Working Papers
1998
May 1, 1998
Exchange Rates and Economic Fundamentals: A Methodological Comparison of BEERs and FEERs
Description: This paper compares two approaches for examining the extent to which a country’s actual real effective exchange rate is consistent with economic fundamentals: the FEER approach, which involves calculating the real exchange rate that equates the current account at full employment with sustainable net capital flows, and the BEER approach, which uses econometric methods to establish a behavioral link between the real rate and relevant economic variables. An exchange rate model is estimated for the G-3 currencies to provide illustrative comparisons of BEERs and FEERs.
0001
January 1, 0001
$name
January 1, 0001
$name
January 1, 0001
$name
January 1, 0001
$name
January 1, 0001
$name
1998
April 1, 1998
Growth, Trade, and Deindustrialization
Description: This paper shows that deindustrialization is explained primarily by trends internal to the advanced economies. These include the combined effects on manufacturing employment of a relatively faster growth of productivity in manufacturing, the associated relative price changes, and shifts in the structure of demand between manufactures and services. North-South trade explains less than one fifth of deindustrialization in the advanced economies. Moreover, the contribution of North-South trade to deindustrialization has been mainly through its effects in stimulating labor productivity in Northern manufacturing. It has had little enduring effect on total manufacturing output in the advanced economies.
Notes: Also published in Staff Papers, Vol. 46, No. 1, March 1999.
April 1, 1998
Public Sector Efficiency and Fiscal Austerity
Description: This paper uses a simple model to analyze the forces that determine the size of the public sector and the quality of workers employed in that sector. Workers are heterogeneous, and the public sector chooses an employment strategy that maximizes a social welfare function U(s, Y) that depends on the share of the labor force employed in public service s and private sector output Y. The government is fully informed about worker productivity. By examining the welfare properties of the possible outcomes, we are able to illuminate situations in which policies that seek to constrain the public sector may or may not improve economic efficiency.
April 1, 1998
Output Decline in Transition: The Case of Kazakhstan
Description: This paper presents a detailed analysis of the output decline in Kazakhstan in the early years of the transition. The decline is documented at the aggregate and sectoral levels, and the quality of the available data is reviewed. A growth accounting framework quantifies the productivity slowdown in Kazakhstan and illustrates how excessive capital accumulation under central planning has contributed to the output decline. In addition, strong evidence is found that disorganization and inherited sectoral misallocation have played a significant role. Credit contractions and reductions in aggregate demand may have had an effect, but clear patterns of causality cannot be established.
April 1, 1998
Economic Announcements and the Timing of Public Debt Auctions
Description: Most treasuries around the world sell their securities at auctions either directly or indirectly through an agent, usually the central bank. Although they can control both the rules and the timing of the auction, they may not be able to control the information and valuations of bidders. The purpose of this paper is to identify those economic indicators whose announcement is likely to have a significant impact on government securities prices and, hence, on bidders’ behavior at auctions of government securities. This information could be used to schedule treasury securities auctions so as to minimize public debt management costs.