During the last two decades of the twentieth century, Brazil went through a sequence of failed stabilization plans that tried to cope with an enduring hyperinflation. This paper uses a money demand model to evaluate monetary policies during those episodes. The consistency between the money...

In its first steps toward reform of its huge and hugely important railway system, the Russian Federation has begun corporate restructuring of a kind favored by many students of railway reform throughout the world: some kind of separation of the entity controlling the infrastructure from the...

A variety of proposals for creating more competition within the railroad sector and in the broader freight transport sector are under consideration in countries throughout the world. Brazil, though something of a latecomer to wider infrastructure reform, has recently taken large steps in...

The recovery from the 1890s depression in Australia was prolonged, and economic growth 1895-1913 was below that in the comparable settler economies of Argentina and Canada. Why? Australia’s hesitant initial recovery is typically attributed to the imbalances in the economy resulting from the...

This paper examines the growth pattern followed by the Chilean economy with reference to the macroeconomic reforms undertaken during the Pinochet regime, which were largely maintained by successive democratic administrations and partially reproduced by neighbouring countries. The focus is on the...

Argentina’s money and banking system was hit hard by the Great Depression. The banking sector was awash with bad assets that built up in the 1920s. Gold convertibility was suspended in December 1929, even before the crisis seriously damaged the core economies. Commonly, these events are seen...

We are increasingly cognizant of the limits to large cross-country empirical studies in trying to understand in-depth a particular country reality, in ways useful for advice. At the same time, merely relying on a single country account at a particular point in time ignores the historical and...

This paper surveys the recent literature analysing fiscal deficit sustainability, most of which focuses on the U.S. and other industrial countries, in an attempt to assess its potential usefulness in the developing country context. Both the accounting approach and the present value constraint...

Theoretical study identifying one modality with conditions necesary for the financial stabilization of an inherently unstable system; and 5040 other unstable dynamic modes. It draws on knowledge made available by the academic field of Control Engineering.

The work of Gwartney, Holcombe and Lawson (GHL, 1998) is cited in New Zealand debate to demonstrate that a larger government share of GDP is detrimental for economic growth. Their work is reassessed here. We find a number of omissions in their analysis lead to a considerable over- statement of...