Economic Issues
1999
September 27, 1999
Hedge Funds: What Do We Really Know?
Description: Each episode of volatility in financial markets heightens the attention of government officials and others to the role played by the hedge fund industry in financial market dynamics. Hedge funds were implicated in the 1992 crises that led to major exchange rate realignments in the European Monetary System, and again in 1994 after a period of turbulence in international bond markets. Concerns mounted in 1997 in the wake of the financial upheavals in Asia. And they were amplified in 1998, with allegations of large hedge fund transactions in various Asian currency markets and with the near collapse of a major hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM). This paper discusses the size, number, and investment styles of hedge funds, and their interactions with global financial markets. It reviews the present state of their supervision and regulation, and assesses various suggestions for regulating them more closely, often as part of new regulatory approaches to the larger financial markets of which hedge funds are but a small part.
1998
October 2, 1998
Inflation Targeting as a Framework for Monetary Policy
Description: Inflation distorts prices, erodes savings, discourages investment, stimulates capital flight, inhibits growth, and makes economic planning a nightmare. During the past decade, several advanced economies have taken a new approach to the age-old problem of controlling inflation through monetary policy known as "inflation targeting." This pamphlet explains the requirements of putting the new policy in place, the experience of the countries that have tried it, and whether it has applicability to developing countries.
April 17, 1998
Fixed or Flexible? Getting the Exchange Rate Right in the 1990s
Description: This paper examines the recent evolution of exchange rate policies in the developing world. It looks at why so many countries have made a transition from fixed or "pegged" exchange rates to "managed floating" currencies. It discusses how economics perform under different exchange rate arrangements, issues in the choice of regime, and the challenges poised by a world or increasing capital mobility, especially when banking sectors are inadequately regulated or supervised.
1997
September 29, 1997
Does Globalization Lower Wages and Export Jobs?
Description: Increased globalization - the international integration of markets for goods, technology, labor, and capital - has coincided in the past 20 years with a shift in demand from less-skilled workers to those with more skills. Have imports from developing countries been responsible for the lowered wages of the unskilled, increased unemployment, and widened income inequality in the more advanced countries? This paper finds that a more important influence on labor markets during these years has been a technology-driven shift in labor demand.