This paper attempts to understand the factors that explain the degree of support or criticism that a reform process may be subject to. Understanding these determinants is critical, in turn, to assess the feasibility and sustainability of those reforms. In particular, we want to assess what are...

The paper presents a new database on sovereign debt in the Americas, describing the sources used and briefly discussing several methodological issues. The paper also highlights major trends in level and composition of public debt in the Americas, discussing debt dollarization in detail

Since the beginning of the 1980s, the world has undergone a major shift in thinking about the appropriate economic role of the state. Privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has been at the heart of this change. The track record on privatization, however, is still very limited. This...

This paper studies the impact of exchange rate regimes on inflation, nominal money growth, real interest rates, and growth performance. We find that, for non-industrial economies, "long" pegs (defined as those lasting for five or more consecutive years) are associated with lower inflation than...

We study the relationship between exchange rate regimes and economic growth for a sample of 154 countries over the post-Bretton Woods period (1974-1999), using a new de facto classification of regimes based on the actual behavior of the relevant macroeconomic variables. In contrast with previous...

This paper studies the impact of exchange rate regimes on inflation, nominal money growth, real interes rates, and GDP growth. We find that, for nonindustrial economies, long pegs (lasting five or more years) are associated with lower inflation than floats, but at the cost of slower growth. A...

We study the global distributive consequences of the “Great Reflation.” The conventional wisdom holds that the increases in interest rates resulting from high inflation in the United States will have a negative impact on the rest of the world (and developing countries in particular) due to...

To the extent that they exert a critical influence on the macroeconomic environment, monetary and exchange rate policies (MERP) are relevant for development. However, the analytical economic literature often sees nominal variables as being irrelevant for the real economy, while the multiplicity...