Tax or debt financing of a given rate of government expenditures would, according to the well-known Ricardian equivalence proposition, have equivalent effects on aggregate demand. Among the sources of a deviation from equivalence is the possibility that the government and the private sector have...

A small macroeconomic model based on familiar theoretical considerations is developed and estimated using data from 31 developing countries. Efficient estimation techniques are used to control for country heterogeneity under the assumption of rational expectations. The estimates and the test...

An endogenous growth model with heterogeneous agents is analyzed to show that “human capital flight” or “brain drain” can lead to a permanent reduction in income and growth of the country of emigration relative to the country of immigration. Convergence between the two is therefore...

Pakistan has experienced high fiscal deficits for over two decades. The accumulation of debt over this period implies that a substantial adjustment will be required to attain a sustainable fiscal position over the medium term. By simulating an estimated macroeconomic model for Pakistan, this...

This paper addresses the adequacy of post-reform growth in Latin America in the 1990s on the basis of international comparisons as well as historical and other relevant standards. The paper analytically explores and empirically tests a number of hypotheses to explain the perceived...

This paper addresses the adequacy of post-reform growth in Latin America in the 1990s on the basis of international comparisons as well as historical and other relevant standards. The paper analytically explores and empirically tests a number of hypotheses to explain the perceived...

In the context of the continuing debate on Fund conditionality, many researchers both inside and outside the Fund have attempted to estimate the effects of Fund programs through the use of multicountry samples. A key challenge in such work is to estimate the counterfactual--that is, what would...

The transmission mechanism through which monetary policy affects real output and the price level depends on the structural and institutional characteristics of individual economies. For many developing countries, relevant characteristics probably include deficient access by the private sector to...

The fundamental equation of the monetary approach to the balance of payments expresses the flow of foreign exchange reserves as the difference between the flow demand for money and the flow supply of domestic credit. Because this relation is a balance-sheet identity, it should be satisfied by...

Short-run fluctuations in the growth of real output are an important concern of policymakers in developing countries. And yet, in spite of the considerable amount of attention that this subject has received in the context of industrial countries during the past fifty years, surprisingly little...