This paper documents a few stylized facts of the residential electricity consumption in Thailand. Using an administrative billing records of 16 million residential meters, we find the following stylized facts and potential uses of the data. First, electricity consumption pattern can be used as proxies for household’s wealth and wealth inequality since it reflects ownership of durable electrical appliances. Second, bill payment choices suggest that a majority of the households still face non-trivial transaction costs in paying their utility bills. Lastly, the electricity consumption pattern suggests that wealthier households are more sensitive to the temperature change but are less sensitive to the change in price.

This paper examines the patterns of price adjustment at the micro level in order to further our understanding of price rigidity at the aggregate level. We highlight 5 stylized facts: 1) Prices change infrequently with a mean duration of approximately 4 to 7 months between price changes; 2) Price decreases are common accounting for roughly 45 percent of all price changes; 3) Price changes, both increases and decreases, are sizable compared to the prevailing in ation rate; 4) The size of price changes covaries strongly with the rate of in ation, whereas the fraction of items changing prices does not; and 5) There is signicant dispersion in price levels as well as in the synchronicity of price changes across geographical regions. Based on a dynamic factor model, we also utilize prices at the disaggregated level to perform an in ation decomposition to understand the underlying driving factors of in ation. The key ndings are: 1) Prices at the micro level are driven mainly by idiosyncratic shocks but these shocks become less important for CPI in ation at the aggregate level; 2) Pure in ation which drives long-term price movements in Thailand is responsible for approximately 10 percent of overall price movements; 3) More than half of all within-quarter uctuations can be classied as relative price changes in response to aggregate shocks; 4) The short-run in ation-output tradeoff which appears weak in aggregate data becomes much stronger once volatile idiosyncratic price changes are removed.

This paper examines Thailand’s economic development through the perspective of structural transformation. Building on the insight that the products that a country exports tells much about the country’s underlying capabilities, we study Thailand’s evolving product structure both at the aggregate country level as well as at the firm level. We show that over the last 30 years, the diversification of Thailand’s product structure has been impressive, with important footholds being established in many well-connected and increasingly sophisticated products. This positive overall picture, however, masks potentially serious distributional problems. The number of firms and the number of provinces that are actively engaged in and contributing materially to Thailand’s product upgrading are highly concentrated. This may be limiting the gains to the economy more broadly. We confirm the importance of existing product structures at the country, regional, and firm levels for the evolution of firms’ product structure over time. That is, the current basket of goods produced by firms, regions, and the country affect firms’ decision over which products to introduce and which ones to drop. This path-dependent nature of product innovation has important implications for policy.

This paper conducts in-depth profiling of players and interlinkages in the Thai financial system based on sectoral balance sheet data and disaggregated supervisory data on banks and mutual funds. Several aspects of Thailand’s financial landscape have been documented. We find that financial interconnectedness has risen and become more complex, with the financial landscape increasingly tilted toward non-bank intermediaries. Network topology suggests a segmented landscape, with the presence of a core cluster where key players including households, firms, large domestic banks, and mutual funds of large banks’ asset management arms are located, indicating their tight interconnections. Leveraging on entity-level balance sheet profiles, we develop a stress-testing framework that is based on a network model of financial contagion. Two types of shocks are studied. For industry shocks, we find that losses generally propagate via the liability and ownership channel and the reverse liquidity channel. But when the losses are large enough, the fire-sale effects dominate. For bank reputational shocks, we simulate a loss of confidence in major banks via deposit withdrawal and fund redemption. While the overall losses are much smaller than those of industry shocks, these risks cannot be ignored since the mutual fund industry stands to suffer and panic selling could amplify the losses.

We propose a novel regime-switching model to study correlation asymmetries in international equity markets. We decompose returns into frequent-but-small diffusion and infrequent-but-large jumps, and derive an estimation method for many countries. Wefind that correlations due to jumps, not diffusion, increase markedly in bad markets leading to correlation breaks during crises. Our model provides a better description of correlation asymmetries than GARCH, copula and stochastic volatilit ymodels. Good and bad regimes are persistent. Regime changes are detected rapidly and risk diversification allocations are improved. Asset allocation results in and out-of-sample are superior to other models including the 1/strategy.

