Working Papers
January 1, 0001
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January 1, 0001
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1997
November 1, 1997
Prices in the Transition: Ten Stylized Facts
Description: The overall price level increased sharply in transition countries once prices were freed. Disinflation has most frequently been gradual, with prices continuing to rise rapidly in subsequent years. This paper identifies the well-known and lesser-known features of inflationary processes in central and eastern Europe, the Baltics, Russia, and other countries of the former Soviet Union on the basis of a sample of 26 countries and observations spanning the first five to seven years of transition.
November 1, 1997
The CFA Franc Zone and the EMU
Description: Whether the prospective shift of the peg of the CFA franc to the euro would constitute an exchange rate arrangement with EMU countries would depend critically on the interpretation of the free convertibility of the CFA franc guaranteed by France. Nonetheless, this shift is likely to leave the CFA franc arrangements and operating features of the zone essentially unchanged. The current parity of the CFA franc could be considered in line with fundamentals. The potential economic consequences for the CFA franc countries could be positive over the long term, but there is a risk of a weakening of external competitiveness.
November 1, 1997
Decentralization and Macroeconomic Management
Description: The literature on fiscal federalism has amply discussed both the potential efficiency and welfare gains from decentralization and the potential trade-offs between decentralization and income redistribution. By contrast, it has generally put less emphasis on the effects of decentralization on macroeconomic management, although policymakers worldwide increasingly have to grapple with these effects. This paper examines the constraints that a high degree of decentralization can place on the ability of the central government to carry out its traditional macroeconomic management functions and explores various ways to minimize these constraints.
November 1, 1997
Wholesale Payments and Financial Discipline, Efficiency, and Liquidity
Description: Properly designed wholesale payments system can make a significant contribution to enhancing market discipline in the financial sector, reducing the risk of systemic disturbance and permitting a less extensive safety net for financial institutions. The objective of these reforms has been to achieve a reduction of the credit risk associated with the growth in intraday credit exposures that arises in net settlement systems and in real-time gross systems when the central bank provides daylight overdrafts. Intraday payments-related credit in net settlement systems has been reduced by restructuring payment systems into real-time gross settlement systems with collateralized overdrafts, while in the existing real-time gross settlement systems, the risk-abatement program currently in effect has taken the form of caps and charges on uncollateralized daylight credit.
November 1, 1997
How Macroeconomic Factors Affect Income Distribution: The Cross-Country Evidence
Description: This study develops a cross-section empirical framework to examine the relationship between the macroeconomic environment and trends in income distribution. The macroeconomic variables that are found to be associated with an improvement in income distribution are higher growth rate, higher income level, higher investment rate, real depreciation (especially for low-income countries), and improvement in terms of trade. The estimated significant effects of growth, income, and investment provide evidence that policies designed to promote investment and growth are likely also to contribute to an improvement in income distribution.
November 1, 1997
Cooperation, Emergence of the Economic Agency Role of Government, and Governance
Description: This paper focuses on the emergence of the economic agency role of government and its relationship with cooperation and economic management. It distinguishes emergence under war, domination or capitulation, perfect cooperation, and strategic bargaining. Good governance is a consequence of constraints designed by principals with the incentive and ability to do so. The incentives are related inversely to the expected relative frequency of controlling government and directly to the expected relative share of costs of poor agency. The ability is directly related to bargaining power in determining the agency role. There are implications for the evolution of cooperation in the society and for macroeconomic performance.
November 1, 1997
Competitiveness in Transition Economies: What Scope for Real Appreciation?
Description: This paper estimates equilibrium dollar wages for 15 transition economies. Equilibrium dollar wages are interpreted as full employment wages consistent with a country’s physical and human capital endowment, and estimated by regressing actual dollar wages on productivity and human capital proxies in a short (1990-95) panel of 85 countries. The main results are: (i) equilibrium dollar wages have appreciated steadily in the Baltic countries and fast-reforming Central and Eastern European (CEE) transition economies, but have been flat in most CIS countries; and (ii) 1996 actual dollar wages remain below estimated equilibrium dollar wages for most but not all transition countries covered.
Notes: Also published in Staff Papers, Vol. 45, No. 2, June 1998.
November 1, 1997
Policy Reform, Adjustment Costs, and Investment: With Activity of Local Investors as a Signal
Description: Adjustment assistance is provided to local investors responding to policy reform and facing adjustment costs, to facilitate their activity–a signal to foreign investors about the profitability of investing in the local economy. The government, in providing assistance, maximizes its utility subject to its budgetary constraint, taking into account the utility forgone in alternative uses of budgetary funds. Foreign investors use the signal to update beliefs about investors in the local economy and compute the expected return from investing in the country. The investment response of foreign investors depends on the expected return so computed relative to the expected returns in their alternative investments worldwide.