Research work by the IMF’s staff on the effectiveness of the country programs the organization supports, which has long been carried out, has intensified in recent years. IMF analysts have sought to “open up the black box” by more closely examining program design and implementation, as...

Are structural reforms growth enhancing? Is the effectiveness of reforms constrained by a country's distance from the technology frontier or by its institutional environment? This paper takes a new and comprehensive look at these questions by employing a novel dataset that includes several kinds...

Many inflation stabilizations succeed only temporarily. Using a sample of 51 episodes of stabilization from inflation levels above 40 percent, we show that most of the failures are explained by bad luck, unfavorable initial conditions, and inadequate political institutions. The evolution of...

This paper investigates how changes in trade linkages between China, Latin America, and the rest of the world have altered the transmission of international business cycles to Latin America. Evidence based on a GVAR model for five large Latin American economies shows that the long-term impact of...