Over the past two years, the IMF staff has been developing a new multicountry macroeconomic model called the Global Economy Model (GEM). This paper explains why such a model is needed, how GEM differs from its predecessor model, and how the new features of the model can improve the IMF’s...

This 2005 Article IV Consultation highlights that Singapore’s economy has recovered rapidly since mid-2003, having weathered a series of adverse shocks since the Asian crisis. This turnaround owes much to a favorable external environment, supportive macroeconomic policies, and continued...

Swiss growth performance in the past quarter century has been mediocre. The paper finds that conditional income convergence contributes significantly to slow growth and the poor performance of the domestically oriented sectors has been a drag on growth. However, slow growth is not inescapable....

The effect of exchange rate volatility on trade flows was examined by a 1984 IMF study on G-7 countries. Over the past two decades, many developments in the world economy, such as the currency crises in the 1990s and increasing cross-border capital flows, may have exacerbated exchange rate...

This paper uses a variant of the IMF's Global Economy Model (GEM) to estimate the macroeconomic effects of Yemen's full accession into the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). After calibrating the model to Yemen and the GCC countries, several simulations were carried out to estimate the potential...

This paper focuses on the trade-off faced by governments in deciding the allocation of public expenditures between productivity-enhancing public infrastructures and utility-enhancing public consumption. From the modeling point of view, the paper augments a standard New Open Economy...

This paper examines the effects of trade costs on macroeconomic volatility. We first construct a dynamic, two-country general equilibrium model, where the degree of market integration depends directly on trade costs (transport costs, tariffs, etc.). The model is a extension of Obstfeld and...

This paper estimates the effects of trade liberalization on plant productivity. In contrast to previous studies, we distinguish between productivity gains arising from lower tariffs on final goods relative to lower tariffs on intermediate inputs. Lower output tariffs can produce productivity...

We account for the appreciation of the real exchange rate in Mexico between 1988 and 2002 using a two sector dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy with two driving forces: (i) differential productivity growth across sectors and (ii) a decline in the cost of borrowing in...

A comprehensive empirical investigation is carried out to ascertain the import-reducing effect of trade protection barriers. We first present a statistical summary of the status of global trade protection. Then, based on a monopolistic competition trade model and 1994 cross-country data on trade...