Since the mid-1980s, New Zealand has been engaged in a broad-ranging economic reform program--involving liberalization of key sectors of the economy, reduction in trade protection, and trimming of the public sector--in order to restructure its economy and stimulate growth. With growth...

Applying a consumption-smoothing model to five ASEAN countries reveals that excessive private consumption has not tended to characterize their widening external imbalances in recent years, except to a small degree in Indonesia and Malaysia. Beyond consumption smoothing, however, a number of...

To better fulfill its crisis-prevention mandate, IMF surveillance needs to provide stronger incentives for countries to follow good policies and for markets to avoid boom-bust cycles in capital flows. To this end, surveillance should culminate in a summary public assessment of the quality of a...

The Fund has recognized in recent years that one cannot separate issues of economic growth and stability on one hand and equality on the other. Indeed, there is a strong case for considering inequality and an inability to sustain economic growth as two sides of the same coin. Central to the...

En la serie de Documentos de Análisis del Personal Técnico del FMI se presentan los últimos análisis e investigaciones sobre políticas elaborados por miembros del personal técnico del FMI, que se publican para recibir comentarios y fomentar el debate. Estos documentos generalmente son...

En la serie de Documentos de Análisis del Personal Técnico del FMI se presentan los últimos análisis e investigaciones sobre políticas elaborados por miembros del personal técnico del FMI, que se publican para recibir comentarios y fomentar el debate. Estos documentos generalmente son...

En esta nota se presenta el enfoque del FMI con respecto a una serie de cuestiones relacionadas con la desigualdad, el desempleo, la gestión de gobierno, etc. Se basa en estudios empíricos anteriores que examinan las correlaciones entre las desaceleraciones del crecimiento/la duración de las...

The relationship between current account developments and changes in the macroeconomic environment remains a key issue in open economy macroeconomics. This paper extends the standard intertemporal optimizing model of the current account to incorporate the effects of macroeconomic uncertainty on...

It is often argued that the parallel market premium is a useful indicator of real exchange rate misalignment in developing countries. The empirical evidence does not, however, suggest the existence of a robust correlation between these two endogenous variables that is independent of the nature...

This paper analyzes the declines in economic activity experienced by Bulgaria, the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR), and Romania in the period since the initiation of market-oriented reforms in these countries. The paper reviews developments in the three countries and empirically...