This Background Paper on the United States examines the effect of fiscal deficit reduction in the context of the IMF’s multicountry simulation model, on the current account and the real exchange rate. The simulations suggest that, other things being equal, fiscal consolidation will tend to...

This paper reviews economic developments in the United States during 1992–96. The paper briefly describes improvements in the national income and product accounts (NIPA) and some of their implications for the analysis of long-term trends in U.S. investment and saving. The paper highlights that...

This paper studies the political influence of individual firms on Congressional decisions to suspend tariffs on U.S. imports of intermediate goods. We develop a model in which firms influence the government by transmitting information about the value of protection, via costless messages...

This paper examines the factors which influence the behavior of real interest rates in the United States over the long run. Data on real and nominal returns to bonds and equities are tested for unit root non-stationarity. The results indicate that real and nominal interest rates and inflation...

This Selected Issues paper on the United States analyzes the measures of potential output, natural rate of unemployment, and capacity utilization. Traditionally, measures of resource utilization have been used as indicators for the potential build-up of inflation pressures, and hence as guides...

This Selected Issues paper on the United States analyzes problems in the measurement of output and prices. The paper examines income versus expenditure measures of national output. Sources of consumer price index and findings of the Boskin Commission are discussed, and mismeasurement of output...

In the United States and a few European countries, inventory behavior is mainly the outcome of demand shocks: a standard buffer-stock model best characterizes these economies. But most European countries are described by a modified buffer-stock model where supply shocks dominate. In contrast to...

This paper reviews the macroeconomic and microeconomic dimensions of the United States-Japan conflict over trade. From a macroeconomic perspective, there is nothing surprising about Japan’s surpluses, given global trends in saving and investment. The current accounts of the United States and...

Previous tests for convexity in the Phillips curve have been biased because researchers have employed filtering techniques for the NAIRU that have been fundamentally inconsistent with the existence of convexity. This paper places linear and nonlinear models of the Phillips curve on an equal...

The recent slowdown in the U.S. economy has led to state and local government tax increases and expenditure cuts that have lowered aggregate demand, in contrast to earlier downturns when the sector provided significant automatic stabilizers. Several explanations for this change are examined,...