This paper demonstrates how a full-blown optimizing model of the dynamics of the current account can be reduced to a small-scale collection of reduced-form relations capable of implementing a rich set of macro-economic simulations. Emphasizing the role of shocks to productivity, labor...

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...

Using Chilean data, we document that for resource-rich small open economies the effects of terms of trade shocks on the wage gap (between skilled and unskilled workers) depend on factor intensities in the non-tradable sector, following the model in Galiani, Heymann, and Magud (2010). For a...

The ESF, established within the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility and Exogenous Shocks Facility (PRGF-ESF) Trust, complements existing Fund instruments for providing timely support, including financing at more appropriate terms, to low-income members that are facing sudden and exogenous...

This paper seeks to advance the discussion of monetary policy strategies in several ways. One involves a comparison of targets for nominal GNP and the price level, with emphasis on specificational robustness and implications for output variability. A second pertains to various “indicator”...

This paper examines the dynamics of the foreign exchange market. The first half addresses a number of key questions regarding the forecasts of future exchange rates made by market participants, by means of updated estimates using survey data. Here we follow most of the theoretical and empirical...

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 investigates the impact of long-run terms-of-trade shocks. Analytically, we show that, if capital goods are largely importable or the labor supply is sufficiently elastic, then natural-resource booms increase aggregate investment and worsen the current account, but Dutch ‘Disease’...