Discussion Papers

Discussion papers include papers, presentations and documents presented at IDB events either by IDB staff or outside speakers.

• Housing Finance, Housing Shocks, and the Business Cycle: Evidence from OECD Countries

  Cardarelli, Roberto; Monacelli, Tommaso; Rebucci, Alessandro; Sala, Luca

  Date : Jan, 2010

  This paper quantifies the role of the housing sector in the business cycle of advanced economies. We identify housing demand and supply shocks in a standard monetary VAR model augmented with a housing sector, by combining sign restrictions with conventional exclusion restrictions. We estimate the relative importance of housing shocks for consumption, house prices and residential investment, and relate them to an index of housing finance development, as well as a few other variables possibly explaining their cross country variation. The main findings of the paper are as follows: (i) Housing shocks (demand and supply combined) explain about 20 percent of consumption variance in the typical OECD economy over a three-year forecast horizon, and their importance seems to have increased over time. There is however a strong eterogeneity across countries; (ii) housing demand shocks are much more important than housing supply shocks for consumption volatility and are also transmitted in a qualitatively different manner; (iii) the distribution of housing shocks in the cross section of countries we consider is associated with the degree of mortgage market development; and (iv) contrary to conventional wisdom, the global imbalances do not seem to have had a large role on the boom-bust cycle of the typical OECD economy. We interpret this evidence as consistent with housing finance innovation having amplified the spillovers from the housing sector to the rest of the economy over the last two decades in these economies by strengthening the role of housing as collateral for non-housing consumption, via house prices.

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• entra21 Program Phase I: Results, Lessons Learned and Sustainability Paths

  Presented at a MIF-IYF Brown Bag Lunch on October 8, 2009

  Susan Pezzullo - International Youth Foundation

  Date : Oct, 2009

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• Building capital: the role of migrant remittances in housing improvement and construction in El Salvador

  Presentation of the winning Masters thesis from the MIF Call for Academic Research in Remittances

  Brendan McBride

  Date : May, 2009

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• The Global Crisis and LAC: Views from Washington - Guillermo Calvo

  Calvo, Guillermo

  Date : Apr, 2009

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• The STC Challenge: Scaling Up Innovation in Sustainable Tourism

  One page flyer

  Soler, Santiago,

  Date : Apr, 2009

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• Remittances in Times of Financial Instability

  2008 LAC Map Supplemental

  Meins, Robert Wilke,

  Date : Mar, 2009

  This document is a supplement to the brochure, Remittances in times of financial instability, and the map of remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2008, produced by MIF. The document provides a short overview of significant trends affecting remittances and their impact on families, communities and national economies throughout the region.

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• Phase I Summary Eng 2008(2)

  Mikkelsen, Lene,

  Date : Feb, 2009

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• Economic interests and economic policy

  Date : Feb, 2009

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• Comments: Politics and Productivity

  Date : Feb, 2009

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• Korean productivity. The brute force method, or The dual economy

  Date : Feb, 2009

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