This paper examines competitiveness of the Thai financial sector through the dimensions of depth, access, efficiency, and stability, as compared to peers. The paper finds that while the Thai financial sector compares reasonably well with peers in most dimensions, it does not fare well in term of SME access to bank credit. Using Panzar-Rosse H-Statistic, the paper also examines competition in the Thai banking sector and finds that the level of competition in the Thai banking sector is consistently high over the sample period. The results raise the question: Why does SME access to bank credit remain low, despite high level of competition in the banking sector? This puzzle is important since SMEs are a key driver of the Thai economy. Reviewing results from various studies and interviews with SMEs and bank credit officers, the paper identifies several bottlenecks in the SME lending process that may lead to market failures. Using data from 1.29 million individual SME loan contracts obtained from 15 Thai commercial banks, and six Specialized Financial Institutions (SFIs), the paper finds that only a few banks attempt to penetrate SMEs at the lower tiers of loan size and income. Although SME lending by SFIs are found to be a good complement to SME lending by banks, the fact remains that fewer than half of SMEs in Thailand have loans from these financial institutions. The paper then discusses how several initiatives have been attempted to harness the power of technology and data to help improve SME access to finance, whether from traditional banks or other types of players. Lessons from the case of SME financing and from other segments of financial sectors in selected countries are then drawn into common themes that might help guide the design of financial landscape in the digital era.

Using firm-level panel data from the Manufacturing Industry Survey of Thailand between 1999 and 2003, this paper estimates the production function and examines the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) for manufacturing firms in Thailand. Controlling for industry, region, and year fixed effects, production function coefficients and TFP measures are obtained through various estimation techniques including ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effects, random effects, and the Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) for comparison. For production function estimation, the results illustrate the biases introduced in traditional TFP estimates and we discuss the performance of alternative estimators. For the determinants of TFP, the results show that firm size is associated with firm TFP, with smaller firms being more productive than larger ones. Firm age and TFP are negatively correlated, indicating that newer firms tend to exhibit higher TFP. Firms with a more skilled workforce also show a higher level of production. Moreover, firm TFP benefits from integration into world markets: foreign-owned firms and exporters have significantly higher TFP. The results further reveal that firm TFP varies with the form of organization, with private firms (in terms of legal organization) and Head-Branch typed firms (in terms of economic organization) having higher TFP. Our findings draw attention to some key areas of policy relevance in which policies promoting labor quality may have important benefits for firm TFP. Furthermore, development in the international integration of firms into world markets through their participation in export markets and attraction of foreign capital is also likely to have large payoffs in terms of TFP for Thai manufacturing.

We develop a three-stage lobbying game to explain why the WTO prohibits export subsidies but not import tariffs. In this model, the government chooses trade policies (i.e., import tariffs or export subsidies) to maximize a weighted sum of social welfare and lobbying contributions. We argue that the economic rents from export subsidies cannot be contained exclusively within lobby groups because new capitalists, who will enter the growing export sector, freely benefit from export subsidies without paying political contributions at the time of lobbying. In the contracting import-competing industries, no new entrants erode the protection rents from tariffs. Therefore, the government receives large political contributions by protecting these import-competing industries. We show that, given that capital reallocation is costly, when the free-rider problem is severe the government will sign a trade agreement that prohibits only export subsidies.

The literature is well aware that blockchain-based digital assets would constitute a new asset class. However, it has been rather silent about the distinction among them. This paper discusses the digital tokens’ differences and similarities by their (i) creation and initial distribution; (ii) intended properties; (iii) actual usage; and (iv) behaviors. Although the digital tokens are indistinguishable in some aspects, they differ in the way they are created and initially distributed. Some of them have distinguishable risk and return profiles. Therefore, we take a view that the digital tokens take (or will take) different roles in the financial systems; should be classified under different asset classes; and should be subject to different sets of regulations (although some may overlap).

