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- International Economics M.A. (87) (remove)
Trade, foreign direct investments and inequality: development perspective for emerging markets
(2018)
The road to the euro: Bulgaria’s economic development since 1989 under currency board conditions
(2018)
The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the key economic developments in Bulgaria over the last three decades, capturing the multidimensionality of the transition process and defining the current economic trajectory of the country under currency board conditions.
With the implosion of the socialist regime and the loss of its main external market the Bulgarian economy failed to regain lost ground and slipped into deep economic crisis. The aggravating macroeconomic imbalances culminated in a severe ‘triple’ crisis combining a crash in public finances, ruined banking system and foreign exchange crisis, as a result of a collapse of the currency, all of which gave rise to a hyperinflationary hike in early 1997.
Introduced as a stabilization instrument and disinflation device, following the severe economic crisis, the implications of the Bulgarian currency board for the economy have been mixed. On the one hand, living up to the expectations a remarkable turnaround in terms of inflation has been achieved and macroeconomic and financial stability has been restored. However, the disinflation came at the cost of enlarging external debt and appreciation of the real exchange rate, which is a primary prerequisite for potential loss of competitiveness of the economy.
After the breakdown of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Kyrgyz Republic started its transition period. During the Soviet Union Kyrgyzstan was one of the fifteen states having planned economic system which was later transited into the market driven mechanism. Consequently, Kyrgyzstan like a number of Commonwealth Independent States (CIS) suffered from primary drastic decline in economic development as well as from considerable transformation in the whole economic system. There was a severe increase in the unemployment situation, rising inequality and poverty and decrease in real wages. In spite of the fluctuations in the economic system, stagnation involving poverty and inequality lasted till 2000s. Therefore the national government had to undertake a number of reforms destined for economic recovery. Moreover, Kyrgyz government stated attracting international donors to help with the situation. The transition period was especially hard for kyrgyz women. There were not equal number of employment opportunities for women compared to men. Also, wage disparities resulted in income inequality for women. It is important to note that due to the more popularised beliefs of patriarchal values in the country, women were obliged to stay at home and do child care rather than pursue their career in social, economic or political spheres. The data is taken from national and international organisation’s sources.
The thesis discusses financialization and secular stagnation in the U.S. economy since the 1980s. The theoretical part outlines the historical approach of the main scholars who have discussed secular stagnation before and since the emergence of financialization.
It illustrates the shortcomings of the current mainstream debate. Furthermore, it then focuses on the relationship between the two phenomena on the basis of heterodox approaches. Both Marxian and Post-Keynesian researchers consider financializaion to be responsible for producing stagnation tendencies. They agreed about the temporary counteracting role of financial expansion in addition to its role in producing bubbles and contradictions. They agree about the channel of accumulation but each of them views it in a different way. Further, they agree also on the impact of income inequality but again each of them recognizes this in a different way. However, they differ in describing the structure of financialization and in how they explain the relationship between policy and that structure.
The thesis finds that the Steindlian model finds some common ground between the two paradigms. The data presented illustrates the validity of the model. It is found that the stagnation trend before crisis was pushed by decreasing accumulation in capital stock and increasing inequality. However, despite the existence of increasing inequality household expenditure increased since the compensating factor, “household debt”, was increasing. After the crisis Stagnation tendencies reemerged because of the slowing down of household expenditure. Household expenditure was therefore negatively influenced by increasing inequality and this post-crisis fall in debt. The accumulation channel also contributed to stagnation since the increase in investment was small.
Historically high and rising level of external debt raises concerns among policymakers and academics around the globe. This master thesis proposes to examine several questions. Firstly, the paper attempts to provide the analysis of the current status quo of external debt in developing and emerging countries. Secondly, it attempts to determine the risks attached to low-quality debt structure. Lastly, the paper attempts answer whether expanding debt market through regional integration of local currency bond markets can increase financial stability and reduce “original sin”.
Towards a Fiscal Capacity in the Euro Area. A Critical Assessment of the Recent Policy Proposals.
(2018)
This Master’s thesis aims to explain the causes of rapidly increasing prices in Venezuela and establish whether the current episode can be considered to be of hyperinflationary nature from the post-Keynesian theoretical approach. The chosen approach highlights the role of distributive conflict, indexation mechanism, balance of payments constraint, devaluation expectations and gradual rejection of national currency in favour of foreign currency. We argue that the root cause of the precarious economic situation in Venezuela lies in the long term failure to implement structural changes ensuring industrial diversification and lessening the dependency on oil exports. The symptoms of the Dutch disease are observed in the prolonged currency overvaluation during the high oil revenue periods. In the face of growing external constraint the authorities introduce severe foreign currency rationing (and/or devalue the exchange rate) which ignites inflation due to external bottlenecks since many sectors face supply constraints as they depend on imports of inputs of production. This leads to a regressive distribution of income, which contributes to the growing distributive conflict and fuels inflation further, as workers oppose to the lowering of real wages. Moreover, the currency rationing puts pressure on the black market for exchange as the devaluation expectations increase, leading to a parallel market devaluation-inflation spiral, which threatens to turn into hyperinflation. Nevertheless, we argue that hyperinflation, according to the proposed post-Keynesian framework (the flight to foreign currency), does not materialise despite skyrocketing prices because of the particular institutional setting – the exchange controls, which have been in place since 2003, prevent full currency substitution.
