IMF Staff Papers, Volume 50, No. 1

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 50, No. 1
Author: Mr.Robert P. Flood
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2003-04-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781589061248

Forty years ago, Marcus Fleming and Robert Mundell developed independent models of macroeconomic policy in open economies. Why do we link the two, and why do we call the result the Mundell-Fleming, rather than Fieming-Mundell model?

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 50, No. 2

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 50, No. 2
Author: Mr.Robert P. Flood
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2003-07-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781589062023

This paper examines sources of economic growth in East Asia. The conventional growth-accounting approach to estimating the sources of economic growth requires unrealistically strong assumptions about either competitiveness of factor markets or the form of the underlying aggregate production function. The paper outlines a new approach utilizing nonparametric derivative estimation techniques that does not require imposing these restrictive assumptions. The results for East Asian countries show that output elasticities of capital and labor tend to be different from the income shares of these factors. The paper also explores the compensating potential of private intergenerational transfers.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 1

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 1
Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2009-06-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1589067940

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, Volume 50, Special Issue, IMF Third Annual Research Conference

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 50, Special Issue, IMF Third Annual Research Conference
Author: Mr.Robert P. Flood
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2003-08-25
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781589062047

The paper discusses a model in which growth is a negative function of fiscal burden. Moreover, growth discontinuously switches from high to low as the fiscal burden reaches a critical level. The paper provides an overview of key elements of corporate bankruptcy codes and practice around the world that are relevant to the debate on sovereign debt restructuring. It also describes the broad trends in international financial integration for a sample of industrial countries and explains the cross-country and time-series variation in the size of international balance sheets.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 57, No. 1

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 57, No. 1
Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2010-03-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1589069110

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.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 55, No. 1

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 55, No. 1
Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2008-06-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1589067223

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?

International Financial Integration

International Financial Integration
Author: Lars Oxelheim
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3642612938

There is widespread agreement in the current social and economic debate that the nations of the world are becoming increasingly integrated. Many structural signs in society also suggest that this is so. Integration has become a catchword in the prepara tions for the internal market of the EC, and a keynote in the debate about association for the European countries which do not belong to the Community. But when we turn to the question of how this integration should be measured, there is very little con sensus. Instead there are numerous problems, not only about how to measure integra tion but even about how to define it. In this book I shall discuss the import and implications of a particular type of integration, namely financial integration, and then look at the most important problems connected with measuring it. In the empirical investigation reported below I felt the need for an integrated micro-macro approach. Further, I decided to illustrate the measurement problems by studying a small and relatively open economy where exchange controls have been imposed by the government in an attempt to reduce the flow of interest-sensitive capital out of the country, and thus to acquire autonomy for the national monetary policy. An interview study has been carried out with a view to illustrating among other things how expectations are formed among the major actors on the financial market, and this provided additional input for an analysis of the level of financial integration.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 49, No. 2

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 49, No. 2
Author: Mr.Robert P. Flood
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2002-07-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781589061194

This paper explores sources of the output collapse in Russia during transition. A modified growth-accounting framework is developed that takes into account changes in factor utilization that are typical of the transition process. The results indicate that declines in factor inputs and productivity were both important determinants of the output fall. The paper analyzes the behavior of real commodity prices over the 1862–1999 progress. It also examines whether average stocks of health and education are converging across countries, and calculates the speed of their convergence using data from 84 countries for 1970–90.

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 4

IMF Staff Papers, Volume 56, No. 4
Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2009-11-04
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1589069102

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.