Recent literature suggests that because investment expenditures are irreversible and can be delayed, they may be highly sensitive to uncertainty. The authors briefly summarize the theory, stressing its empirical implications. Then, using cross-section and time-series data for a set of developing...

Globalization could significantly expand trade, international investment, and technological advances, but the gains from global integration have been unevenly distributed across and within nations. Greater global interdependence has also brought greater macroeconomic volatility, resulting in...

This paper reviews current investment theories, recent models linking macroeconomic policies and private investment, and the effect of uncertainty and credibility on irreversible investment decisions. Empirical studies on the subject are also reviewed, and the general implications of this...

The author identifies fundamental economic changes in the last 20 years that have influenced the emergence of a new paradigm on economic reform. The new orthodoxy on economic reform emphasizes smaller government, trade liberalization, business deregulation and privatization, macroeconomic...

Global capitalism, vintage early 21st century, favors the movement of goods and capital across national borders more than it does the movement of people. It was not always this way. The first wave of globalization, in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th, came with massive...

The recovery of the Chilean economy since the mid 1980s, has certainly been successful in macroeconomic terms. In fact, the restoration of growth and the correction of external imbalances after the severe economic crises of 1982 -83 has taken place in a macroeconomic environment of moderate...

Current attempts at reform in Eastern European countries raise important issues of macroeconomic management in the transition from central planning to a market or mixed economy. This paper develops simple models, reviews empirical evidence and discusses policy issues associated with traditional...

This paper considers two periods: before socialism and after it. The former includes the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, and the second includes the late 1980s and early 1990s. The focus is on issues of economic reconstruction, hyperinflation, integration with the global monetary system and the...

Globalization offers developing countries the opportunities to create wealth through export-led growth, to expand international trade in goods and services, and to gain access to new ideas, technologies, and institutional designs. But globalization also entails problems and tensions that must be...

Deposit insurance is widely offered in a number of countries as part of a financial system safety net to promote stability. An unintended consequence of deposit insurance is the reduction in the incentive of depositors to monitor banks, which leads to excessive risk-taking. This paper examines...