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...

For over 10 years, the IMF has supported adjustment and reform programs in many of its low-income members through two facilities established specifically for that purpose - the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) and its precursor the Structural Adjustment Facility (SAF). By the end...

How should possible policy reforms and projects be assessed when prices give misleading signals? Revenues and costs at market prices then give distorted measures of social gains and losses and our appraisal should use social opportunity costs, or correctly defined, shadow prices. We show how...

This paper aims to inform policymakers, and other interested parties, about the IMF's approach to fiscal adjustment. The approach focuses on the role of sound and sustainable government finances in promoting macroeconomic stability and growth. Achieving, and maintaining, such a fiscal position...

Mozambique is an economic success story in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Its remarkable achievements offer valuable lessons to other low-income countries in a post-stabilization economic phase, including how they can efficiently manage a scaling up of foreign aid aimed at poverty reduction. Of...

The art of financial programming is a central element in the design of IMF-supported macroeconomic adjustment programs. This volume, edited by Richard Barth and William Hemphill, includes contributions from staff members of the IMF institute and introduces the reader to the concepts and tools of...

This paper develops a small analytical model to explore the relationship between the dynamics of macroeconomic adjustment and the timing of the implementation of an adjustment program featuring a nominal devaluation. The effects of postponing adjustment depend on the source of the original...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the argument that debt relief would increase the incentive of a debtor country to make an adjustment effort (to invest) and that for this reason creditors may benefit by granting relief. It is shown that there are actually opposing incentive effects of...