Economic globalization has given rise to frequent and severe financial crises in emerging market economies. Other countries are also unsuccessful in their efforts to generate economic growth and reduce poverty. This book provides perspectives on various aspects of the international financial system that contribute to financial crises and growth failures, and discusses the remedies that economists have proposed for addressing the underlying problems. It also sheds light on a central feature of the international financial system that remains mysterious to many economists and most non-economists: the activities of the International Monetary Fund and the factors that influence its effectiveness. Dr Isard offers policy perspectives on what countries can do to reduce their vulnerabilities to financial crises and growth failures, and a number of general directions for systemic reform. The breadth of the agenda provides grounds for optimism that the international financial system can be strengthened considerably without revolutionary change.
This book describes and evaluates the literature on exchange rate economics. It provides a wide-ranging survey, with background on the history of international monetary regimes and the institutional characteristics of foreign exchange markets, an overview of the development of conceptual and empirical models of exchange rate behavior, and perspectives on the key issues that policymakers confront in deciding whether, and how, to try to stabilize exchange rates. The treatment of most topics is reasonably compact, with extensive references to the literature for those desiring to pursue individual topics further. The level of exposition is relatively easy to comprehend; the historical and institutional material (part I) and the discussion of policy issues (part III) contain no equations or technical notation, while the chapters on models of exchange rate behavior (part II) are written at a level intelligible to first-year graduate students or advanced undergraduates. The book will enlighten both students and policymakers, and should also serve as a valuable reference for many research economists.
This book edited by Michael Mussa, James M. Boughton, and Peter Isard, records the proceedings of a seminar held at the IMF in March 1996 on the future of the special drawing right (SDR), given changes in the international monetary system since the inception of the SDR. The seminar focuses on the differences in opinion in the international community on the desirability or feasibility of an additional allocation of SDRs.
The paper models an adjustable peg exchange rate arrangement as a policy rule with an escape clause under which the timing and magnitudes of realignments are the outcomes of policy optimization decisions. Under the assumptions that market participants are rational, risk averse, and fully informed about the incentives of policymakers, the analysis focuses on the implications for relating realignment expectations to the state variables that enter the policy objective function, for modeling the bias in using forward exchange rates to predict future spot rates, and for characterizing the effectiveness of sterilized intervention.
This paper examines the problems in establishing currency convertibility- and the optimal timing- in formerly planned economies making the transition to market-oriented systems.
The paper uses MULTIMOD to examine the implications of uncertain exchange rate pass-through for the conduct of monetary policy. From the policymaker's perspective, uncertainty about exchange rate pass-through implies uncertainty about policy multipliers and the impact of state variables on stabilization objectives. When faced with uncertainty about the strength of exchange rate pass-through, policymakers will make less costly errors by overestimating the strength of pass-through rather than underestimating it. The analysis suggests that pass-through uncertainty of the magnitude considered does not result in efficient policy response coefficients that are smaller than those under certainty.
Using stochastic simulations and stability analysis, the paper compares how different monetary rules perform in a moderately nonlinear model with a time-varying nonaccelerating-inflation-rate-of-unemployment (NAIRU). Rules that perform well in linear models but implicitly embody backward-looking measures of real interest rates (such as conventional Taylor rules) or substantial interest rate smoothing perform very poorly in models with moderate nonlinearities, particularly when policymakers tend to make serially correlated errors in estimating the NAIRU. This challenges the practice of evaluating rules within linear models, in which the consequences of responding myopically to significant overheating are extremely unrealistic.
The paper characterizes the feasibility of economic transformation as requiring the simultaneous attainment of macroeconomic stability, political support, and adequate private investment. Macroeconomic stability is defined as fiscal balance; political feasibility is related to the income gains and losses of different population groups; and private investment is linked to public “infrastructure” investment. The analysis illustrates that attainment of the multiple requirements for successful transformation may necessitate a “big push” with external financial and technical assistance. It also emphasizes the importance of the productivity gains achieved when workers are induced to make occupational choices consistent with their comparative advantages.
This note addresses various types of incentives that must be established before a market economy can function effectively. It also argues that the enormous challenge of restructuring large industrial enterprises or reabsorbing their workers, while appropriately based on market signals, cannot be accomplished by the market alone. Some type of planning will eventually be required. Ideally, such planning should receive high priority from the outset with clear recognition that durable macroeconomic stabilization will be very difficult to achieve in a democratic political system until the large state enterprises have been successfully transformed or their workers reabsorbed.
This paper builds a multiperiod, general equilibrium framework for analyzing the macroeconomic effects of financial reforms in developing countries and the costs of maintaining official safety nets under the financial system during such reforms. While a financial liberalization yields efficiency gains, adverse macroeconomic effects can arise if the creditworthiness of the nonfinancial sector is weak. In this situation, financial liberalization may also increase the authorities’ expected deposit insurance funding obligations even with strong prudential supervision. Moreover, given the distortions in a repressed financial system, an increase in the required bank capital-asset ratio may increase the funding obligations associated with deposit insurance, particularly when the debt-servicing capacity of nonfinancial firms is low.
The IMF's internal analysis of exchange rate issues has been guided by, and limited by, the conceptual and empirical frameworks that have emerged from the collective research of the economics profession. The research has provided several general approaches that are useful for assessing whether countries' exchange rates seem broadly appropriate. One involves the calculation of purchasing power-party (PPP) measure or international competitiveness indicators. A second, known as the macroeconomic balance framework, focuses on the extent to which prevailing exchange rates and policies are consistent with simultaneous internal and external equilibrium over the medium run. Some recent extensions of the macroeconomic balance approach and the manner in which it is applied by the IMF staff are described in this paper.
The 18 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (APEC) encompass not only a wide geographic area but also broad differences in stages of economic development, including among them some of the fastest- growing economies in the world. Such rapid growth has been ficilitated by high levels of investment and trade, international linkages, and, in most APEC economies, macroeconomic policies that have sustained growth while not sparking excessive inflation. This study offers insights about how medium and long-term changes in real exchange rates have affected international (and intra-APEC) trade and investment in the region.
How can international monetary stability be promoted? This study looks at ways to bolster economic policies and coordination among the industrial countries serving as nominal anchors for the world economy. It also assesses the operation of monetary unions and common currency areas. The authors conclude that problems with the world monetary system reflect weaknesses outside the exchange rate arena, and that exchange rate commitements must be tailored to individual country characteristics.
This study describes the Mark III version of MULTIMOD, the IMF's multi region macroeconomic model. Mark III version of MULTIMOD differs from its predecessor in several important respects. New features include a core steady-state analogue model, a new model of teh inflation-unemployment nexus, and extended non-Ricardian specification of consumption-saving behavior, and improved specifications and estimates of investment behavior and international trade equations. In addition, the introduction of a new solution algorithm has greatly increased the robustness, speed of convergence, and accuracy of the simulations.
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