This paper considers the impact of the Euro in Sub-Saharan Africa, looking at the transmission channels through which the Euro could affect the economies in the region and at the risks and opportunities for Sub-Saharan African countries. In particular, the paper looks into effects from the trade...

What purpose does the European Monetary System serve? Who benefits from it? Is it a Deutschmark zone? Or could one argue that, despite the asymmetrical positions of France and Germany, the System does serve a certain collective interest? An attempt to answer these questions reveals a basic...

This paper analyzes the inefficiency that arises from a debt overhang. In order to define the lenders' optimal rescheduling strategy, I calculate the maximum present discounted value of the repayment they could obtain. This upper bound occurs when the borrower gives up sovereignty over all...

In the first part of the paper I calculate the returns on developing countries' debt obtained by their (private and public) creditors (when taking account of the transfers already generated and of the liquidative value of the debt) and show that they are satisfactory. I then evaluate the...

The Paper highlights one critical difference between Europe and the US regarding the Phillips curve: the behaviour of prices. While they are quickly restored to an equilibrium level in the US, European prices are driven by highly counter-cyclical mark-ups. In bad times, European firms manage to...

If interest rates (country spreads) rise, debt can rapidly be subject to a snowball effect, which then becomes self-fulfilling with regard to the fundamentals themselves. This is a market imperfection, because we cannot be confident that the unaided market will choose the ‘good equilibrium’...

The paper examines the behaviour of 100 firms interviewed regularly between 1993-4. It reaches the following conclusions:1) Following the inter-enterprise debt (IED) crisis of 1992, most firms have switched to a `pay-in-advance' system, which pushed firms towards a `hard budget constraint'...

This paper offers new tests of the `convergence hypothesis'. It first analyses the pattern of growth of measured inputs (human and physical capital conventionally measured by an inventory method) and shows that these tests sustain the hypothesis. On the other hand, when the pattern of growth of...

This paper addresses two puzzles of the growth literature: the failure of standard growth equations to account for slow growth in Latin America and Africa; and the surprising failure of trade to explain growth when trade liberalization appears to play a significant role. The paper shows that: i)...

We develop a two-sector model in which technological progress alternatively raises the productivity of one sector after another. We assume that goods are <MI>complements<D> for the final consumers. The sector which benefits from technical progress will see a resulting <MI>fall in its price<D>. In this model,...</d></mi></d></mi>