Using individual level data, this paper investigates whether nationwide smoke-free legislations in Europe lead to smoking reduction and cessation among mature smokers. It exploits cross-country data and the European Union’s multinational governance that provides a quasi-experimental setting. Top-down regulations on smoke-free environment by the EU mitigate the self-selection bias and endogeneity bias of smoke-free laws generally faced in other settings. The results show that comprehensive bans lower smoking propensity by approximately 7 percent and reduced smoking intensity by 10 percent. The effect persisted and increased over time. Light smokers and heavy smokers were 14.5 and 7.2 percent more likely to quit while there is no significant effect on average smokers. Those working in industry and occupation that faced with more comprehensive and strict bans were also more likely to quit, showing that comprehensive bans can increase smoking cessation even among mature smokers with well-established addiction.

In 2011, Thailand faced the largest ood in seventy years. In response to the unexpected crisis the Thai government rolled out Thailand’s car tax rebate scheme in an attempt to prevent the economy from slipping into a deep recession. This study investigates consumption responses to changes in vehicle prices induced by the car tax rebate scheme presented in the framework of a life-cycle model. The model features durable goods with adjustment costs and non-homothetic preference. The key features match the fact that car purchases are lumpy and infrequent and that cars are luxury goods in Thailand. Additionally, liquidity constraints and adjustment costs are also important features for the evaluation of shorter-run consumption responses. Key parameters are estimated to match household-level data. Then partial equilibrium responses, which are key inputs to inform the aggregate outcome of the policy, are simulated given a distribution of the population wealth, income,and age in the economy. Findings show that Thai households have large elasticity of intertemporal substitution (EIS), hence large responses to the scal stimulus. Furthermore, non-homotheticity in the preference generates heterogeneous policy responses varied by household income and wealth. The model predicts that the temporary price shock will lead to a large cutback in future consumption and saving, consistent with the evidence shown by aggregate data. A number of alternative policy experiments are also conducted.

This paper examines competitiveness of the Thai financial sector through the dimensions of depth, access, efficiency, and stability, as compared to peers. The paper finds that while the Thai financial sector compares reasonably well with peers in most dimensions, it does not fare well in term of SME access to bank credit. Using Panzar-Rosse H-Statistic, the paper also examines competition in the Thai banking sector and finds that the level of competition in the Thai banking sector is consistently high over the sample period. The results raise the question: Why does SME access to bank credit remain low, despite high level of competition in the banking sector? This puzzle is important since SMEs are a key driver of the Thai economy. Reviewing results from various studies and interviews with SMEs and bank credit officers, the paper identifies several bottlenecks in the SME lending process that may lead to market failures. Using data from 1.29 million individual SME loan contracts obtained from 15 Thai commercial banks, and six Specialized Financial Institutions (SFIs), the paper finds that only a few banks attempt to penetrate SMEs at the lower tiers of loan size and income. Although SME lending by SFIs are found to be a good complement to SME lending by banks, the fact remains that fewer than half of SMEs in Thailand have loans from these financial institutions. The paper then discusses how several initiatives have been attempted to harness the power of technology and data to help improve SME access to finance, whether from traditional banks or other types of players. Lessons from the case of SME financing and from other segments of financial sectors in selected countries are then drawn into common themes that might help guide the design of financial landscape in the digital era.

This paper explains the method using a set of night light imaginary to estimate GPP of Thailand. This method is quite new but widely acceptable in the area of economics because luminosity of night lights is normally based on the amount of economic activities in each area. The results showed a high and significant correlation between the night lights and the GPP growth. Even if the estimation was controlled by some specific factors, such as population density, timing size of agricultural or manufacturing sector, the relationship is still robust. After this relationship is confirmed in the provincial level of Thailand, this research applied the results to show the relationship between economic values and spatial inequality, which indicates new understanding about spatial development patterns.

Over the past 20 years, Thailand’s FX hedging market has evolved to accommodate demands from rising trade and investment activities. Notwithstanding the growth in the use of FX derivative instruments for investment risk management by outward investment funds and non-residents, FX hedging demand from merchandise trade remains a significant part of the market. This paper utilizes a transactional database that disaggregates exporters according to their firm-level characteristics in order to explain their hedging behavior over periods of exchange rate fluctuation. FX hedging by exporters is found to be sensitive to the movement in exchange rate and past hedging experience. These sensitivities give rise to periods of panic or complacency. The effects also vary across exporters with different sizes.

