Working Papers
1992
May 1, 1992
A Theory of Optimum Currency Areas: Revisited
Description: Starting with Friedman and Mundell the academic literature has conducted a high level debate concerning the design of cross-country monetary arrangements. That debate has become very complex and the data requirements necessary for appropriate application of the principles developed are far beyond the means of the very nations for which the principles might be valuable. In this paper we return to the simplicity of the early arguments and formalize them in a way that may be helpful for currency area decisions where little is known about economic structure.
May 1, 1992
Anticipated Exchange Rate Reforms
Description: Exchange rate reforms in developing countries have often aimed at floating the exchange rate in an attempt to unify the official and parallel markets for foreign exchange. This paper examines the anticipatory dynamics associated with such reforms. The analysis shows that if the future unified exchange rate is more depreciated than the prevailing official rate, a pre - announced reform will lead to a depreciation of the parallel rate upon announcement and, during the transition period, a rising premium, an increase in the rate of reserve losses, and possibly to an output contraction and an appreciation of the real exchange rate.
Notes: Also published in Staff Papers, Vol. 39, No. 4, December 1992.
May 1, 1992
A Framework for the Analysis of Financial Reforms and the Cost of official Safety Nets
Description: This paper builds a multiperiod, general equilibrium framework for analyzing the macroeconomic effects of financial reforms in developing countries and the costs of maintaining official safety nets under the financial system during such reforms. While a financial liberalization yields efficiency gains, adverse macroeconomic effects can arise if the creditworthiness of the nonfinancial sector is weak. In this situation, financial liberalization may also increase the authorities’ expected deposit insurance funding obligations even with strong prudential supervision. Moreover, given the distortions in a repressed financial system, an increase in the required bank capital-asset ratio may increase the funding obligations associated with deposit insurance, particularly when the debt-servicing capacity of nonfinancial firms is low.
May 1, 1992
Stabilization and Reform in Eastern Europe: A Preliminary Evaluation
Description: The paper analyzes common issues emerging from the recent experience with Fund-supported programs in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania. These comprise the initial price-overshooting and the output collapse, fiscal sustainability as well as the financial and structural problems associated with bad loan portfolios and sluggish implementation of privatization programs. Substantial success, in varying degrees, has been achieved in the initial macro-stabilization and opening-up effort. At the same time mounting difficulties with fiscal and monetary control may be emerging, as a result of social and political pressures and insufficiently clear policy signals on the micro-issues involving the sharp structural transformation of the productive and financial systems.
Notes: Also published in Staff Papers, Vol. 39, No. 4, December 1992.
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1992
April 1, 1992
Financial Markets and Public Finance in the Transformation Process
Description: The paper surveys the role of financial markets and fiscal institutions in the transformation process going on in Eastern and Central Europe. It highlights (a) the need to create some sort of “social ecological balance” necessary for the working of a modern market economy; (b) the need to develop appropriate financial institutions that can mobilize savings and allocate them efficiently; and (c) the major reforms necessary in the fiscal area. It also calls attention to the extent to which monetary and fiscal policies overlap in these countries and the implications of that overlapping.
April 1, 1992
Tariffs, Optimal Taxes, and Collection Costs
Description: This paper studies an optimal tax problem for a small open economy where collecting taxes is costly. It is shown that, in the presence of collection costs modeled as an increasing function of the tax rate: (a) the standard rules of optimal commodity taxation (the Ramsey, the inverse elasticity, the Corlett-Hague rules) may no longer be valid; (b) tariffs may replace domestic taxes as a second-best revenue-raising device; and (c) the optimal tariff/tax structure may be uniform rather than differentiated.
April 1, 1992
An Analysis of the Process of Capital Liberalization in Italy
Description: Beginning in 1985 Italy embarked on a path of progressive removal of its system of controls on portfolio investment, a process formally completed with the abolition of all remaining restrictions in 1990. In this paper we review this policy of capital liberalization and integrate the analysis with an examination of the process of stabilization of the lira exchange rate in the 1980s. Various indicators of capital controls’ effectiveness and target zone credibility are used to identify the temporal relations among capital liberalization, exchange rate stabilization and capital flows.