The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Using a comprehensive dataset of 272 large-scale natural disasters in 83 countries from 1986 to 2018, we find that disasters increase government debt financing costs (T-bill rates and 10-year government bond yields) but only in the middle- and low-income countries. This distinct response relative to high-income countries is due to lower levels of credit market depth, of private insurance penetration, and of central bank independence. The results for all natural disasters are driven by biological (epidemic) and climatological disasters — two types of hazards, the frequency and severity of which have been rising.
The ongoing process of globalization has affected the way the monetary policy is conducted – and this is especially the case of small open economies, where the economic developments are heavily affected by the developments abroad. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to investigate the effects of unconventional monetary policy in two very open economies – Slovakia and the Czech Republic in the post-crisis era – the two rather similar very open economies. We assess the effects of their monetary policies by estimating their impact on the banking sector in both countries. We employ two cointegrating estimators – DOLS and FMOLS, so that we can assess the dynamics of the relationship between the developments of main balance sheet items of the respective central banks and the aggregate bank lending to various sectors of the economy. We do find evidence that unconventional policies of both central banks did lift bank lending – with the effect being stronger in Slovakia and for the QE policies. In both countries, the effect was more pronounced for the bank lending to household sector – specifically on housing related loans. Finally, we do not find evidence that the increasing openness of these two already very open economies affected the transmission of monetary policies into the banking sector.
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