The Asian financial crisis in 1997 has an impact on Thailand’s productivity both in the short run and in the long run. The post-crisis productivity growth rate dropped to merely 1% per year in comparison to the pre-crisis level at 2% per year. Thus, a better understanding about the factors determining Thailand’s aggregate productivity is a key to raising Thailand’s output in the long run. Recent literature has identified resource misallocation as an important factor to explain the difference in the productivity levels between developed and developing economies. This paper uses the plant-level data to estimate the allocative efficiency and to identify the source of resource misallocation in the Thai manufacturing sector. The results suggest that the size-dependent policies could contribute to the factor misallocation and that market concentration, foreign investment, and financial deepening could help alleviate the misallocation problem at the sector level. However, R&D activities intensifies resource misallocation that calls for well-defined policies to promote knowledge spillover within industry and to reduce the frontier-laggard gap. Dynamic resource reallocation helps shore up TFP growth over the business cycle that emphasizing a set of policy to reinforce the mechanism of creative destruction.

Thailand’s income inequality has reportedly declined since the mid-1990s. This paper examines possible mechanisms underlying the dynamic patterns of the country’s labor income inequality. Using the Thai labor force survey between 1988 and 2017, we document that the country’s reduction in income inequality is likely driven by the fact the earnings at the bottom part of the distribution have become more similar. The median wage gap between college and non-college workers, however, still gets larger over time. Our key explanation is the changes in education-occupation composition. Recently college graduates are no longer concentrated in high skill jobs. A larger share of secondary educated workers works in low-skill jobs instead of the middle-skill ones. Using panel administrative data from the Thai Social Security Office, we find that wage disparity can also be explained by employment history. The high wage earners earn more since they enter the market, and the gap gets wider as the workers age. Additionally, the top of the group can command higher wages by working at a large firm or switching to a new job. These findings highlight the fact that to tackle the income inequality issue, the country needs to understand the underlying mechanisms behinds its dynamics.

At present, the Thai public health insurance schemes cover medical care. However, the financial risk associated with long-term care needs is unprotected. The increasing likelihood of Thai elderly living longer and living alone has raised great concern about their quality of life. In the wake of the declining informal support capacity, a public long-term care insurance (LTCI) system has been considered as a potential alternative. Because the public will have to contribute to the LTCI fund, this paper explores whether the Thai people are willing to pay for such a provision. The LTCI demand is estimated based on the stated preference survey data. Our results show that most respondents are willing to pay to insure against their risk associated with long-term care expenditure, but their preferences are very heterogeneous. Gains and losses for different policy scenarios, measured by consumer surplus, are discussed.

While a large number of health insurance studies find that an increase in cost-sharing reduces healthcare demand, little has looked at the effect of a policy change operating through a non-price channel. This paper examines how a billing process can affect healthcare utilization given no change in price. Specifically, we look at the launch of the Direct Billing Payment program (DBP) to the Thai Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme. In the past, although the outpatient care is essentially free, its beneficiaries must pay at the point of services and get their money reimbursed later. The DBP allows the hospitals to charge the government directly. Using patient-level panel data from a large regional hospital, we find that the new billing system affects utilization through multiple channels. First, it increases the number of outpatient visits. Second, for each visit, the treatment costs and the share of prescription drug charge are higher. These impacts are found to be persistent over time, although less so in the case of visits. In addition, our analysis suggests that the likely cash constrained patients increase their utilization more proportionally.

Assets managed under sustainable investment criteria have been massively growing during the recent years. Among the criteria, environmental, social and governance (ESG) score leads the group as an important indicator of non-financial quality of a firm, which may reflect value to investors either through higher expected profit or lower risk. In this paper, we focus on the latter by exploring whether ESG score has any impact on the credit rating of firms due to the risk mitigation effect. Ordered logistic regressions were applied on a panel dataset of listed companies in Shanghai and Tokyo Stock Exchanges over 2009 – 2018. The results suggest that only in Japan, having ESG coverage is greatly associated with being awarded higher credit rating. However, just the environmental and governance pillars positively affect the Japanese firms’ credit ratings, while the social pillar shows negative effect.

