The effects and determinants of capital controls are studied using panel data for 61 countries. Capital controls are more likely in countries with lower income, a large government, and a central bank with limited independence. Other determinants of controls include the exchange rate regime,...

The CMEA countries are starting to conduct their trade at world prices and in convertible currencies. These are crucial steps in economic reform but will worsen Eastern Europe's terms of trade and drive it into current account deficit with the U.S.S.R. Proposals have been made for a payments...

The focus of this analysis is on the output costs of disinflation. A model of inflation with both forward and backward elements seems to characterize reality. Such an inflation model is estimated using data for industrial countries, and the output costs of a disinflation path are calculated,...

Staff Papers has, since its inception in 1950, been an important vehicle for the dissemination of research done by staff of the IMF. The paper discusses three areas in which articles published in Staff Papers up until the 1970s made major contributions to the literature in international...

International policy coordination is generally considered to be made less likely--and less profitable--by uncertainty about how the economy works. This paper offers a counter example, in which investors' increased uncertainty about portfolio preference makes coordination more beneficial. Without...

The pros and cons of institutionalized constraints limiting the freedom of national budgetary policies within an economic and monetary union in Europe are reviewed. The issue is approached from three angles: the influence of EMU on budget discipline, intergenerational equity and intertemporal...

Expansionary fiscal policies in the United States in the early 1980s and contemporaneous fiscal restraint in the Federal Republic of Germany and Japan constituted important shifts in fiscal positions among industrial economies. The international economy was simultaneously characterized by...