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...

This paper constructs and analyzes an optimizing model of dual exchange markets which are incompletely separated owing to the presence of fraudulent cross transactions. The model is used to examine the implications of certain shocks, including devaluation. Devaluation first leads to the...

This paper shows that the presence of quotas on imported inputs that are based on installed capacity can lead to capacity underutilization in manufacturing industries of developing countries. A replacement of such quotas, by tariffs leads to full capacity utilization under assumptions of both...

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...

This paper considers the problem of allocation of investment for a debtor country that faces a ceiling on the amount of foreign debt it can accumulate. It shows that it is optimal for the debtor country to create a more open economy by favoring investment in the export sector over investment in...

Many arguments that have been advanced in favor of maintaining capital controls within the EC have not paid sufficient attention to the welfare consequences of this type of market intervention. Our paper provides a simple, optimizing framework in which the welfare consequences of capital...

The search for ways to ensure growth while accommodating necessary expenditure cuts to correct fiscal imbalances, has often led to the advocacy of the government own savings (GOS) measure as an indicator of growth potential in fiscal adjustment. This paper critically examines the rationale of...

This paper analyzes the relationship between inflation tax and the level of government spending in a public finance context. The key feature of the model developed is that it recognizes the possibility that conventional taxes, such as the consumption tax, may carry increasing marginal collection...

This paper analyzes the implications of devaluation and a variety of structural disturbances in a dual exchange rate economy. A key feature of the model developed is its explicit recognition of both private (fraudulent) and officially-sanctioned cross transactions between the two exchange...