Macroeconomics usually prescribes counter-cyclical fiscal policies to stabilise the economy: government spending should increase above trend in the economic downturns, and decrease below trend during booms. Yet, empirical research has documented pro-cyclical fiscal policy in several democratic developing countries. This article uses updated data to analyse 63 developing countries from 1980 to 2013 and robustly shows that pro-cyclical fiscal policy does exist in both democratic and non-democratic developing countries. The essence of this paper is controlling endogeneity issue by the instrumental variable method and investigating the interaction between democracy, its maturity and quality of institutions in affecting fiscal policy cyclical.We provide 3 main findings. Firstly, an improvement in the level of institutions quality plays an important role to restrain pro-cyclical fiscal policy and these effects are larger in democratic countries than non-democratic ones. Additionally, more mature and stable democratic countries tend to implement less pro-cyclical fiscal policy.

Since the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis during 2007-2008, financial stability (FS) has become top priority for central banks around the world. The conduct of monetary policy (MP) sees no exception. By leveraging on the existing literature, we propose a systematic approach to incorporate FS considerations into MP framework. This starts with calculating a financial cycle (FC) which is a measure of financial imbalances and a predictor of financial crises. We then look at an FS dashboard which consolidates pockets of risks facing the financial sector, and show how it may be used in FS surveillance. Next, we discuss the concept of model development and introduce an example of a model platform to facilitate MP formulation. Nevertheless, when implementing MP to address FS risks, policymakers encounter an inter-temporal trade-off between financial and price stability. A key challenge towards MP decision-making is, therefore, to strike a balance between both mandates by designing the appropriate policy mix between monetary and macroprudential policies. As a demonstration of our approach, we discuss, in each section, an on-going attempt at the Bank of Thailand to systematically incorporate FS into flexible inflation targeting.

Improvements in technology can have substantial impact on the labor market both directly and indirectly via changes in global trade patterns. This paper studies the potential impact of computerization and reshoring/relocating of operations by firms on Thailand’s labor market. Specifically, the analysis is built upon Frey and Osborne’s (2017) approach and incorporates additional measures of trade-base tasks. This is so that the revised machine-learning model can account for both the impact of technology and change in global trade patterns. Our results revealed that occupations that are mostly affected are service and sales workers, and agricultural and fishery workers. In the worst-case scenario, approximately one-third of existing jobs (12.14 million jobs) could be at risk. However, in real situations, new types of jobs may be created, workers may voluntarily adjust, or other factors could drive some overseas operations back to Thailand. Therefore, the potential outlook for Thailand’s labor market may not be as severe as the model has predicted.

Google is currently the most-used search engine in the world. There are approximately 3.5 billion searches being conducted on Google each day. With real-time processing, Google Trends data can be used in a prediction technique called nowcasting (or “predicting the present”) – using the current period’s real-time information to estimate the current period’s indicators of interest. In this paper, we showed how Google Trends can be used for nowcasting Thailand’s various economic indicators. The sectors being analyzed are (i) the labor market sector (unemployment rate and unemployment registration), (ii) the real sector (automobile sales), and (iii) the financial sector (SET index). The results revealed that incorporating the Google Trends data into the prediction models improved the Adjusted R-Squared and improved the predication accuracies under various measures.

