What are the reasons for and the costs of Latin America's volatility? Because there is no consensus on these fundamental questions, there is no consensus on the appropriate policy response to macroeconomic volatility in Latin America, and other shock-prone countries. This paper provides new...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

Despite the growing support for market-oriented strategies, and for a greater role of private investment, empirical growth models for developing countries typically make no distinction between the private and public components of investment. This paper sheds some light on this important issue by...

The dynamic responses of a developing economy to a variety of policy and external shocks are studied using an empirical macroeconomic model which embodies rational expectations, perfect capital mobility, and import rationing. These features, which are relatively new in developing-country...