The relationship between the degree of wage indexation chosen by private agents and the degree of public debt indexation chosen by the government is examined. It is shown that the government is likely to increase public debt indexation in response to an increase in wage indexation. By contrast,...

This paper analyzes the issue of purchasing power parity using real effective exchange rate (REER) data for 20 industrial countries in the post-Bretton Woods period. The serial correlation-robust median-unbiased estimator yields a cross-country average of half-lives of deviations from parity of...

This paper examines how the effects of fiscal policies are transmitted internationally. The analysis emphasizes that fiscal shifts of recent years constitute major disturbances to saving and investment flows. An increase in a country's fiscal deficit corresponds to a higher level of public...

This paper empirically investigates the monetary impact of banking crises in Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Japan, Kenya, Malaysia, and Uruguay during 1975–98. Cointegration analysis and error correction modeling are used to research two issues: (i) whether money demand stability is threatened by...

This paper examines contractionary currency crashes in developing countries. It explores the causes of India’s productivity surge around 1980, more than a decade before serious economic reforms were initiated. The paper finds evidence that the trigger may have been an attitudinal shift by the...

Although accommodative policies and widespread indexation may account for the persistence of high inflation, they cannot explain changes in the inflation rate. The causes of such changes for the high-inflation episodes immediately preceding the recent “heterodox” attempts at stabilization in...

The determinants of current account imbalances under floating exchange rates are analyzed. The analysis provides a framework within which the sources of. and the remedies for, the current account imbalances between the United States, Japan, and the Federal Republic of Germany can be discussed....

This paper proposes a model that can serve as a starting point for the development of a generalized framework that can analyse issues in adjustment with growth. The two main building blocks of this model are the monetary approach to the balance of payments, used often in designing short-term...

Common issues emerging from the recent experience with IMF-supported programs in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania are analyzed. These comprise the initial price overshooting and output collapse and the financial and structural problems associated with bad loan portfolios...

This paper analyzes macroeconomic effects of projected population aging in industrial countries. The effects of population aging are examined with a theoretical model and simulations of the IMF’s multiregion econometric model (MULTIMOD). The study highlights that an older population will...