Conventional wisdom suggests that reducing military spending may improve a country's economic growth, but empirical studies have produced ambiguous results on this point. Extending a standard growth model, the authors exploit both cross-section and time-series dimensions of available data to get...

Recent empirical studies have examined the determinants of economic growth using country-average (cross-sectional) data. By contrast, this paper employs a technique for using a panel of cross-sectional and time series data for 98 countries over the 1960-85 period to determine the quantitative...

Although conventional wisdom suggests that reducing military spending may improve a country's economic growth performance, empirical studies have produced ambiguous results. This paper extends a standard growth model and obtains consistent panel data estimates of the growth retarding effects of...

This paper surveys the main theoretical approaches for analyzing movements in the current account of the balance of payments, from the Mundell-Fleming paradigm to modern intertemporal approaches. It discusses the main implications of these analyses for policymaking, highlighting that modern...

This is the first of a group of papers dealing with various aspects of Fund-supported adjustment programs. The other two, The Global Effects of Fund-supported Adjustment Programs by Morris Goldstein and Fund-Supported Programs, Fiscal Policy, and Income Distribution by the Fiscal Affairs...

This paper analyzes the impact of the globalization of financial markets on developing and transition economies. Differences between the responses of competitive and imperfectly competitive banking sectors cause them to affect economic activity differently. While nonbank financial markets and...

Since 1991, the 15 countries under review - have to varying degrees, been pursuing reforms whose broad objectives have been to achieve market-based determination of interest rates and exchange rates, manage banking system liquidity through market operations with indirect instruments, and provide...

This paper analyses empirically the economic factors that lead to approval of Fund financial arrangements. We account for both the economic variables that induce a country to seek an arrangement with the Fund ("demand-side" factors) and the macroeconomic policy commitments that the Fund...