The paper highlights the important differences between the extensive margins (participation) and the intensive margins (hours-of-work) of labour supply, in the case of Thailand. We use Thailand’s Labour Force Survey to explore the evolution of labour supply at both margins over the past three decades. We show that Thailand’s extensive margins of labour supply follow the conventional life-cycle pattern of an inverted U-shape along the age distribution. However, for the intensive margins, occupation types and education levels play significant roles in dictating the shape of hours-of-work along the life-cycle. We employ a pseudo-cohort analysis to allow us to track the same representative age-gender sample across their life time. While we find that men supply more mean hours per capita than women, we do not find much marriage premium on the intensive margin among those who worked. Marriage premium is highly noticeable along the extensive margin. At all ages, women have smaller extensive margins. Female workforce also reduce the margins more strongly when they reach older ages than men. In our statistical exercise combining a decomposition approach with forecasting, we find that a policy targeting raising participation rates work more effective than a policy on intensive margins, in increasing the total hours-of-work of the working age population.

This paper conducts in-depth profiling of players and interlinkages in the Thai financial system based on sectoral balance sheet data and disaggregated supervisory data on banks and mutual funds. Several aspects of Thailand’s financial landscape have been documented. We find that financial interconnectedness has risen and become more complex, with the financial landscape increasingly tilted toward non-bank intermediaries. Network topology suggests a segmented landscape, with the presence of a core cluster where key players including households, firms, large domestic banks, and mutual funds of large banks’ asset management arms are located, indicating their tight interconnections. Leveraging on entity-level balance sheet profiles, we develop a stress-testing framework that is based on a network model of financial contagion. Two types of shocks are studied. For industry shocks, we find that losses generally propagate via the liability and ownership channel and the reverse liquidity channel. But when the losses are large enough, the fire-sale effects dominate. For bank reputational shocks, we simulate a loss of confidence in major banks via deposit withdrawal and fund redemption. While the overall losses are much smaller than those of industry shocks, these risks cannot be ignored since the mutual fund industry stands to suffer and panic selling could amplify the losses.

This paper explores Thailand’s foreign exchange (FX) market landscape by utilizing the Bank of Thailand’s supervisory Financial Market Statistics (FMST) data which covers the universe of onshore foreign exchange transactions in Thailand. Historical developments regarding different groups of market players and the use of foreign exchange instruments, as well as the overall market structure are documented. Through the lens of network analysis, we also provide topological descriptions of Thailand’s FX market landscape, with applications on interbank network stability. We observe low degree of concentration among the dealer banks in terms of market turnover share. In contrast, from a customer’s perspective, market share is highly concentrated within a handful of large FX customers. The network connectivity among different groups of players suggests that the Thai FX market is one that is rather segmented and clustered among similar players. A substantial degree of specialization is evident across banks in terms of FX instruments and market segments, both in the interbank network and in the retail market. Probing into the interbank network stability, we find a small subset of banks to be truly central to the FX market network, though the system appears to hold up well in stress times supported by fluidity among interbank players.

Over the past 20 years, Thailand’s FX hedging market has evolved to accommodate demands from rising trade and investment activities. Notwithstanding the growth in the use of FX derivative instruments for investment risk management by outward investment funds and non-residents, FX hedging demand from merchandise trade remains a significant part of the market. This paper utilizes a transactional database that disaggregates exporters according to their firm-level characteristics in order to explain their hedging behavior over periods of exchange rate fluctuation. FX hedging by exporters is found to be sensitive to the movement in exchange rate and past hedging experience. These sensitivities give rise to periods of panic or complacency. The effects also vary across exporters with different sizes.

Since the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis during 2007-2008, financial stability (FS) has become top priority for central banks around the world. The conduct of monetary policy (MP) sees no exception. By leveraging on the existing literature, we propose a systematic approach to incorporate FS considerations into MP framework. This starts with calculating a financial cycle (FC) which is a measure of financial imbalances and a predictor of financial crises. We then look at an FS dashboard which consolidates pockets of risks facing the financial sector, and show how it may be used in FS surveillance. Next, we discuss the concept of model development and introduce an example of a model platform to facilitate MP formulation. Nevertheless, when implementing MP to address FS risks, policymakers encounter an inter-temporal trade-off between financial and price stability. A key challenge towards MP decision-making is, therefore, to strike a balance between both mandates by designing the appropriate policy mix between monetary and macroprudential policies. As a demonstration of our approach, we discuss, in each section, an on-going attempt at the Bank of Thailand to systematically incorporate FS into flexible inflation targeting.

