Publication:
Determinants of Bulgarian Brady Bond Prices: An Empirical Assessment

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (1.53 MB)
361 downloads
Published
2000-01
ISSN
Date
2015-07-23
Editor(s)
Abstract
To analyze the main determinants of secondary market prices of Bulgarian Brady Bonds, the authors investigate to what extent fluctuations in domestic fundamentals affect the bonds secondary market price. They also assess the extent to which external shocks affect the bonds prices. They estimate the long-term relationship between domestic fundamentals and market prices of bonds, using co-integration techniques. In the long-run, they find that gross foreign reserves and exports had a positive effect on bond prices and the real exchange rate and Mexico's nominal exchange rate depreciation had a negative effect. In the short run, the Asian crisis had a negative impact, and Bulgaria's change in political regime and introduction of a currency board had a positive impact. Mexico's economic crisis in 1995 had contagion effects. The authors' empirical results confirm the view that the so-called fundamentals approach should be used to supplement the analysis of spillover effects for Bulgaria Brady bonds.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Budina, Nina; Mantchev, Tzvetan. 2000. Determinants of Bulgarian Brady Bond Prices: An Empirical Assessment. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 2277. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/22279 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
  • Publication
    The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29) Abalo, Kodzovi; Boehlert, Brent; Bui, Thanh; Burns, Andrew; Castillo, Diego; Chewpreecha, Unnada; Haider, Alexander; Hallegatte, Stephane; Jooste, Charl; McIsaac, Florent; Ruberl, Heather; Smet, Kim; Strzepek, Ken
    Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.
  • Publication
    South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08) Baez, Javier E.; Kshirsagar, Varun
    Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.
  • Publication
    The Evolution of Local Participatory Democracy in Nepal
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-05) Bhusal, Thaneshwar; Breen, Michael G; Rao, Vijayendra
    Nepal is, according to its constitution, among the world’s most decentralized countries, with a long and complex tradition of local-level public participation. This paper traces the evolution of Nepal’s modern participatory institutions, examining the extent to which they are “induced” by external interventions versus being “organically” rooted in indigenous practices. The paper identifies three broad phases: an initial focus on participation in project implementation; a subsequent phase that expanded citizen engagement; and a third phase of citizen empowerment, culminating in the 2015 federal constitution, which granted unprecedented local autonomy. The analysis yields five key findings. First, over the past 50 years, successive reforms have progressively expanded opportunities for citizens to influence local decision-making. Second, these reforms have integrated traditional participatory mechanisms into formal institutions of local government. Third, although central-level initiatives exist, most participatory platforms continue to operate at the local level. Fourth, the federal constitution has created a new landscape of local democracy, embedding autonomy and accountability. Fifth, although they are still valued in many ethnic and territorial communities, traditional participatory practices are gradually disappearing. The paper concludes by offering policy recommendations to help donor agencies and governments strengthen Nepal’s democratic trajectory. It argues that effective interventions should build on Nepal’s deep participatory traditions while recognizing the constitutional reality of far-reaching local autonomy.
  • Publication
    Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07) Kim, Galileu; Kumar, Tanu; Ramalho, Rita; Russell, Stuart
    State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.
  • Publication
    Closing the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Challenges in Law and Practice for Female Entrepreneurs
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07) Behr, Daniela M.; Xi, Yue
    Despite significant strides toward gender equality, women around the world continue to encounter systemic obstacles that hinder their entrepreneurial success. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the barriers female entrepreneurs face and the solutions proposed to overcome these challenges. It discusses institutional factors, financial factors, human capital factors, and social and cultural factors. The literature overview is complemented by a series of stylized facts that illustrate how overcoming some of these existing barriers is correlated with improved women’s entrepreneurship and female labor force participation, drawing on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law database as well as the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys. The findings underscore the need for creating an enabling environment where women can thrive as entrepreneurs.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Can the Distributional Impacts of Macroeconomic Shocks be Predicted? A Comparison of the Performance of Macro-Micro Models with Historical Data for Brazil
    (World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-05) Leite, Phillippe George; Ferreira, Francisco H.G.; Pereira da Silva, Luiz A.; Picchetti, Paulo
    What was the impact of Brazil's 1998-99 currency crisis-which resulted in a change of exchange rate regime and a large real devaluation-on the occupational structure of the labor force and the distribution of incomes? Would it have been possible to predict such effects ahead of the crisis? The authors present an integrated macro-micro model of the Brazilian economy in 1998. The model consists of an applied general equilibrium macroeconometric component, connected through a set of linkage aggregate variables to a microeconomic model of household incomes. The authors use this framework to predict the employment and distributional consequences of the 1999 Brazilian currency crisis, based on 1998 household survey data. They then test the predictive performance of the model by comparing its simulated results with the actual household survey data observed in 1999. In addition to the fully integrated macro-micro model, the authors also test the performances of the microeconometric model on its own, and of a "representative household groups" approach. They find that the integrated macro-micro econometric model, while still inaccurate on many dimensions, can actually predict the broad pattern of the incidence of changes in household incomes across the distribution reasonably well, and much better than the alternative approaches. The authors conclude that further experimentation with these tools might be of considerable potential usefulness to policymakers.
  • Publication
    Global Monetary Conditions versus Country-Specific Factors in the Determination of Emerging Market Debt Spreads
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06) Dailami, Mansoor; Masson, Paul R.; Padou, Jean Jose
    The authors offer evidence that U.S. interest rate policy has an important influence in the determination of credit spreads on emerging market bonds over U.S. benchmark treasuries and therefore on their cost of capital. Their analysis improves on the existing literature and understanding by addressing the dynamics of market expectations in shaping views on interest rate and monetary policy changes and by recognizing nonlinearities in the link between U.S. interest rates and emerging market bond spreads, as the level of interest rates affect the market's perceived probability of default and the solvency of emerging market borrowers. For a country with a moderate level of debt, repayment prospects would remain good in the face of an increase in U.S. interest rates, so there would be little increase in spreads. A country close to the borderline of solvency would face a steeper increase in spreads. Simulations of a 200 basis points (bps) increase in U.S. interest rates show an increase in emerging market spreads ranging from 6 bps to 65 bps, depending on debt/GDP ratios. This would be in addition to the increase in the benchmark U.S. 10 year Treasury rate.
  • Publication
    Assessing Debt Sustainability in Emerging Market Economies : Using Stochastic Simulation Methods
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-01) Hostland, Doug; Karam, Philippe
    The authors apply stochastic simulation methods to assess debt sustainability in emerging market economies and provide probability measures for projections of the external and public debt burden over the medium term. The vulnerability of public debt to adverse shocks is determined by a number of interrelated factors, including the volatility of output, financial fragility, the endogenous response of the risk premium, and sudden stops in private capital flows. The vulnerability of external debt is sensitive to the determination of the exchange rate and to the pricing of traded goods. The authors show that fiscal policy can act in a preemptive manner to prevent the debt burden from rising significantly over the medium term. This requires flexibility in fiscal planning, which many emerging market economies lack. Emerging market economies therefore face a difficult tradeoff between managing the risk of a debt crisis and pursuing other important fiscal policy objectives.
  • Publication
    Real Exchange Rates, Saving and Growth : Is There a Link ?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-05) Montiel, Peter J.; Servén, Luis
    The view that policies directed at the real exchange rate can have an important effect on economic growth has been gaining adherents in recent years. Unlike the traditional "misalignment" view that temporary departures of the real exchange rate from its equilibrium level harm growth by distorting a key relative price in the economy, the recent literature stresses the growth effects of the equilibrium real exchange rate itself, with the claim being that a depreciated equilibrium real exchange rate promotes economic growth. While there is no consensus on the precise channels through which this effect is generated, an increasingly common view in policy circles points to saving as the channel of transmission, with the claim that a depreciated real exchange rate raises the domestic saving rate -- which in turn stimulates growth by increasing the rate of capital accumulation. This paper offers a preliminary exploration of this claim. Drawing from standard analytical models, stylized facts on saving and real exchange rates, and existing empirical research on saving determinants, the paper assesses the link between the real exchange rate and saving. Overall, the conclusion is that saving is unlikely to provide the mechanism through which the real exchange rate affects growth.
