This study examines the macroeconomic determinants of survey inflation expectations in Brazil since the adoption of inflation targeting in 1999. The results suggest that the inflation targeting framework has helped anchor expectations, with the dispersion of inflation expectations declining...

This paper surveys the literature on sovereign debt that deals with the issues of a country’s ability-to-pay, its willingness-to-pay, and the policy responses to the debt crisis of the 1980s. The existence of an ability-to-pay problem suggests a need for debt reduction, but plans for debt...

The transparency of monetary policy in South Africa has increased substantially since the end of the 1990s; but little empirical work has been done to examine the economic benefits of the increased transparency. This paper shows that, in recent years, South African private sector forecasters...

This paper measures the extent to which South African economic growth is an engine of growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Results based on panel data estimation for 47 African countries over four decades suggest that South African growth has a substantial positive impact on growth in the rest of...

This paper provides an overview of recent Chinese reforms to introduce a modern system of fiscal federalism that balances the need for central macroeconomic control with the economic advantages of decentralized government. Following a discussion of the rationale for decentralization, the paper...

This paper quantifies the economic impact of changes in U.S. monetary policy on emerging market countries. We explore empirically how country risk, as proxied by sovereign bond spreads, is influenced by U.S. monetary policy, country-specific fundamentals, and conditions in global capital...

This paper provides estimates of potential output growth in post-apartheid South Africa using both time trend techniques and a production function approach which indicates a potential growth rate of around 3 percent. The implied output gap provides statistically significant information for...

This paper empirically examines the extent to which a country''s economic growth is influenced by its trading partner economies. Panel estimation results based on four decades of data for over 100 countries show that trading partners'' growth and relative income levels have a strong effect on...

This paper assesses Brazil''s growth performance from a long-term perspective, using crosscountry and panel estimation techniques, building on the vast empirical literature on growth. The empirical evidence presented in this paper confirms that macroeconomic stability and several reforms have...

By the end of 2007, Chile''s total factor productivity was lower than ten years earlier, a performance that contrasted sharply with the previous decade, when productivity grew by a cumulative 30 percent. This paper assesses productivity trends in Chile, by decomposing productivity into...