A model of adjustment and growth: An empirical analysis

the simplicity that makes a model more tractable from an operational standpoint may have several drawbacks as a result of the necessarily restrictive assumptions it employs. This paper assesses the empirically the trade-off between its simplifying assumptions and its ability to fit reality. This trade-off can be assessed by applying the model to a variety of countries. For each country, the following questions are asked: (1) Are the key parameters of the model stable? (2) How sensitive are the policy multipliers to these parameter estimates-that is, how robust are the policy implications? and (3) Are some target variables more vulnerable to forecast errors than others? This paper examines these three questions for a diverse sample of seven capital importing developing countries and attempts to reach some conclusions about the usefulness of the model to help in designing policy.