This paper highlights the institutional features of the inflation process and contrasts two stabilization efforts in 1964-66 and in 1986.The inflation process in Brazil is highly institutional. It does not resemble hyperinflations where pricing and wage setting are geared to the exchange rate by...

This report brings together three separate, short papers on problems of Brazilian trade and payments. The following topics are addressed: the determinants of export behavior in the manufactures sector, measures of the real exchange rate and the monetary approach applied to the external balance....

The paper stresses the evolutionary and adaptive experience of Latin American growth between 1950 and 1980, and provides a synthetic view by considering the sources of growth within a simple production framework. Regressions use quinquennial panel data for 18 Latin American countries.They...

The 1980s were a lost decade for Latin America, will the 1990s also be lost? For some countries stabilization has not even started. In other countries the stabilization accomplishments remain tentative and vulnerable. And even those countries that have established firmly a new path for their...

Do existing theories of stabilization help understand the credibility issues involved in such programs? The experience with stabilization in a hyperinflation setting in Israel and Latin America makes it worthwhile to ask how much existing theories help understand the success and failure of these...

Can the credibility of a stabilization plan affect the output costs of disinflation? The new classical economics has asserted this possibility, but little evidence has been brought forward. This paper analyzes the stabilization program of Ireland in the l980s against the background of the new...

This paper discusses exchange rate issues in advanced and in developing countries. For the determination of exchange rates among industrialized countries the key question is the following: What is the right framework -- the monetary approach, the equilibrium approach, the new classical approach...

This paper investigates the role of interest rates, commodity prices, growth in bringing the debt crisis about and how they facilitated or made more difficult the first five years of adjustment. We also ask whether and how the world macroeconomy is likely to contribute to the solution of the...

The paper reviews the directions of research that offer important insights into open economy macroeconomic policy: pricing, waiting and expectations. The pricing discussion centers on the recognition that firms are price setters. This implies that industry shocks such as exchange rate movements...

The U.S. has significant interests involved in the world debt problem. It affects the profitability and even the stability of our banking system, but the debt problem also matters because debt service requires trade surpluses for debt- ors. Debtor countries have made their goods extra...