In the 1990s macroeconomic policies improved in a majority of developing countries, but the growth dividend from such improvement fell short of expectations, and a policy agenda focused on stability turned out to be associated with a multiplicity of financial crises. The authors take a...

This paper addresses the adequacy of post-reform growth in Latin America in the 1990s on the basis of international comparison and other relevant standards. It analytically explores and empirically tests a number of hypotheses to explain the perceived dissatisfaction with growth performance.

In the context of the continuing debate on Fund conditionality, many researchers both inside and outside the Fund have attempted to estimate the effects of Fund programs through the use of multicountry samples. A key challenge in such work is to estimate the counterfactual--that is, what would...

The transmission mechanism through which monetary policy affects real output and the price level depends on the structural and institutional characteristics of individual economies. For many developing countries, relevant characteristics probably include deficient access by the private sector to...

The fundamental equation of the monetary approach to the balance of payments expresses the flow of foreign exchange reserves as the difference between the flow demand for money and the flow supply of domestic credit. Because this relation is a balance-sheet identity, it should be satisfied by...

Short-run fluctuations in the growth of real output are an important concern of policymakers in developing countries. And yet, in spite of the considerable amount of attention that this subject has received in the context of industrial countries during the past fifty years, surprisingly little...

It has been argued by some observers that the monetary approach to the balance of payments was tested and found wanting in several prominent stabilization programs undertaken during the late 1970s. The short-run failure of domestic prices and interest rates to converge to those prevailing...

The analysis of stabilization policies in developing countries was greatly enhanced by the development of the monetary approach to the balance of payments. Many theoretical expositions of the monetary approach, however, employ "global monetarist" structural models that are designed to explain...