This special issue brings together world-renowned experts to provide a systematic and critical analysis of the costs and benefits of financial globalization. Contributors include Kenneth Rogoff, Maurice Obstfeld, Dani Rodrik, and Frederic S. Mishkin

China’s growth performance since the start of economic reforms in 1978 has been impressive, but the gains have not been distributed equally across provinces. We use a nonparametric approach to analyze the variation in labor productivity growth across China’s provinces. This approach imposes...

Studies of the impact of trade openness on growth are based either on crosscountry analysis—which lacks transparency—or case studies—which lack statistical rigor. This paper applies a transparent econometric method drawn from the treatment evaluation literature (matching estimators) to...

This paper empirically evaluates four types of costs that may result from an international sovereign default: reputational costs, international trade exclusion costs, costs to the domestic economy through the financial system, and political costs to the authorities. It finds that the economic...

Do highly indebted countries suffer from a debt overhang? Can debt relief foster their growth rates? To answer these important questions, this article looks at how the debt-growth relation varies with indebtedness levels, as well as with the quality of policies and institutions, in a panel of...

This paper introduces a new database of financial reforms covering 91 economies over 1973-2005. It describes the content of the database, the information sources utilized, and the coding rules used to create an index of financial reform. It also compares the database with other measures of...

This paper presents views of Professor Robert Triffin on international liquidity and the role of the IMF. The paper is an exposition of Triffin's diagnosis of present and prospective difficulties in the international financial area and of his prescriptions for dealing with these difficulties. It...

This paper is an attempt to examine several theories about the dynamics of exchange rate adjustment. All the models start from the premise that exchange rates are determined by the balancing of supply and demand for each currency and that expectations play a prime role in determining demand. The...

This paper highlights various problems and policies related to latent inflation. Disappointment will undoubtedly be widespread if, after 10 years of inflation control, latent inflation is permitted to become active and there is a considerable rise in prices. It is not unlikely that some...

This paper focuses on various aspects of inflation in Latin America. Among short-run factors, World War II considerably affected the balance of payments of Latin American countries and thus indirectly their inflationary situation. Inflation in a greater or less degree has long been...