Imf Staff Papers Volume 48 No 3

This paper analyzes the financial implications of the 1956 crisis of nationalization of the Suez Canal by Egypt. It examines the regional distribution of public employment in Italy. The paper quantifies the impact of changes in the U.S. monetary policy on sovereign bond spreads in emerging market countries. Specifically, the paper explores empirically how country risk, as proxied by sovereign bond spreads, is influenced by U.S. monetary policy, country-specific fundamentals, and conditions in global capital markets. Modeling the IMF’s statistical discrepancy in the global current account is also discussed.

This paper explores the role of the IMF in promoting price stability. The IMF has one of its major objectives is to eliminate exchange restrictions that are due to balance of payments reasons. It carries on extensive annual consultations with its members toward that end; and, once the post-war transition is at an end, these members cannot impose exchange restrictions on current transactions without the approval of the Fund. This paper has consistently dealt with the IMF in its role of helping members to avoid inflation. Inflation is the subject of our meeting; and, in the post-war world as it has in fact developed, inflation, latent or realized, has been the perennial problem. Recessions have been short lived. Wherever a member is under pressure, either from external causes such as shrinkage in its foreign markets or from its own policies at home, the IMF stands ready to help it through its period of adjustment. Also with the notable strengthening of its resources that is now in the mill, it should prove to be an even more powerful bulwark against deflation. In such a world, those major countries that are maintaining the most stable and orderly price systems will set the standard to which others must repair.

This paper re-examines the issue of the existence of threshold effects in the relationship between inflation and growth, using new econometric techniques that provide appropriate procedures for estimation and inference. The threshold level of inflation above which inflation significantly slows growth is estimated at 1-3 percent for industrial countries and 11-12 percent for developing countries. The negative and significant relationship between inflation and growth, for inflation rates above the threshold level, is quite robust with respect to the estimation method, perturbations in the location of the threshold level, the exclusion of high-inflation observations, data frequency, and alternative specifications.

This paper explores trends in payment imbalances between 1952 and 1964. When desired reserves deviate appreciably from actual holdings, the authorities will sooner or later readjust their economic policies to reduce the magnitude of the deviation. On the assumption that the priorities given in individual countries to domestic and external objectives of economic policy and the attitudes toward the use of various policy instruments remain unchanged, desired reserves would tend to rise chiefly as a result of the increase in the size of expected payments fluctuations. International reserves of all 65 countries of the study rose over the period studied by 2.5 per cent a year. This low rate of increase reflects, however, the large reduction in US reserves. For all countries of the study excluding the United States, the reserves grew by 6.0 per cent a year. Leaving aside the loss of reserves by the United States, reserves of all countries appear, therefore, to have grown roughly in proportion to the value of trade and to the size of payments imbalances.

This chapter is the collection of eight papers on different aspects of the first 10 years of economic transition. Transition issues have appeared initially quite controversial. There have been controversies on the speed of reforms, privatization methods, the role and organization of government, the kind of financial system needed, etc. Although these controversies often have been ideological, they also reflect to a large extent the initial ignorance and unpreparedness of the economics profession with respect to the large. Resident representatives in transforming economies have had a unique opportunity to witness and participate in one of the most interesting and challenging events of the economics profession in the past 50 years: the transformation of centrally planned economies into market-based systems. The job is intellectually fascinating, frequently extremely rewarding, occasionally frustrating, however, never boring. The decline in cash revenue in Russia has been the key macroeconomic policy failure of the transition. This paper argues that the fall in cash compliance emerged when money printing was replaced with a method of budget financing that did not, in the short run, compromise the government's goals of low inflation, a stable exchange rate, and low interest rates, but which ultimately has led the government into a low cash revenue trap.

This paper analyzes the link between product variety and economic growth. It finds support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the United States helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The paper presents an empirical study for South Africa, which indicates that there exists a stable money demand type of relationship among domestic prices, broad money, real income, and interest rates, as well as a long-term relationship among domestic prices, foreign prices, and the nominal exchange rate.

This paper analyzes the link between product variety and economic growth. It finds support for the hypothesis that a greater degree of product variety relative to the United States helps to explain relative per capita GDP levels. The paper presents an empirical study for South Africa, which indicates that there exists a stable money demand type of relationship among domestic prices, broad money, real income, and interest rates, as well as a long-term relationship among domestic prices, foreign prices, and the nominal exchange rate.

WILLIAM. white, who joined the International Monetary Fund in 1948, spent his entire professional life in the Research Department. Present and past staff members, many of whom benefited from his advice, have asked that his contribution-to the work of the Fund should receive recognition in Staff Papers. This appreciation draws on excerpts from written recollections of some of his colleagues.