Since the late 1980s, there has been an abrupt turnaround in Sweden's public finances. The present paper makes the case for the very early adoption of a policy of medium-term fiscal consolidation in Sweden, notwithstanding the presently relatively depressed state of the Swedish economy. It does...

This essay reflects the thoughts and experience of two staff members. Mark Allen has been a resident representative in both Poland (1990-93) and Hungary (1996-1998), two countries that have moved well along the road of transformation. Rick Haas was the resident representative in Belarus...

This essay reflects the thoughts and experience of two staff members. Mark Allen has been a resident representative in both Poland (1990-93) and Hungary (1996-1998), two countries that have moved well along the road of transformation. Rick Haas was the resident representative in Belarus...

Evans (1991) has demonstrated that Blanchard's (1985) finite-horizon model obeys approximate Ricardian equivalence. This paper shows that this result is determined largely by an unrealistic assumption that labor income grows monotonically over the consumer's entire lifetime. With more realistic...

Which model best explains the 1991 currency crisis in India? Did real overvaluation contribute to the crisis? This paper seeks the answers through error correction models and by constructing the equilibrium real exchange rate using a technique developed by Gonzalo and Granger (1995). The...

This paper uses a dynamic panel data model to estimate the pass-through coefficients of 20 nine-digit industrial commodities that are traded between Japan and its East Asian and industrial country trading partners. By using the monthly series of unit export and import values obtained from the...

Using a simple model of international lending, we show that as long as the IMF lends at an actuarially fair interest rate and debtor governments maximize the welfare of their taxpayers, any changes in policy effort, capital flows, or borrowing costs in response to IMF crisis lending are...

The transition economies in Europe and the former Soviet Union between 1991 and 1999 differed widely in terms of total capital flows and the share and composition of private flows. With some exceptions (notably Russia), the main source of private inflows was foreign direct investment. Portfolio...