Working Papers
1996
March 1, 1996
The 1987 Mexican Disinflation Program: An Exchange-Rate-Based Stabilization?
Description: We examine whether Mexico’s disinflation experience during 1987-94 fits a widely accepted set of stylized facts of exchange rate-based stabilization (ERBS), and relate it to theories put forward to account for the boom-recession business cycle associated with ERBS. A cursory look at Mexican data shows that the experience fits quite closely the theoretical predictions and the stylized facts of ERBS. However, the paper shows that there were some important differences and peculiarities of the Mexican case that deserve further study, especially regarding the role of the nominal anchor and the nature of the business cycle.
March 1, 1996
Financial Development and Economic Growth: An Economic Analysis for Singapore
Description: With the emergence of the rapidly expanding literature on endogenous growth, the relationship between financial development and economic growth has received a new source of inspiration. Recent cointegration techniques that focus on the estimation and the identification of long-run economic relationship(s) between data variables are particularly appropriate to the study of long run endogenous growth models. This paper has applied these techniques to the Singapore data using a supply-side framework. By and large, the econometric analysis in this paper has yielded results that are in line with predictions of endogenous growth models. In particular, we find that financial development positively affects both transitional and long-run growth in Singapore.
March 1, 1996
Economic Transformation and Income Distribution: Some Evidence From the Baltic Countries
Description: A transition from a centrally planned to a market economy implies a massive reallocation of resources requiring realignments in relative prices, which may have important distributional effects. This paper examines the extent to which income differentials have changed in countries where bold reforms have been introduced. Discussing the experience in the Baltic states, it finds that—largely due to a significant increase in the dispersion of earnings—recorded income differentials in these countries have widened markedly and that the redistributive effects of social assistance and tax policies have been only marginal.
Notes: Also published in Staff Papers, Vol. 43, No. 3, September 1996.
0001
January 1, 0001
$name
January 1, 0001
$name
January 1, 0001
$name
January 1, 0001
$name
January 1, 0001
$name
1996
February 1, 1996
Employment Protection, International Specialization, and innovation
Description: We develop a model to analyze the implications of firing costs on incentives for R & D and international specialization. The key idea is that, to avoid paying firing costs, the country with a rigid labor market will tend to produce relatively secure goods, at a late stage of their product life cycle. Under international trade, an international product cycle emerges where, roughly, new goods are first produced in the low firing cost country and then move to the high firing cost country. We show that in the closed economy, an increase in firing costs does not necessarily imply a reduction in R & D; it crucially depends on the riskiness of R & D activity relative to production activity. In the open economy, however, an increase in firing cost is much more likely to reduce R & D intensity.
February 1, 1996
Private Bond Restructurings: Lessons for the Case of Sovereign Debtors
Description: This paper reviews recent experience with both sovereign and private bond restructurings. It also summarizes the literature on private bond restructurings and describes the “typical” process for a voluntary exchange of new bonds for existing obligations. From this information some conclusions are drawn as to the possibility of concluding voluntary restructuring agreements for sovereign bonds within relatively short periods of time.