This paper reviews the main features of market-oriented foreign trade reforms in planned economies. It considers reform initiatives aimed at expanding enterprise autonomy and breaking up the state monopoly of foreign trade, modifying the exchange rate system, and reforming the domestic price...

This paper discusses reviews major issues and developments in the trade area and outlines the problems in the multilateral trading system that governments face as they seek to liberalize trade in the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations. The paper's emphasis is on policy developments in the major...

This note provides an update on the status of Doha negotiations and an outlook on significant non-Doha trade issues that should be tackled in the near future. Section II investigates what has stalled progress on Doha since the IMF Executive Board was last briefed in October 2008 (World Bank and...

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...

The paper explores the relationship between trade policy and current accounts. The effect on the current account of a change in protection at home and then abroad is analyzed, assuming that the exchange rate floats. The “savings-and-investment approach” is used. It shows that there is no...

Efforts to liberalize world trade are increasingly focusing on strengthening the links between low-income countries’ trade policies and their development strategies. However, although greater trade openness promises faster growth for poor countries, it also presents risks to those with small...

Market-oriented economic reforms in centrally planned economies have altered the functions and objectives of key policy instruments, particularly in the case of fiscal policy. As a result of reform, economic management requires the use of “indirect” levers to regulate the behavior of...

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...