In this project, we will conduct a series of research exercise to demonstrate how selected web-based data sources can provide additional insights for labour market analysis, beyond what conventional government-conducted surveys can offer. We exploit web-based data from selected job-boards and resume postings under Thai domain to provide some insights on job vacancy statistics, labour market mismatch between required skill vis-a-vis attained skill at occupation level and the gap between reservation wage and productivity. We also test for potential impacts of the 300-baht minimum wage increase in 2013 and find negative relationship with our measure of province-level labour market tightness. We also use this dataset to investigate labour market discriminations using separate perspective of firms and job seekers.

This paper explores promises of satellite technology in creating high-quality agricultural risk information necessary for unlocking market inefficiencies that have precluded sustainable development of insurance markets and overall risk management in agricultural sector, where uninsured risk remains a leading impediment of economic development. Using pixel-level, high resolution, high frequency and longitudinal satellite data together with a combination of geographical information system (GIS) data, administrative and household-level agricultural data, this paper answers three questions: (1) Can satellite data be used to generate high-quality risk information for Thai rice farmers? (2) How might the satellite-based risk information be used to crowd in sustainable markets for agricultural finance? And (3) What are potential economic impacts of having high quality agricultural data on farmers, agricultural banks and government? After illuminating the potential values of investing in high-quality agricultural data, this paper also discusses key challenges and ways forward in bringing this research into real action to enhance financial stability of farmers, financial system and government.

The paper takes a critical look at the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of prevailing explanations of low real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates over long horizons and finds them incomplete. The role of monetary policy, and its interaction with the financial cycle in particular, deserve greater attention. By linking booms and busts, the financial cycle generates important path dependencies that give rise to intertemporal policy trade-offs. Policy today constrains policy tomorrow. The policy regime is not neutral and can exert a persistent influence on the economy’s evolution, including on the real interest rate. This raises serious conceptual and practical questions about the use of the natural interest rate as a monetary policy guidepost. In developing the analysis, the paper also provides a specific critique of the safe asset shortage hypothesis – a hypothesis that has gained considerable popularity in recent years.

This paper examines the patterns of price adjustment at the micro level in order to further our understanding of price rigidity at the aggregate level. We highlight 5 stylized facts: 1) Prices change infrequently with a mean duration of approximately 4 to 7 months between price changes; 2) Price decreases are common accounting for roughly 45 percent of all price changes; 3) Price changes, both increases and decreases, are sizable compared to the prevailing in ation rate; 4) The size of price changes covaries strongly with the rate of in ation, whereas the fraction of items changing prices does not; and 5) There is signicant dispersion in price levels as well as in the synchronicity of price changes across geographical regions. Based on a dynamic factor model, we also utilize prices at the disaggregated level to perform an in ation decomposition to understand the underlying driving factors of in ation. The key ndings are: 1) Prices at the micro level are driven mainly by idiosyncratic shocks but these shocks become less important for CPI in ation at the aggregate level; 2) Pure in ation which drives long-term price movements in Thailand is responsible for approximately 10 percent of overall price movements; 3) More than half of all within-quarter uctuations can be classied as relative price changes in response to aggregate shocks; 4) The short-run in ation-output tradeoff which appears weak in aggregate data becomes much stronger once volatile idiosyncratic price changes are removed.

Prevailing explanations of the decline in real interest rates since the early 1980s are premised on the notion that real interest rates are driven by variations in desired saving and investment. But based on data stretching back to 1870 for 19 countries, our systematic analysis casts doubt on this view. The link between real interest rates and saving-investment determinants appears tenuous. While it is possible to find some relationships consistent with the theory in some periods, particularly over the last 30 years, they do not survive over the extended sample. This holds both at the national and global level. By contrast, we find evidence that persistent shifts in real interest rates coincide with changes in monetary regimes. Moreover, external influences on countries’ real interest rates appear to reflect idiosyncratic variations in interest rates of countries that dominate global monetary and financial conditions rather than common movements in global saving and investment. All this points to an underrated role of monetary policy in determining real interest rates over long horizons.