The Fifteenth Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attracted worldwide attention by announcing its adoption of "controlling big while releasing the small strategy in reforming its 354,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs), 240,000 of which are small-sized SOEs. A shareholding system...

Because of the stringent nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions legislation for heavy-duty diesel engines, the SCR (selective catalytic reduction) has been investigated by many researchers. The objective of these studies is to investigate the reasons why the temperature downstream of the SCR catalyst...

This Occasional Paper provides an overview of the main challenges facing Hong Kong SAR as it continues to become more closely integrated with the mainland of China. Section I provides an overview of recent macroeconomic developments and the main policy issues in Hong Kong SAR. Section II...

This paper investigates the relationship between the nominal exchange rate regime and the volatility of relative commodity prices. The analysis shows that the relationship depends upon both the market structure and the economic agent’s perception about future exchange rate movements. When the...

A recent study by Grilli and Kaminsky (1991) argues that real exchange rate (RER) behavior is likely to be dependent on the particular historical period rather than on the nominal exchange rate arrangement itself. This paper reexamines RER behavior using alternative data sets, as well as...

In most African economies, both agricultural production and the terms- of-trade are highly uncertain. This paper re-examines the implications of such uncertainty for the optimal mix of production and trade under alternative assumptions about international capital flows. The ultimate objective is...

This paper reviews and draws lessons from the stabilization and reform program that Korea implemented in response to the 1997-98 crisis. The economy recovered quickly from the deep recession in 1998 and its vulnerability to a balance of payments crisis has been reduced sharply. Significant...

This paper examines the persistence of shocks to world commodity prices, using monthly IMF data on primary commodities between 1957-98. We find that shocks to commodity prices are typically long-lasting and the variability of the persistence of price shocks is quite wide. The paper also...