Is an Interest Rate Cap Warranted in Kenya? An Assessment Through a Vector Error Correction Analysis
(2018)
This paper investigates whether policy rates have an impact on bank lending rates and whether bank lending rates have an impact on credit to the private sector in Kenya. The analysis is based on a vector error correction model (VECM) on a data sample for Kenya over 1996-2016. This investigation was motivated by the recent interest rate capping law that necessitated the reexamination of this channel of monetary transmission. The empirical evidence shows a significant and robust long-run relationship between the policy rate and the bank lending rate. The short-run relationship is significant though less
robust. Similarly there is a significant and robust long-run relationship between credit and the lending rate; the short run relationship is also significant but less robust. These results
indicate that monetary transmission from policy rates to credit is effective in the long run but less so in the short run. Therefore, the interest rate capping law may somehow be justified as a means of containing the cost of credit to stimulate access to credit.
This paper aims to introduce a new topic for the economic policies associated with financial instability, both theoretically and through data analysis, discussing the roots of instability and the policy recommendations in the literature of Minsky and examining the role of National Development Banks (NDBs) in the economy. The purpose of the work is to acknowledge NDBs as Thwarting Institutions in a Minskyian sense. These special financial institutions have two sides of effects in the economy, one side related to their financial nature, through their capacity to provide finance to key sectors of the economy, and the other related to the real effects the financing of development projects implicate. Due to these influences, National Development Banks can be considered strong pillars to strengthen the economy, providing additional mechanisms for economic policies for stabilisation and recovery purposes, which is the definition of Thwarting Institution. The study case of the Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development (BNDES) provided a detailed data analysis of the general performance of the bank between 2000-2018, its importance for the economy and especially the countercyclical role of the bank after the 2008s’ financial crisis. The last section will provide the analysis of financial stability in Brazil, showing important variables both from the financial and real side of the economy, in accordance with the Minskyian theory.
This thesis aims at analysing the potential benefits and obstacles of an Employer-of-Last-resort(ELR) policy in the case of Germany. Three main conclusions can be drawn from the analysis. First, as a bottom-up approach an ELR policy can tackle the issue of unemployment on the macroeconomic, socioeconomic and individual level in a unique way and promotes social inclusion of the unemployed. An ELR addresses non-pecuniary costs of unemployment and has the potential to tackle further socioeconomic problems. Second, this work points out that an ELR’s impact on inflation depends on excess production capacities of economic sectors as well as wage bargaining structures. In this regard, trade unions, government and employer representatives must
cooperate comprehensively in order to adapt to a potential raise of workers’ class consciousness. Third, the institutional setup of the European union does not allow for the application of functional
finance and the necessary fiscal spending for financing an ELR. Hence, Germany would need to abolish or redefine the debt break strategy, e.g. in accordance to the so-called Golden Rule, in order to implement a comprehensive ELR policy.
This thesis investigates the impacts of large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs), which are an unconventional monetary policy (UMP) used by the Fed in the response to the 2008 global financial crisis and recession, on gender and racial wealth inequality in the US. After demonstrating that monetary policies have gendered and racial impacts and that none of these studies have yet considered UMPs, the thesis will then explain theoretically what the transmission channels of LSAPs to the wealth distribution are. Empirical studies show that LSAPs created a wealth effect, through increasing the price of some asset owned by households, primarily stocks prices, and to a lesser
extent house prices. Current literature on the impact of LSAPs in the US is still in dissension over whether it increased net wealth inequality or not. However, there is ample evidence from the current gender and racial economic literature that the wealth distribution in the US is significantly unequal, and a hole in the literature on the impact of LSAPs on the highly gendered and racial US wealth distribution. The thesis then begins to fill in some of these gaps in the literature by investigating what has happened to the financial and non-financial wealth of households disaggregated by gender and race in the period of the LSAPs, and whether the LSAPs did contribute to or reinforce these wealth inequalities. Due to limitations in the data collection the thesis is not able to conclude that there was a net negative gender wealth inequality effect. Nevertheless, there is strong empirical evidence that the LSAPs did increase racial wealth
inequality, due to white households disproportionately owning stocks and having higher rates on homeownership.
