Insufficient resources and inadequate public expenditure management often prevent governments in low-income countries from providing quality basic education free of charge. User payments by parents are an alternative means of financing basic education. This paper assesses how user payments...

Studies have shown that markets may underprice sub-national governments’ risk on the implicit assumption that these entities would be bailed out by their central government in case of financial difficulties. However, the question of whether sovereigns pay a premium on their own borrowing as a...

In an ideal world, primary education would be universal and publicly financed, and all children would be able to attend school regardless of their parents’ ability or willingness to pay. In many poor countries, however, governments lack either the financial resources or the political will...

We use a general-equilibrium model to explain the rise in global trade and payments imbalances since the mid-1990s, and then to construct adjustment paths to a steady state. Assuming that the shocks giving rise to the imbalances do not suddenly reverse, simulated movements in the U.S. trade...

This paper focuses on the output costs of disinflation. A model of inflation with both forward and backward elements seems to characterize reality. Such an inflation model is estimated using data for industrial countries, and the output costs of a disinflation path are calculated, first...

This paper compares the hypothetical performance of various monetary policy rules with that of the discretionary policies actually pursued in Japan over the 1986-91 period. The results suggest that simple rules based on targeting growth in either the money supply, nominal income, or prices would...

Uncovered interest parity (UIP) has been almost universally rejected in studies of exchange rate movements, although there is little consensus on why it fails. In contrast to previous studies, which have used relatively short-horizon data, we test UIP using interest rates on longer-maturity...

The unbiasedness hypothesis