This paper reviews key areas of central banking reform in a sample of centrally planned economies undergoing transition to market-based systems. The discussion draws mainly on the experiences of four countries, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and China. Significant efforts have been made, or...

This paper compares the effective rates of taxation faced by a representative investor located in a major capital-exporting country for investments in machinery and buildings in nine capital-importing European countries. Poland and Hungary are found to have relatively high effective tax rates on...

This paper examines the relationship between macroeconomic stabilization and market-oriented reform in planned economies. It emphasizes that market-oriented reform should enhance the likelihood that adjustment to exogenous disturbances will involve genuine adjustment in the sense of actually...

Poland stands out among transition economies as having experienced a relatively short and shallow contraction followed by sustained, vigorous growth. This paper examines various aspects of Poland’s growth performance from 1992 through 1998 at the macroeconomic level as well as across sectors...

One of the most significant recent developments in world trade has been the entry of China into the World Trade Organization (WTO). This paper examines the implications of China''s WTO accession for India''s trade, using both econometrics and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. The...

In most macroeconomic models, the substitutability between domestic and foreign goods is calibrated using aggregated data. This imposes homogeneous elasticities across goods, and the calibration is only valid under this assumption. If elasticities are heterogeneous, the aggregate...

This paper uses VAR models to examine the magnitude and sources of growth spillovers to the Baltics from key trading partners, as well asfrom the real effective exchange rate (REER). Our results show there are significant cross-country spillovers to the Baltics with those from the EU outweighing...

The paper describes a global model consisting of several industrial and developing country blocks built to analyze alternative economic policies in a medium-term context. The model, which has been used to construct medium-term scenarios for the World Economic Outlook, consists of aggregate...

This paper analyzes the implications of growing international economic integration for the conduct of structural policy. Section I points out that the internationalization of financial intermediation has raised the welfare costs associated with domestic distortions. The growing importance of...