Which structural reforms affect the speed the regional convergence within a country? We found that domestic financial development, trade/current account openness, better institutional infrastructure, and selected labor market reforms facilitate regional convergence. However, these reforms have...

The current crisis calls for two main sets of policy measures. First, measures to repair the financial system. Second, measures to increase demand and restore confidence. While some of these measures overlap, the focus of this note is on the second set of policies, and more specifically, given...

This volume examines the impact on economic performance of structural policies-policies that increase the role of market forces and competition in the economy, while maintaining appropriate regulatory frameworks. The results reflect a new dataset covering reforms of domestic product markets,...

The third stage of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was implemented in January 1999 against the specter of persistently high unemployment in many of the participating countries. While the high European unemployment has received considerable attention, this new IMF staff study analyzes...

Do foreign-educated individuals play a role in promoting democracy in their home countries? Despite the large amount of private and public resources spent on foreign education, there is no systematic evidence that foreign-educated individuals foster democracy in their home countries. Using a...

This paper evaluates the performance of fiscal policy in Russia since the 1998 crisis along several dimensions, using a variety of indicators. Russia has progressed tremendously in recent years on public debt sustainability, largely thanks to the fact that the real interest rates on public debt...

After the large exchange rate depreciations following the 1997 East Asian crisis, export volumes from East Asian countries responded with a notable lag. Two main explanations for this lag have been proposed: that the policy of high interest rates limited access to domestic credit and hence...

In a large panel of countries, we find that less liquid countries are more likely to default on their external debt. Specifically, for given total external debt, the probability of a crisis increases with the proportion of short-term debt and debt service coming due and decreases with foreign...