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With close to 30 emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) using inflation targeting to determine monetary policy, and many of them for over 15 years, it is possible to create a meaningful measure of neutral real interest rates in these economies. The neutral real interest rate provides policymakers with a benchmark for the interest rate at which economic activity reaches its full potential and inflation will stabilize. The deviation of policy rates from this neutral rate determines whether monetary policy is accommodative or restrictive. This paper provides aggregate estimates of the neutral rate in 20 of these economies. EMDEs have seen a decline in the neutral rate of 4 percentage points, from over 6 percent in 2000 to closer to 2 percent at the end of 2019; advanced economies saw an above 2 percentage point decline over this period. The decline of neutral real interest rates in EMDEs can only partially be related to domestic drivers of desired savings and investment. The secular decline in the neutral rate of interest is limiting the ability of EMDEs to stimulate economies in the face of large shocks. The neutral real interest rate is unobservable and subject to a high degree of uncertainty, double the size of that for advanced economies. With such high uncertainty determining the stance of monetary policy in these economies is a challenge.

Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies --- Developing Economies --- Economic Shock --- Economic Stimulus --- Emerging Market Economies --- Fiscal and Monetary Policy --- Inflation --- Macroeconomic Management --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Monetary Policy --- Neutral Real Interest Rate --- Real Interest Rate --- Taylor Rule

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Russia had more-or-less completed the privatization of its manufacturing and natural resource sectors by the end of 1997. And in February 1998, the annual inflation rate at last dipped into the single digits. Privatization should have helped with stronger micro-foundations for growth. The conquest of inflation should have cemented macroeconomic credibility, lowered real interest rates, and spurred investment. Instead, Russia suffered a massive public debt-exchange rate-banking crisis just six months later, in August 1998. In showing how this turn of events unfolded, the authors focus on the interaction among Russia's deteriorating fiscal fundamentals, its weak micro-foundations of growth and financial globalization. They argue that the expectation of a large official bailout in the final 10 weeks before the meltdown played an important role, with Russia's external debt increasing by USD 16 billion or 8 percent of post-crisis gross domestic product during this time. The lessons and insights extracted from the 1998 Russian crisis are of general applicability, oil and geopolitics notwithstanding. These include a discussion of when financial globalization might actually hurt and a cutoff in market access might actually help; circumstances in which an official bailout could backfire; and why financial engineering tends to fail when fiscal solvency problems are present.

Access to Finance --- Bailout --- Banking crisis --- Banks & Banking Reform --- Credibility --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Currency --- Debt Markets --- Debt obligations --- Emerging market --- Emerging Markets --- Exchange rate --- External debt --- Face value --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Globalization --- Gross domestic product --- Inflation --- Inflation rate --- International Bank --- Market access --- Private Sector Development --- Public debt --- Real interest --- Real interest rates --- Repo --- Solvency

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Russia had more-or-less completed the privatization of its manufacturing and natural resource sectors by the end of 1997. And in February 1998, the annual inflation rate at last dipped into the single digits. Privatization should have helped with stronger micro-foundations for growth. The conquest of inflation should have cemented macroeconomic credibility, lowered real interest rates, and spurred investment. Instead, Russia suffered a massive public debt-exchange rate-banking crisis just six months later, in August 1998. In showing how this turn of events unfolded, the authors focus on the interaction among Russia's deteriorating fiscal fundamentals, its weak micro-foundations of growth and financial globalization. They argue that the expectation of a large official bailout in the final 10 weeks before the meltdown played an important role, with Russia's external debt increasing by USD 16 billion or 8 percent of post-crisis gross domestic product during this time. The lessons and insights extracted from the 1998 Russian crisis are of general applicability, oil and geopolitics notwithstanding. These include a discussion of when financial globalization might actually hurt and a cutoff in market access might actually help; circumstances in which an official bailout could backfire; and why financial engineering tends to fail when fiscal solvency problems are present.

Access to Finance --- Bailout --- Banking crisis --- Banks & Banking Reform --- Credibility --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Currency --- Debt Markets --- Debt obligations --- Emerging market --- Emerging Markets --- Exchange rate --- External debt --- Face value --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Globalization --- Gross domestic product --- Inflation --- Inflation rate --- International Bank --- Market access --- Private Sector Development --- Public debt --- Real interest --- Real interest rates --- Repo --- Solvency

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May 2000 - For the period 1992-98, domestic factors explain most output variability in Latin America. However, external factors account for about 60 percent of the 1998-99 slowdown - perhaps in part because external variables were more volatile during this period, but mainly because domestic variables - real interest rates and real exchange rates - were more stable in these two years. Herrera, Perry, and Quintero explain Latin America's growth slowdown in 1998-99. To do so, they use two complementary methodologies. The first aims at determining how much of the slowdown can be explained by specific external factors: the terms of trade, international interest rates, spreads on external debt, capital flows, and climatological factors (El Nino). Using quarterly GDP data for the eight largest countries in the region, the authors estimate a dynamic panel showing that 50 - 60 percent of the slowdown was due to these external factors. The second approach allows for effects on output by some endogenous variables, such as domestic real interest rates and real exchange rates. Using monthly industrial production data, the authors estimate country-specific generalized vector autoregressions (GVAR) for the largest countries. They find that during the sample period (1992-98) output volatility is mostly associated with shocks to domestic factors, but the slowdown in the subperiod 1998-99 is explained more than 60 percent by shocks to the external factors. This paper - a product of the Economic Policy Sector Unit and the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office - is part of a larger effort to understand output fluctuations and growth in the region. The authors may be contacted at gperry@worldbank.org or nquintero@worldbank.org

Accounting --- Bond --- Bonds --- Business Cycles --- Business Cycles and Stabilization Policies --- Capital Flows --- Capital Markets --- Currencies and Exchange Rates --- Debt Markets --- Domestic Interest Rates --- Economic Stabilization --- Economic Theory and Research --- Emerging Markets --- Exchange --- External Debt --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Financial Literacy --- Gross Domestic Product --- Interest Rates --- International Development --- International Interest --- Investment and Investment Climate --- Macroeconomic Management --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Poverty Reduction --- Private Sector Development --- Pro-Poor Growth --- Real Exchange Rate --- Real Exchange Rates --- Real Interest --- Real Interest Rate --- Real Interest Rates --- Share --- Sovereign Debt

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It has recently been suggested that allowing for switches between different inflationary regimes produces a much better fit for the Fisher relationship between interest rates and inflation, at least for U.S. data. The paper assesses the merits of the regime-switching theory as an explanation for the apparent fluctuations in real interest rates in Australia, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Banks and Banking --- Inflation --- Interest Rates: Determination, Term Structure, and Effects --- Price Level --- Deflation --- Finance --- Macroeconomics --- Real interest rates --- Long term interest rates --- Short term interest rates --- Yield curve --- Financial services --- Prices --- Interest rates --- United States