The Annual Research Conference 2019: Celebrating 20 Years of Academic Excellence

• Author: Emine Boz
• Pages: 9-9

Annual

20th Jacques Polak

IMF RESEARCH perspectives | IMF.org/researchbulletin 09

This is mainly bec ause these rms nd it mor e desirable to

pay the high xed cos ts of direct expor ting and enjoy its lower

variable cos ts by exporting larg er quantities. Conseq uently,

in the absence of th e direct exporti ng channel, the share of

exporter s declines by 11 percentage point s, export volume

drops by 74 percent, and welf are falls by 6 percent.

As another exam ple of a counterfac tual exercise, consider

moderate subs idies to reduce the xed cos t of indirect

exporting. Recent research shows that wholesalers,

on average, expor t more products th an manufacturing r ms,

which sugges ts that these trade in termediaries spread the

xed cost s of indirect export ing across many product s.

Under this assumption, taxing the income of households

and subsidizing the xed costs of indirect expor ters can

lead to welfare gains, although these gains are negligible.

For a small Vietna mese rice producer, export ing directly

may be expensive an d risky. However, another way of gaining

access to inter national markets is thro ugh trade intermediari es.

Indirect ex porting is not only a che aper way of testing the wate rs

in foreign market s, it is also a stepping- stone to direct expo rting

for small and young exp orters.

THE ANNUAL RESEARCH

CONFERENCE 2019:

Celebrating 20 Years of Academic Excellence

The Jacques Polak Annual Research

Conference cel ebrated its 20t h

anniversar y November 78. This yea rs

conference foc used on “Debt: The Go od.

The Bad. The Ug ly” covering household,

corporate, and p ublic debt.

Debt measuremen t and sustainabilit y

were a common thread a cross both

academic and policy sessions.

Researchers and policymakers alike

argued that standard accounting identities

or the simple d ebt-to-GDP rat io were

insufci ent to assess ind ebtedness or

evaluate debt sustainabilit y. While interest

and growth ra tes had been often neg ative

in the past—s uggesting smaller cos ts of

debt—the lively discussions, including

the session with Olivier Blanchard and

Kenneth Rogoff, revealed disagreements

on the implications of this empirical

regularity for policymaking, par ticularly at

the current juncture.

In his Mundell- Fleming Lecture, Jeremy

Stein took up the que stion of what

policy could do t o dampen credit

cycles. He ar gued that sentiment play s

an import ant role in driving credit

booms and bust s. While central bank s

already pay attention to sentiment, it

remains unclear how strongly it should

affec t setting polic y rates. Stein furt her

emphasized that macroprudential policies

could be insuf cient to address nancial

stabilit y concerns, espec ially when the

unregulated nan cial system is large.

Interested i n learning more about the

Annual Research C onference? Visit the

conference website for links to videos o f

Managing Director Kristalina Georgievas

opening remarks, Steins Mundell-Fleming

Lecture, and the discussion featuring

Blanchard and Rogo ff, as well as links

to all academic papers presented at the

conference.

The Good. The Bad. The Ugly

Emine Boz

eboz@IMF.org