IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 3

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 3 PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1589068203
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
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.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 3

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 3 PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1589068203
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book

Book Description
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.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 4

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 4 PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1589069102
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
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.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 2

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 2 PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1589067959
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
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.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 1

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 1 PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1589067940
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
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.

IMF Staff papers

IMF Staff papers PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451960115
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
This paper presents a study on economic development with stability in India. While the Five-Year Plan occupies the central position as the means through which the Government of India proposes to deal with the basic economic problem, it must be implemented by many specific economic and social measures. It is of the utmost importance that the measures taken in various fields should not only contribute to the fulfilment of the Five-Year Plan but that they should form part of a consistent economic and social policy. Apart from the change in total foreign investment, the composition of foreign investment in India now includes a larger proportion of direct and a smaller proportion of fixed interest obligations than before the war. While India's official sterling debt has been practically wiped out, the Government of India has incurred new obligations in dollars. If India could meet its pre-war obligations on foreign investment without any great strain on its balance of payments, it should be able to meet future obligations, resulting from any new debts, provided its balance of payments position in the future is not materially worse than in the past.

IMF Staff papers

IMF Staff papers PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451972938
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
In the middle of 1985 Argentina and Israel launched frontal attacks on inflation which succeeded in reducing it drastically during the first year without very significant costs in employment and output. Despite basic differences in the countries’ structures, the programs were similar in their design and their effects. This paper covers some of these similarities in the implementation and the results of the two stabilization programs, and analyzes the rationale of the underlying conception of the plans. The focus is on the strategy for the transitional period, and the ability of the programs to sustain price stability.

IMF Staff papers, Volume 46 No. 3

IMF Staff papers, Volume 46 No. 3 PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451973683
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description
This paper examines determinants and leading indicators of banking crises. The paper examines episodes of banking system distress and crisis in a large sample of countries to identify which macroeconomic and financial variables can be useful leading indicators. The best warning signs of the recent Asian crises were proxies for the vulnerability of the banking and corporate sector. Full-blown banking crises are shown to be associated more with external developments, and domestic variables are the main leading indicators of severe but contained banking distress.

IMF Staff papers

IMF Staff papers PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451969163
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
This paper focuses on problems of economic policy in terms of targets and instruments. Both the fixed-targets approach and the welfare-economics approach tend to favor a multiplication of policy instruments, the former so as to increase the number of targets that can be attained and the latter so as to permit all objectives to be more closely approximated. It is necessary that policies be centrally coordinated, and in each country, there is a limit to the number of policies that can be successfully coordinated by the political and administrative machine. For this reason, the costs of applying any given policy instrument will depend not only on the degree of its use but also on the number and nature of the instruments already in use. The existence of both kinds of cost, and particularly the latter, will set a limit on the number of policy instruments that can appropriately be brought into operation.

IMF Staff papers

IMF Staff papers PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451972989
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
The proposal to set up an international debt facility to buy the debt of developing countries at a discount and then mark down its contractual value is analyzed. The paper considers the central question of how the debtor countries, creditor banks, and owners of the facility would be affected; in particular, what redistribution of gains and losses there would be among them. The “market price effect” and the “ceiling effect” are distinguished. A crucial consideration is whether debt retained by banks is subordinated to debt bought by the facility.

IMF Staff papers

IMF Staff papers PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1451969341
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This paper constructs three simple model of the financial effects on countries in different situations of the various arrangements regarding reserve supply that were discussed during the recent negotiations on reform of the international monetary system. Much of the analysis is devoted to an identification of the conflicting factors that determine the financial impact on a country of the possible arrangements considered. It is demonstrated that nonreserve centers have a financial interest in the existence of convertibility and in the absence of holding limits for primary assets, while the converse is true for a reserve center. Another clear-cut conclusion is that net users of special drawing rights (SDR) have a financial interest in increasing the role of the SDR by means of restrictions on reserve composition rather than by means of an increased SDR yield, while the reverse is true of countries with SDR holdings in excess of allocations.