Does External Debt Service Devalue Local Currency in the Long Run? Empirical Evidence from Egypt

The aim of this study is to identify the extent to which there is an effect of external debt service on the exchange rate in Egypt in the long run, where the change in the exchange rate has great importance in changing currency value and thus affecting its function as a store of value and a standard for forward payments and then in the redistribution of income and wealth, It also has an effect on some macroeconomic variables, such as inflation, exports, imports, and thus the current account. The study examines the estimation of the long-run relationship between the external debt service and the exchange rate in Egypt in the period 1980-2019 and relies on the exchange rate of the dollar against the Egyptian pound as a dependent variable, while the explanatory variables were the external debt service, gross capital formation, broad money growth, deposit interest rate, household final consumption expenditure, gross savings, and terms of trade adjustment. The methodology is based on Vector Error Correction (VEC) and the study concluded that there is a significant long-term relationship between the value of the Egyptian pound and all the variables explained in the study, as the error correction coefficient is negative and significant. Also, there is an inverse statistically significant relationship between the value of the Egyptian pound and each of the external debt service, the deposit interest rate, and gross savings; any change of 1% in the external debt service, the deposit interest rate, and gross savings leads to a devaluation of the Egyptian pound against the dollar by 4.8%, 0.04%, and 0.05%, respectively. The study also concluded that there is a positive, statistically significant relationship in the long term between the value of the Egyptian pound and each of gross capital formation, broad money growth, households' and NPISHs' final consumption expenditure, and terms of trade adjustment, as any change of 1% in these variables leads to an increase in the value of the Egyptian pound by 0.16%, 0.05%, 0.27%, and 6%, respectively. This study recommends that decision makers consider all the reasons that would reduce the external debt service in order to preserve the value of the Egyptian currency in the long run.

Wage Insurance and Labor Market Trajectories

Wage insurance provides income support to displaced workers who find reemployment at a lower wage. We study the effects of the wage insurance provisions of the US Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program using administrative data from the state of Virginia. The program includes an age-based eligibility cutoff, allowing us to compare earnings and employment trajectories for workers whose ages at the time of displacement make them eligible or ineligible for the program. Our findings suggest that wage insurance eligibility increases short-run employment probabilities and that wage insurance and TAA training may yield similar long-run effects on employment and earnings.

Skill Overshooting in Job Training With the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program

The authors investigate the training choices made by workers entering the Trade Adjustment Assistance program and their postexit outcomes. This is important as more workers enter these types of programs due to technological change and globalization. Their study shows that workers that choose a training occupation beyond their skill level (skill overshooting) achieve higher earnings ($615 annually) and wage replacement rates (2.0 percentage points) at the cost of lower reemployment rates (−1.9 percentage points) immediately following program exit. An investigation of subsamples shows that skill overshooting is especially beneficial to females and those living in rural areas with earnings gains of $1,443 and $1,080, respectively, without hurting their chances of reemployment.

Trade Competition and Worker Compensation: Why Do Some Receive More than Others?

Dealing with the distributional consequences of trade liberalization has become one of the key challenges facing developed democracies. Governments have created compensation programs to ease labor market adjustment, but these resources tend to be distributed highly unevenly. What accounts for the variation? Looking at the largest trade adjustment program in existence, the US’ Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), we argue that petitions for compensation are largely driven by legislative attitudes. When legislators express negative views of TAA, individuals in their districts become less likely to petition for, and receive, compensation. This effect is especially pronounced in Republican districts. An underprovision of TAA, in turn, renders individuals more likely to demand other forms of government support, like in-kind medical benefits. We use roll-call votes, bill sponsorships, and floor speeches to measure elite attitudes, and we proxy for the demand for trade adjustment using economic shocks from Chinese import competition. In sum, we show how the individual beliefs of political elites can be self-fulfilling.

How responsive is Trade Adjustment Assistance?

How responsive is the US’ Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) to the labor dislocation that results from trade integration? Recent findings suggest that the world's most ambitious trade adjustment program barely responds to import shocks, and that the shortfall is made up by disability insurance and early retirement. This holds considerable implications: TAA offers a lens onto the central question of whether developed democracies can effectively redistribute the gains from international economic integration. We take a closer look at these results. Using petition-level data over a 20-year period, we find that TAA is between 1.7 and 3.3 times more responsive than current estimates suggest. Yet the news is not all good. As we show, the responsiveness of TAA has decreased considerably since the 1990s, just as developed democracies started facing increasing pushback against liberalization. This shortfall, in turn, has political consequences: areas where TAA has been least responsive were also more likely to shift toward voting for Trump in the 2016 Presidential election. Our findings speak to the considerable challenge governments face in aiding workers “left behind” by liberalization.

The Politics of Trade Adjustment Versus Trade Protection

The United States’ Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program seeks to help workers transition away from jobs lost to import competition. By contrast, trade remedies like antidumping seek to directly reduce the effect of competition at the border. Though they have very different economic effects, we show that trade adjustment and protectionism act as substitutes. Using the first geo-coded measure of US trade protectionist demands, we show that controlling for trade shocks, counties with a history of successful TAA petitions see fewer calls for trade protection. This effect holds when we confine our analysis to the steel industry, a heavy user of antidumping duties. And though they are both means of addressing import exposure, the two policy options have distinct political effects: in particular, successful TAA petitions carry a significant electoral benefit for Democratic candidates. Greater recognition of the substitutability of trade compensation and protectionism would improve governments’ response to import exposure.