Using annual data for Colombia over the last thirty years and a new battery of econometric techniques, we test opposing theories that explain macroeconomic fluctuations: The neoclassical synthesis, which posits that, in the presence of temporary price rigidity, an unanticipated monetary...

Even after one of the most severe multi-year crises on record in the advanced economies, the received wisdom in policy circles clings to the notion that high-income countries are completely different from their emerging market counterparts. The current phase of the official policy approach is...

During the past two years Latin America has received sizable international capital inflows. This paper compares the recent experience with that of the late 1970s. The analysis examines differences and similarities between the two episodes in three broad areas: domestic macroeconomic conditions...

Devaluation is an integral part of adjustment in many developing countries, particularly relied upon by countries facing large external imbalances. A devaluation can only reduce trade imbalances if it translates to a real devaluation and if trade flows respond to relative prices in a significant...

The role of the international commodity market in transmitting disturbances is considered in a model that incorporates commodities as an input in production. The analysis employs a three-country framework: a liquidity-constrained commodity supplier and two industrial countries that import the...

Africa lags behind other regions in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). In some circumstances, there are obvious explanations for the absence of FDI, such as a high incidence of war. In this paper, we examine the role that monetary and exchange rate policy may have played in explaining...

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and...

This paper evaluates the importance of auction format on bidding behavior and seller revenue, focusing on differences in performance under uniform-price and discriminatory-price formats. The analysis is based on a standard benchmark model from which empirically-testable hypotheses are derived on...

Traditional specifications of money demand have been commonly plagued by persistent overprediction, implausible parameter estimates, and highly autocorrelated errors. This paper argues that some of those problems stem from the failure to account for the impact of financial innovation. We...

The “traditional structural approach” to the determination of real commodity prices has relied exclusively on demand factors as the fundamentals that explain the behavior of commodity prices. This framework, however, has been unable to explain the marked and sustained weakness in commodity...