  • Publication
    Real Exchange Rate Uncertainty and Private Investment in Developing Countries
    (World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2002-04) Servén, Luis
    The author examines empirically the link between real exchange rate uncertainty and private investment in developing countries using a large cross country-time series data set. He builds a GARCH-based measure of real exchange rate volatility and finds that it has a strong negative impact on investment, after controlling for other standard investment determinants and taking into account their potential endogeneity. The impact of uncertainty is not uniform, however. There is some evidence of threshold effects, so that uncertainty only matters when it exceeds some critical level. In addition, the negative impact of real exchange rate uncertainty on investment is significantly larger in economies that are highly open and in those with less developed financial systems.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Global Economic Prospects, January 2025
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16) World Bank
    Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.
  • Publication
    El Salvador - Public Expenditure Review : Enhancing the Efficiency and Targeting of Expenditures, Volume 2. Chapters and Statistical Tables
    (Washington, DC, 2010-11) World Bank
    This Public Expenditure Review (PER), produced jointly by the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), is an in-depth economic and sector report on El Salvador. The study builds on the analysis and recommendations of the PER delivered in 2004 that concluded that El Salvador faced the dual challenge of addressing deteriorating fiscal trends while financing key investments required to accelerate growth and meet pressing social needs. This report is intended to provide the government with practical and useful near-and medium-term recommendations that will support the country's efforts to ensure sustainable fiscal balances and establish effective and transparent mechanisms to allocate public resources to promote broad-based economic growth, improve social indicators, and reduce poverty. Hence, the government knows that El Salvador is faced with two fiscal challenges that will have great influence on the economic performance over the coming years. The first is the need to improve the fiscal balance, by strengthening revenue and reducing expenditure, to ensure medium-term sustainability. The second is the need to finance priority investments required to accelerate growth, reduce unemployment, and cover basic social needs. Meeting both challenges simultaneously will require great skill, given the still fragmented political environment and the difficulties in creating a consensus on future policies. The country needs to strengthen its fiscal stance because not doing so jeopardizes the medium-term macroeconomic framework, and exposes the country to greater vulnerability in the face of external shocks and contingent liabilities.
  • Publication
    Digital Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.
  • Publication
    Recipe for a Livable Planet
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-09-20) Sutton, William R.; Lotsch, Alexander; Prasann, Ashesh
    The global agrifood system has been largely overlooked in the fight against climate change. Yet, greenhouse gas emissions from the agrifood system are so big that they alone could cause the world to miss the goal of keeping global average temperatures from rising above 1.5 centigrade compared to preindustrial levels. Greenhouse gas emissions from agrifood must be cut to net zero by 2050 to achieve this goal. Recipe for a Livable Planet: Achieving Net Zero Emissions in the Agrifood System offers the first comprehensive global strategic framework to mitigate the agrifood system’s contributions to climate change, detailing affordable and readily available measures that can cut nearly a third of the world’s planet heating emissions while ensuring global food security. These actions, which are urgently needed, offer three additional benefits: improving food supply reliability, strengthening the global food system’s resilience to climate change, and safeguarding vulnerable populations. This practical guide outlines global actions and specific steps that countries at all income levels can take starting now, focusing on six key areas: investments, incentives, information, innovation, institutions, and inclusion. Calling for collaboration among governments, businesses, citizens, and international organizations, it maps a pathway to making agrifood a significant contributor to addressing climate change and healing the planet.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2007
    (World Bank, 2006) World Bank
    The theme of The World Development Report 2007 is youth - young people between the ages of 12 to 24. As this population group seeks identity and independence, they make decisions that affect not only their own well-being, but that of others, and they do this in a rapidly changing demographic and socio-economic environment. Supporting young people's transition to adulthood poses important opportunities and risky challenges for development policy. Are education systems preparing young people to cope with the demands of changing economies? What kind of support do they get as they enter the labor market? Can they move freely to where the jobs are? What can be done to help them avoid serious consequences of risky behavior, such as death from HIV-AIDS and drug abuse? Can their creative energy be directed productively to support development thinking? The report will focus on crucial capabilities and transitions in a young person's life: learning for life and work, staying healthy, working, forming families, and exercising citizenship. For each, there are opportunities and risks; for all, policies and institutions matter.