Trade among the CMEA countries will soon be conducted at world prices and in convertible currencies. These are crucial steps in economic reform but will worsen Eastern Europe’s terms of trade and drive it into current account deficit with the USSR. Proposals have been made for a payments...

This paper discusses principles and functions of the IMF. The IMF is a specialized agency of the United Nations system set up by treaty in 1945 to help promote the health of the world economy. Through its work, the IMF helps to keep the world economy running as smoothly as possible. Its work is...

The External Sector Report presents a methodologically consistent assessment of the exchange rates, current accounts, reserves, capital flows, and external balance sheets of the world's largest economies. The 2018 edition includes an analytical assessment of how trade costs and related policy...

Conceptual ambiguities and statistical weaknesses hamper the assessment of external competitiveness. The term competitiveness, while applied extensively, is often imprecisely defined, which can result in analytical errors and mistaken policy advice. Furthermore, aggregate statistical measures of...

This paper analyzes competitiveness in the Baltics in the run-up to European Union accession. Several factors appear to have driven movements in equilibrium real exchange rates in the Baltics since the start of the transition process. In the earlier years of transition, price liberalization,...