This paper reviews Zaïre’s experience with hyperinflation during 1990-96 and develops an illustrative model based on a money demand function that includes government revenue as a determinant. Government revenue is itself subject to the “Tanzi effect,” in which inflation tends to lower...

The paper reviews the principles and practical considerations involved in the choice between foreign and domestic financing of fiscal deficits, and derives a series of recommendations broadly applicable to Central and West African countries. The paper develops a simple analytical framework and...

The paper develops an interpretation of volatile exchange rate movements in a dollarized economy with very high rates of inflation. Differences between the rate of inflation and currency depreciation (over- or undershooting of the exchange rate) are seen as a proxy for changes in the relative...

The paper reviews the “stylized facts” on economic growth gathered by Easterly and Levine in their 2001 joint paper and illustrates some of the points made on the basis of data from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook on real growth and per capita GDP since 1970. The data show that the growth...