The Argentine economy has grown 94 percent for the years 2002-2011, using International Monetary Fund projections for the end of this year. This is the fastest growth in the Western Hemisphere for this period, and among the highest growth rates in the world. It also compares favorably to...

This paper examines some of the economic issues that could be relevant to Mexico’s July 1st presidential election. These include the short-term impact of the 2008-2009 recession and recovery; the longer-term record of Mexico’s economy since the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) party took power...

Outside observers could be forgiven for expecting Ecuador to suffer terribly during and after the recent global crisis. Two of the country’s largest sources of foreign earnings, petroleum exports and remittances from abroad, crashed during the global recession. Furthermore, lacking its own...

This paper looks at Ecuador’s financial and regulatory reforms during the past five years, perhaps the most comprehensive of any country in the 21st century: taking control over the central bank, regulating capital outflows, taxing the financial sector, encouraging domestic investment and...

This paper briefly reviews the IMF’s current practices and policy-making in the context of a proposed quadrupling of IMF resources to $1 trillion dollars, and a consequent increase in the Fund’s influence over economic policy-making in developing countries. It finds that the IMF is still...

Venezuela’s current growth is generally described as unsustainable, with various negative scenarios put forth, including spiraling debt, inflation, and balance of payments crises. However, these pessimistic forecasts have been far off the mark for most of the past decade. This paper looks at...

This paper is the third installment in a series (the first and second editions were in 2001 and 2005) that traces a long-term growth failure in most of the world's countries.

In this paper, we take a systematic look at global imbalances. First, we provide a definition of the phenomenon, and relate global imbalances to widening external positions of systemically important economies that reflect distortions or entail risks for the global economy. Second, we provide an...

This paper studies the incentives to join or enlarge a monetary union under alternative assumptions about the extent of market reform within the union and in candidate countries. Lack of labour mobility, wage/price flexibility or fiscal reform brings costs for both new entrants and in the...

This paper explores income and consumption smoothing patterns among the member countries of each of the CFA zones the CEMAC and the WAEMU during the period 1980-2000.I find that for the CEMAC only about 15 percent of shocks to GDP are smoothed through the standard channels (that is capital...