Working Papers
2000
April 1, 2000
Real Effects of High Inflation
Description: This paper revisits the question of the real effects of inflation, on the basis of the experience with 23 high inflation episodes in 17 countries. It finds strong indications that inflation had contractionary effects on a number of important macroeconomic variables, such as GDP, investment and employment. Moreover, high inflation led to a significant decline in real wages, a real depreciation and an improvement in external trade. These patterns are consistent with explanations that stress the transaction role of money, such as models with a cash-in-advance constraint. However, some observations are hard to reconcile with existing theory, especially the large magnitude of the fall in real wages.1
April 1, 2000
VIVAT, CVAT and All That: New Forms of Value-Added Tax for Federal Systems
Description: Conventional wisdom has it that the value-added tax is not a suitable instrument for lower-level jurisdictions (‘provinces’) in a federal system. The problems that arise when it is so used have become a serious constraint on the development of the VAT—and closer economic integration—in Brazil, the EU, India and elsewhere. This paper describes and compares two recent proposals for forms of VAT intended to alleviate these difficulties: the VIVAT and the CVAT. Both enable the VAT chain to be preserved on inter-provincial trade without compromising the destination principle (allowing provinces to tax consumption at different rates) or introducing new scope for game-playing by the provinces. The key difference between them is that the CVAT requires sellers to discriminate between buyers located in different provinces of the federation, whereas VIVAT requires them to discriminate between registered and non-registered buyers. Where the balance of advantage between the two lies is not entirely obvious.
April 1, 2000
Social Fractionalization, Political Instability, and the Size of Government
Description: This paper explores the relationship between the degree of division or fractionalization of a country’s population (along ethnolinguistic and religious dimensions) and both political instability and government consumption, using a neoclassical growth model. The principal idea is that greater fractionalization, proxying for the degree of conflict in society, leads to political instability, which in turn leads to higher government consumption aimed at placating the opposition. There is also a feedback mechanism whereby the higher consumption leads to less instability as government consumption reduces the risk of losing office. Empirical evidence based on panel estimation supports this hypothesis.
April 1, 2000
Assessing Fiscal Sustainability in Theory and Practice
Description: The main purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of approaches to assessing fiscal sustainability. It summarizes the general analytical background, focusing on the present value budget constraint, which is the benchmark against which solvency is determined, tests of sustainability (including sustainability indicators), and sustainability and uncertainty. The paper then looks at the way in which fiscal sustainability has been assessed in different types of IMF work. Finally the link between fiscal and external sustainability is discussed.
April 1, 2000
How Accurate Are Private Sector Forecasts: Cross-Country Evidence From Consensus Forecasts of Output Growth
Description: This paper evaluates the performance of Consensus Forecasts of GDP growth for industrialized and developing countries from 1989 to 1998. The questions addressed are (1) How do forecast errors differ across industrialized and developing countries? (2) How well do forecasters predict recessions? (3) Are forecasts efficient and unbiased? (4) How does private sector performance compare with that of international organizations? (5) Is forecaster discord a reliable predictor of forecast accuracy? Two key results emerge. First, the record of failure to predict recessions is virtually unblemished. Second, there is high degree of similarity between private forecasts and those of international organizations.
April 1, 2000
Assessing Financial System Vulnerabilities
Description: Recent financial crises have highlighted the potentially significant macroeconomic costs of financial system instability, and the potential for the instability in the financial system of one country to have broader implications for the stability of financial systems and macroeconomic performance in other countries. This paper reviews the different analytical approaches to assessing vulnerabilities in the financial systems and the benefits and limitations of the different approaches, and suggests enhancements that could help strengthen financial system stability assessments.
April 1, 2000
A Simple Model of An International Lender of Last Resort
Description: This paper develops a simple model of an international lender of last resort (ILOLR). The world economy consists of many open economies, each with a banking system and a central bank operating under a pegged exchange rate regime. The fragility of the banking system and the limited ability of a domestic central bank to provide international liquidity together can cause currency and banking crises. An international interbank market can help an economy with the needed international liquidity, but with potential costs of international financial contagion. An ILOLR can play a useful role in providing international liquidity and reducing international contagion.
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