises

Canadian Public Budgeting in the Age of Crises
Author: G. Bruce Doern
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2013-04-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0773588523

A broad look at attempts to address economic crises by various governments, with insights into how budget decisions are made.

Bank Capital

Bank Capital
Author: Ouarda Merrouche
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 38
Release: 2010-12-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1455254878

Using a multi-country panel of banks, we study whether better capitalized banks experienced higher stock returns during the financial crisis. We differentiate among various types of capital ratios: the Basel risk-adjusted ratio; the leverage ratio; the Tier I and Tier II ratios; and the tangible equity ratio. We find several results: (i) before the crisis, differences in capital did not have much impact on stock returns; (ii) during the crisis, a stronger capital position was associated with better stock market performance, most markedly for larger banks; (iii) the relationship between stock returns and capital is stronger when capital is measured by the leverage ratio rather than the risk-adjusted capital ratio; (iv) higher quality forms of capital, such as Tier 1 capital and tangible common equity, were more relevant.

Author:
Publisher: The Fraser Institute
Total Pages: 70
Release:
Genre:
ISBN:

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report
Author: Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission
Publisher: Cosimo, Inc.
Total Pages: 692
Release: 2011-05-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1616405414

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, published by the U.S. Government and the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in early 2011, is the official government report on the United States financial collapse and the review of major financial institutions that bankrupted and failed, or would have without help from the government. The commission and the report were implemented after Congress passed an act in 2009 to review and prevent fraudulent activity. The report details, among other things, the periods before, during, and after the crisis, what led up to it, and analyses of subprime mortgage lending, credit expansion and banking policies, the collapse of companies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the federal bailouts of Lehman and AIG. It also discusses the aftermath of the fallout and our current state. This report should be of interest to anyone concerned about the financial situation in the U.S. and around the world.THE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY COMMISSION is an independent, bi-partisan, government-appointed panel of 10 people that was created to "examine the causes, domestic and global, of the current financial and economic crisis in the United States." It was established as part of the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009. The commission consisted of private citizens with expertise in economics and finance, banking, housing, market regulation, and consumer protection. They examined and reported on "the collapse of major financial institutions that failed or would have failed if not for exceptional assistance from the government."News Dissector DANNY SCHECHTER is a journalist, blogger and filmmaker. He has been reporting on economic crises since the 1980's when he was with ABC News. His film In Debt We Trust warned of the economic meltdown in 2006. He has since written three books on the subject including Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books, 2008), and The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big to Jail (Disinfo Books, 2011), a companion to his latest film Plunder The Crime Of Our Time. He can be reached online at www.newsdissector.com.

Introduction of a New Conceptual Framework for Government Debt Management

Introduction of a New Conceptual Framework for Government Debt Management
Author: Anja Hubig
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2013-01-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3658009187

​Against the background of the financial-cum-sovereign debt crisis, government debt managers are currently faced by a challenging environment. One key element in that respect is the analysis and forecast of interest rates, which is important for achieving the strategic objective of low borrowing costs. Anja Hubig develops a new mathematical method to estimate the term structure of interest rates, that is adopted to describe the term structure dynamics within a stochastic setting. The introduced model is capable to capture the complex behavior of the entire yield curve with a reduced set of parameters. It essentially ensures a comprehensive analysis of the costs and risks associated with individual funding strategies, and thus effectively supports the selection of a long-term optimal debt portfolio composition.