Download or read book IMF Staff papers Volume 37 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of IMF-supported adjustment programs. The evidence is reviewed for such effects, and new estimates are provided of these effects for 69 developing countries with programs during 1973–88. The empirical analysis indicates that in the short term, programs have led to an improvement in the current account and the balance of payments, a lowering of inflation, and a decline in growth. In the longer term, the positive effects of programs on the external balance and inflation are strengthened, and the adverse growth effects reduced.
Download or read book IMF Staff papers Volume 37 No 3 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes macroeconomic effects of projected population aging in industrial countries. The effects of population aging are examined with a theoretical model and simulations of the IMF’s multiregion econometric model (MULTIMOD). The study highlights that an older population will consume more of aggregate disposable income, require higher government expenditure, and decrease labor supply. These effects should raise real interest rates and lower capital stock and output. Effects on current balances will depend on the relative speed and extent of aging.
Download or read book IMF Staff papers Volume 37 No 1 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines factors affecting saving, policy tools, and tax reform. The literature on factors affecting saving and capital formation in industrialized countries is reviewed, and measurement problems are examined. The effect on the saving rate of real rates of return, income redistribution, allocation of saving between corporations and individuals, growth of public and private pension plans, tax incentives, the bequest motive, energy prices, and inflation is considered. The limited tools available to policymakers to affect savings are discussed.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 48 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2001-12-12 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes the link between product variety and economic growth. It finds support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the United States helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The paper presents an empirical study for South Africa, which indicates that there exists a stable money demand type of relationship among domestic prices, broad money, real income, and interest rates, as well as a long-term relationship among domestic prices, foreign prices, and the nominal exchange rate.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 53 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2006-06-29 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noteworthy among the six papers appearing in this latest issue of the IMF's peer-reviewed journal is another installment in the Special Data Section. Anthony Pellechio and John Cady from the IMF's Statistics Department take a close look at differences in IMF data; how and when they could occur; and what the implications of such differences might be for end-users of the IMF's data.
Download or read book IMF Staff papers written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1986-01-01 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WILLIAM. white, who joined the International Monetary Fund in 1948, spent his entire professional life in the Research Department. Present and past staff members, many of whom benefited from his advice, have asked that his contribution-to the work of the Fund should receive recognition in Staff Papers. This appreciation draws on excerpts from written recollections of some of his colleagues.
Download or read book Staff Papers April 1960 written by International Monetary Fund and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book IMF Staff papers written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1981-01-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paper discusses the application of economic analysis and statistics to several questions of tax administration and legislation bearing on it. The principle of equalizing marginal administrative costs and marginal tax revenue is suggestive, but persuasive arguments can be made for spending more or less than it indicates. The marginal principle, nevertheless, is valuable as a guide for allocating a fixed appropriation that is too small to cover all remunerative activities. Human capital theory corroborates the productivity of staff training but implies that different financing arrangements may be appropriate for general and specialized training. Economic studies can help in establishing criteria for identifying cases for detailed examination or audit and in making administrative or alternative assessments where accounts are inadequate. A lump-sum, first-year depreciation allowance equal to the discounted value of normal allowances would have merit as a simple method of adjusting for inflation. Tax administrators and economists could benefit from acquaintance with the attitudes and methods of each other's discipline.
