This paper looks at the dynamics of (dis)equilibria during post-command transition. It tries to define an optimal mix between external and internal disequilibrium and to apply this concept to the analysis of the Romanian economy. The forced adjustment of the balance of payments in the 1980s is...

The paper analyzes common issues emerging from the recent experience with Fund-supported programs in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These comprise the initial price-overshooting and the output collapse, fiscal sustainability as well as the financial and structural...

The corporate governance problem of state enterprises in former socialist economies can give rise to excessive wage claims and/or capital decumulation. This paper focuses on these problems, highlighting the dynamic links between wage behavior, the fiscal deficit, inflation and the capital stock....

This report presents a description of the stress test exercises for Spain’s banking and insurance systems. The exercises were carried out in the context of the Financial Sector Assessment Program with the aim of assessing the resilience of the financial system to key risks. It describes...

The causes of the global financial crisis were multi-faceted but revealed still unresolved weaknesses in national and international financial oversight and resolution frameworks. In particular, many governments in the crisis-hit countries had to provide unprecedented levels of support to contain...

A common assumption in standard economic models is that agents are risk-averse and prudent, and it is often argued that prudence is necessary to generate precautionary savings. This paper shows that prudence is not necessary to generate precautionary savings in small open economy models with...

This article examines income tax progression as a mechanism for achieving the intertemporal adjustments of earnings profiles. With a rising income profile, the preference for progression arises from the market (borrowing) rate of interest exceeding the rate at which the government borrows. For a...

Chapter 1 An Introduction to the Economics of Optimal Growth Pathways -- Chapter 2 Ricardo’s Rent -- Chapter 3 Von Thunen’s Spatial Land Use: Grasslands and Cities -- Chapter 4 Faustmann’s Forest Harvest Rotation -- Chapter 5 Hotelling’s Fossil Fuel Economics -- Chapter 6 Fisheries...

This paper analyzes the price stabilizing properties of puttable and extendible bonds, their potential to help develop interest-rate derivative markets, and their use by governments. Their stabilizing properties imply that, when bond prices fall, prices for puttable and extendible bonds fall by...

This paper calibrates the production functions of 176 countries to fit 2003 data and examines the capital flows that emerge, when labor forces change according to the 2007 UN population projections. It finds that demographic factors are no help in correcting today's global imbalances; that...