This Master’s thesis examines the impact of heterogeneity on the assessment of systemic risk in the context of the German banking sector. Precisely, it is questioned whether currently employed, official systemic risk indicators are able to account for the German banking sector’s heterogeneity and to signal systemic risk reliably regardless of different bank types’ individual characteristics. For the assessment, a two-step procedure is employed. First, currently employed, official risk indicators are applied to bank-type-specific data for six different bank types from 1990 until 2018 and benchmarked against crises that occurred during the assessment period. Second, the implications of sectoral characteristics on systemic risk are assessed. The findings suggest that indicators are indeed able to account for the German banking sector’s heterogeneity, issuing different signals for various bank types. Moreover, the indicators allow for the identification of individual bank types’ behavior and their role in the accumulation of systemic risk. Yet, they are only partially able to signal crises correctly and behave more like thermometers than barometers of risk. Lastly, structural features of the German banking sector amplify the risk of individual institutions and thus their contribution to systemic risk at large.
The Role of Fintech in Promoting Financial Inclusion in Developing Countries: THE CASE OF MEXICO
(2019)
Financial inclusion is globally on the rise since 2011; however, still, nearly 1.7 billion adults worldwide do not have a bank account at a formal institution (Demirguc- Kunt et al, 2018). Supply, demand and societal factors may lead to barriers to financial inclusion, and accelerate voluntarily and involuntarily exclusions in the developing countries (World Bank, 2008; Beck and De La Torre, 2006; Beck el at, 2008). With the mobile phone technology and advancements in the innovations, the number of participants has increased with the entrance of new challenger i.e. Fintech startups, in the financial services market. The literature reveals that Fintech has a great
potential to broaden access to financial services through lowering costs, reducing information asymmetries, enabling more transparency, increasing competitiveness, etc. This thesis analyzes the role of Fintech in promoting financial inclusion with the case of Mexico, approaching the lack of financial inclusion issue from the perspective of the household. To approach this issue, one of the objectives of this thesis is to investigate the barriers refraining households from accessing and using financial services.
In Mexico, more than half of the adult population do not have a bank account at a formal institution including mobile money account (Demirguc-Kunt et al, 2018). The G20’s financial inclusion indicators revealed that account ownership as well as saving and borrowing at financial institutions has decreased since 2014. The main barriers are the difficulties to use financial services, financial illiteracy and insufficient financial infrastructure leads to barriers to
financial inclusion in Mexico. Ideally, Fintech has a great potential to reduce the barriers to financial inclusion and promote access to and use of financial services for the people who are excluded by traditional financial institutions due to prohibitive prices, lack of documentation, etc. However, Fintech alone is not sufficient to transmit its full potential benefits. Even though Fintech ecosystem is growing rapidly in Mexico, and seen as a potential solution for lack of financial inclusion issue in Mexico, this study reveals that Fintech ecosystem couldn’t achieve its potential in Mexico so far.
The objective of this master’s thesis paper is to investigate the middle class in China in a comprehensive way and examine the main defying elements of Chinese middle class. In addition to this, this master’s thesis attempts to dive deep and find the overlapping points between middle class and economic growth by talking about the middle class development issues. Historical analysis of middle class
development is also touched in this paper to understand what factors were behind its growth until these days.
In an overall view of my thesis work which is academically backed by previous researches and scholarly papers it is found that economic growth, achievements related to higher education and fair redistribution policies lead to reduced income inequality are the major elements that contribute to the growth of middle class. It is even more significant than social policies which explains class mobility. Based on the findings of my analysis of China, per capita income growth of Chinese people was the major element that expanded Chinese middle class by almost 75% through creating more open business market, and the rest of the factor was done due to inequality changes occurred in China. The growth was mainly occurred via creation of formal jobs which were fairer in payment and increased qualifications of labor force. There was also radical decrease in inequality of labor earnings which is the major factor for reducing income inequality among households. This can be explained by the fact that minimum wages kept rising throughout the 90’s which in turn modified the patterns of middle class consumption.
The Unhealthy Trade: The Expansion of the Food Industry in Latin America, case study of Mexico
(2019)
The text analyses the global and local inequalities that emerge because of the global food industry. More specifically, it analyzes how the consumption of food has changed affecting the health of the most vulnerable groups of people. In that sense, first, I analyze how the global food industry has expanded generating a health problem of obesity and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs), especially in the Global South. The result is that global inequalities are wider between Global North and South. This is reflected in higher rates of obesity and NCDs in peripherical countries, while Global North companies have more profits. Second, I analyze how this expansion is impacting local inequalities in Mexico. There, socioeconomic dynamics shape the way that ultra-processed food and drinks are consumed generating differentiated impacts by gender, class, and age. Women, poor people, and children are the most affected. In the end, the expansion of the global food industry has been contributing to reinforce previous inequalities at global and local levels