This paper analyzes regional labor mobility in Finland using two complementary empirical approaches: a VAR proposed by Blanchard and Katz (1992) and a gravity model. The results point to a relatively limited regional labor mobility in Finland compared to the U.S. and to EU peers. The limited...

This paper studies the main factors that explain the low regional mobility in Spain, with a view to identifying policy options at the regional and central level to promote labor mobility. The empirical analysis finds that house prices, labor market conditions, and the pervasiveness of labor...

This paper examines the effect of the efficiency of the education system on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). First, it focuses on the external efficiency and applies a frontier-based measure as a proxy of the ability of countries to optimally convert the average years of schooling into income...

This paper examines the extent to which there has been convergence in real per capita incomes across developing countries during the last two decades. In the analysis particular emphasis is placed on the separate roles played by private and public sector investment in determining both the extent...

Several transition economies have undertaken fiscal decentralization reforms over the past two decades along with liberalization, privatization, and stabilization reforms. Theory predicts that decentralization may aggravate fiscal imbalances, unless the right incentives are in place to promote...

This paper discusses different instruments of monetary policy, and in particular the choice between direct and indirect instruments. It identifies the main characteristics of a country’s financial system that should be considered in selecting monetary instruments, and analyzes how these...

This paper examines factors determining the allocation of bank credit to the enterprise sector, and the implications of this allocation for aggregate supply and macro-economic performance, in the former socialist economies. It first develops a model to explain how changes in demand for money by...

This paper makes use of the IMF’s Database for Monitoring Fund Arrangements (MONA) to investigate whether transition countries that more successfully implement the conditionality of IMF programs tend to show a better performance on recovery and growth. It is not possible to determine a...