Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 52 No 1 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2005-04-18 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first issue of IMF Staff Papers for 2005 contains 7 papers that discuss: whether output recovered after the Asian crisis; the value of a country's trading partners to its own economic growth; whether interdependence is a factor in understanding the spread of currency crises; can remittance payments from expatriates be a reliable source of capital for economic development?; total factor productivity; designing a VAT for the energy trade in Russia and Ukraine; and lastly, a discussion of the reasons for central bank intervention in ERM-I since 1993

Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 52 No 3 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2005-12-22 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This last issue for 2005 comprises seven new papers, including a contribution to the journal's occasional Special Data Section about domestic debt markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, and also an in-depth look at the internal job market for entry-level economists at the IMF. The remaining articles cover toics as diverse as: modeling of asset markets, exchange rates in developing countries, international bank claims on Latin America, the effectiveness of "early warning" systems, and the use (by emerging market countries) of the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS).

Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 52 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2005-08-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines contractionary currency crashes in developing countries. It explores the causes of India’s productivity surge around 1980, more than a decade before serious economic reforms were initiated. The paper finds evidence that the trigger may have been an attitudinal shift by the government in the early 1980s that, unlike the reforms of the 1990s, was pro-business rather than pro-market in character, favoring the interests of existing businesses rather than new entrants or consumers. A relatively small shift elicited a large productivity response, because India was far away from its income possibility frontier.

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 56 No 1 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This special issue brings together world-renowned experts to provide a systematic and critical analysis of the costs and benefits of financial globalization. Contributors include Kenneth Rogoff, Maurice Obstfeld, Dani Rodrik, and Frederic S. Mishkin.

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.

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 56 No 3 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2009-07-31 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies of the impact of trade openness on growth are based either on crosscountry analysis—which lacks transparency—or case studies—which lack statistical rigor. This paper applies a transparent econometric method drawn from the treatment evaluation literature (matching estimators) to make the comparison between treated (that is, open) and control (that is, closed) countries explicit while remaining within a statistical framework. Matching estimators highlight that common cross-country evidence is based on rather far-fetched country comparisons, which stem from the lack of common support of treated and control countries in the covariate space. The paper therefore advocates paying more attention to appropriate sample restriction in crosscountry macro research.

Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 55 No 1 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2008-06-18 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this issue, a team of economists look at approaches to modeling the use of IMF resources in order to gauge whether the recent decline in credit outstanding is a temporary or permanent phenomenon. Era Dabla-Norris and Gabriela Inchauste examine what drives the growth of firms, with a focus on informality and regulations. Evan Tanner and Issouf Samake use a vector autoregression approach to examine the probabilistic sustainability of public debt in Brazil. Mexico, and Turkey. And Rachel Glennerster and Yongseok Shin ask whether transparency pays?that is, does the frequency and accuracy of macroeconomic information released to the public lead to lower borrowing costs in sovereign debt markets?

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 51 No 1 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2004-04-20 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first issue of Volume 51 for 2004 includes a new paper by Peter B. Clark and Jacques J. Polak, along with a tribute from the Editor to Mr. Polak in honor of his 90th birthday. This issue also launches a new featured section, "Data Issues," which will be devoted in future issues to on-going discussions of the latest in econometric and statistical tools for economists, data puzzles, and other related topics of interest to researchers.

Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 56 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2009-06-03 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China’s growth performance since the start of economic reforms in 1978 has been impressive, but the gains have not been distributed equally across provinces. We use a nonparametric approach to analyze the variation in labor productivity growth across China’s provinces. This approach imposes less structure on the data than the standard growth accounting framework and allows for a breakdown of labor productivity into efficiency gains, technological progress, and capital deepening. We have the following results. First, we find that on average capital deepening accounts for about 75 percent of total labor productivity growth, while efficiency and technological improvements account for about 7 and 18 percent, respectively. Second, technical change is not neutral. Third, whereas improvement in efficiency contributes to convergence in labor productivity between provinces, technical change contributes to productivity disparity across provinces. Finally, we find that foreign direct investment has a positive and significant effect on efficiency growth and technical progress.

Download or read book Working Papers Volume II written by Peterson Institute for International Economics and published by Peterson Institute. This book was released on 2007 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the most popular of all Institute products, selected Working Papers are now available in a print format. These papers contain the preliminary results of ongoing Institute research. The book covers a wide range of topics including offshoring, central banks, Eurasian growth, Europe, and international reserves. Included in the book are papers by Edwin M. Truman, Adam Posen, J. Bradford Jensen, Anders slund, C. Randall Henning, and Jacob Kirkegaard. Volume II contains papers from 2006. Future volumes will be published on a semi-regular schedule as material is available.

Download or read book IMF Staff Papers Volume 54 No 2 written by International Monetary Fund. Research Dept. and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2007-09-26 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 54, No. 2 includes three notable contributions from the Seventh Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference (ARC) hosted by the IMF in November 2006. Its lead paper, by Olivier Blanchard of Harvard University, is the 2006 Mundell-Fleming Lecture (delivered at the ARC), which analyzes current-account deficits in the advanced economies. Other papers in this issue look at the relationship between international financial integration and the real economy. Other papers discuss whether (or not): i) the next capital account crisis can be predicted; ii) accepted definitions of debt crises are adequate; iii) the Doha Round of trade talks (if they are ever successfully completed) will lead to preference erosion; and finally iv) there is room for political opportunism in countries deciding between money-based or exchange-rate-based stabilization programs.

Download or read book IMF History Volume 2 1945 1965 written by International Monetary Fund and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1996-02-29 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper discusses the history of the first 20 years of the IMF. It attempts to recount objectively what were its origins and what have been its plans and activities. The paper contains a chronological account of the evolution of the IMF from the original plans formulated in 1941 to the end of 1965, with a supplementary chapter summarizing subsequent events. It analyzes the IMF’s policies in three major fields and reviews its constitutional development.

Download or read book IMF Research Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: