Imf Staff Papers 2001

This paper focuses on the IMF’s credit policy and the balance of payments. The attempts at simplicity in the construction of the IMF's models have necessarily involved recognizing the fact that models for different types of countries had to bring out different main features. In models for developing countries it was reasonable to assume that there was little organized capital market, that credit was rationed, that holdings of money were predominantly transactions balances and insensitive to interest rates, that capital flows were largely autonomous, and that the money supply tended to respond to the overseas balance. The simplification involved in the model fails to reflect some important features of economies with highly developed financial markets. The model, although it contains the major behavioral features to be found in macro models of the industrial countries, nevertheless lacks several refinements. The long-run effects on income of increases in exports or net capital inflows are identical in the two models, where imports must rise in equilibrium to match the increase in foreign receipts.

This is the final issue for 2006 (Volume 53), and contains another paper in the occasional Special Data Section that seeks to measure financial development in the Middle East and North Africa by utilizing a new database. The issue also contains a comment from Jacques J. Polak on parity reversion in real exchange rates.

Forty years ago, Marcus Fleming and Robert Mundell developed independent models of macroeconomic policy in open economies. Why do we link the two, and why do we call the result the Mundell-Fleming, rather than Fieming-Mundell model?

Stock and bond issues and capital markets in less developed countries (LDCs) have recently received increasing attention from policymakers, and this preliminary study provides a cross-country survey of the actual experience of LDCs in this respect. Capital markets in LDCs are markedly underdeveloped, reflecting a combination of historical circumstances, current level of economic and financial development, and government policy—including inflation and low interest rates on government debt. Through its regulatory powers, the government can do much to reduce uncertainty (and, hence, risk). Supervising capital markets has several dimensions: preventing fraud; improving information; reducing transactions costs; and developing capital market techniques and institutions. Information on the Brazilian experience includes the fact that a strong, self-sustained capital market has not yet been established, despite the gains made. Tax incentives do provide a way of promoting capital market development, but the benefits of initial development must be judged in terms of the cost of tax receipts forgone.

This last issue for 2005 comprises seven new papers, including a contribution to the journal's occasional Special Data Section about domestic debt markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, and also an in-depth look at the internal job market for entry-level economists at the IMF. The remaining articles cover toics as diverse as: modeling of asset markets, exchange rates in developing countries, international bank claims on Latin America, the effectiveness of "early warning" systems, and the use (by emerging market countries) of the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS).

This paper extends a standard growth model and obtains consistent panel data estimates of the growth retarding effects of military spending via its adverse impact on capital formation and resource allocation. Simulation experiments suggest that a substantial long-term “peace dividend”—in the form of higher capacity output—may result from markedly lower military expenditure levels achieved in most regions during the late 1980s, and the further military spending cuts that would be possible if global peace could be secured.

This paper introduces a new database of financial reforms covering 91 economies over 1973-2005. It describes the content of the database, the information sources utilized, and the coding rules used to create an index of financial reform. It also compares the database with other measures of financial liberalization, provides descriptive statistics, and discusses some possible applications. The database provides a multifaceted measure of reform, covering seven aspects of financial sector policy. Along each dimension the database provides a graded (rather than a binary) score, and allows for reversals.