Download or read book IMF Staff papers written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The CMEA countries are starting to conduct their trade at world prices and in convertible currencies. These are crucial steps in economic reform but will worsen Eastern Europe’s terms of trade and drive it into current account deficit with the U.S.S.R. Proposals have been made for a payments union, resembling the European Payments Union of 1950–58, to ease the transition. Such an arrangement would not function well if it included the U.S.S.R., which would be a persistent creditor. Other ways must be found to deal with the transition.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 51 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2004-07-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second issue for 2004 contains 8 new papers, including notable contributions from: Nancy Brune, Geoffrey Garrett, and Bruce Kogut on the global spread of privatization; and Mark P. Taylor and Elena T. Branson on asymmetric arbitrage and default premiums in the U.S. and Russian markets. Other papers in the issue look at German wage structures, contagion in equity markets, export orientation and productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa, the role of higher vs. basic education in economic development, and issues related to capital account liberalization.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 47 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper analyzes portfolio diversification, leverage, and financial contagion. It studies the extent to which basic principles of portfolio diversification explain “contagious selling” of financial assets when there are purely local shocks. The paper demonstrates that the elementary portfolio theory offers key insights into “contagion.” Most important, portfolio diversification and leverage are sufficient to explain why an investor will find it optimal to significantly reduce all risky asset positions when an adverse shock impacts just one asset.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 57 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2010-06-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper introduces a new database of financial reforms covering 91 economies over 1973-2005. It describes the content of the database, the information sources utilized, and the coding rules used to create an index of financial reform. It also compares the database with other measures of financial liberalization, provides descriptive statistics, and discusses some possible applications. The database provides a multifaceted measure of reform, covering seven aspects of financial sector policy. Along each dimension the database provides a graded (rather than a binary) score, and allows for reversals.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 52 Special Issue IMF Conference in Honor of Michael Mussa written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2005-08-30 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper focuses on expectations for the American economy focused on the likelihood of secular stagnation, which continued to be debated throughout the post-war period. Concerns rose during the late 1960s and early 1970s about rapid population growth smothering the potential for economic growth in developing countries were contradicted when, during the mid- and late-1970s, fertility rates began to decline rapidly. In policy-oriented institutions (and in most businesses and individual decision making), policymaking decisions are often guided by projections and forward-looking indicators. The case of Michael Mussa has been one of great anticipation, and of great accomplishment, and all the early optimistic forecasts about him have turned out to be correct. Within the sphere of economics, undoubtedly the most famous and widely used forecast—one, incidentally, that thus far has often been incorrect—is that based on the Malthusian doctrine of the relationship between resources and population.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 51 No 3 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2004-11-23 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper tests uncovered interest parity (UIP) using interest rates on longer maturity bonds for the Group of Seven countries. These long-horizon regressions yield much more support for UIP—all of the coefficients on interest differentials are of the correct sign, and almost all are closer to the UIP value of unity than to zero. The paper also analyzes the decision by a government facing electoral uncertainty to implement structural reforms in the presence of fiscal restraints similar to the Stability and Growth Pact.
Download or read book IMF Staff papers written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1990-01-01 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transition strategy from administratively set interest rates to market rates is discussed. Despite worldwide trends toward financial liberalization, few monetary authorities are prepared to accept as reasonable any interest rate level that is market determined. The paper suggests some helpful indicators to assess the adequacy of interest rates and discusses factors that contribute to a smooth liberalization process. The main conclusion is that interest rate liberalization is not synonymous with laissez-faire policies, but requires the replacement of the administratively set interest rates by indirect monetary management techniques that operate through the market.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 56 No 4 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2009-11-04 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper empirically evaluates four types of costs that may result from an international sovereign default: reputational costs, international trade exclusion costs, costs to the domestic economy through the financial system, and political costs to the authorities. It finds that the economic costs are generally significant but short-lived, and sometimes do not operate through conventional channels. The political consequences of a debt crisis, by contrast, seem to be particularly dire for incumbent governments and finance ministers, broadly in line with what happens in currency crises.
Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 57 No 1 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2010-03-26 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do highly indebted countries suffer from a debt overhang? Can debt relief foster their growth rates? To answer these important questions, this article looks at how the debt-growth relation varies with indebtedness levels, as well as with the quality of policies and institutions, in a panel of developing countries. The main findings are that, in countries with good policies and institutions, there is evidence of debt overhang when the net present value of debt rises above 20–25 percent of GDP; however, debt becomes irrelevant above 70–80 percent. In countries with bad policies and institutions, thresholds appear to be lower, but the evidence of debt overhang is weaker and we cannot rule out that debt is always irrelevant. Indeed, in such countries, as well as in countries with high indebtedness levels, investment does not depend on debt levels. The analysis suggests that not all countries are likely to profit from debt relief, and thus that a one-size-fits-all debt relief approach might not be the most appropriate one.
