This paper reviews Romania's experience with interenterprise arrears during 1991 with the purpose of extracting lessons that might prove useful for other economies in transition to market-based systems. The rapid growth of interenterprise arrears poses a serious policy problem in many of the...

The paper addresses the interaction between exchange rate appreciation and increased protection, specifically nontariff trade barriers, in terms of a two-stage process. In the first stage, an appreciating real exchange rate leads to increases in import penetration beyond what would typically...

There is surprisingly little empirical research on whether Balassa-Samuelson effects can explain the long-run behavior of real exchange rates in developing countries. This paper presents new evidence on this issue based on a panel-data sample of 16 developing countries. The paper finds that the...

There is surprisingly little empirical research on whether Balassa-Samuelson effects can explain the long-run behavior of real exchange rates in developing countries. This paper presents new evidence on this issue based on a panel-data sample of 16 developing countries. The paper finds that the...

The conventional growth-accounting approach to estimating the sources of economic growth requires unrealistically strong assumptions about either competitiveness of factor markets or the form of the underlying aggregate production function. This paper outlines a new approach utilizing...

The conventional growth-accounting approach to estimating the sources of economic growth requires unrealistically strong assumptions about either competitiveness of factor markets or the form of the underlying aggregate production function. This paper outlines a new approach utilizing...

Staff Papers has, since its inception in 1950, been an important vehicle for the dissemination of research done by staff of the IMF. The paper discusses three areas in which articles published in Staff Papers up until the 1970s made major contributions to the literature in international...

There is general puzzlement in both academic and policymaking circles about the supposed failure of the liberalization experiments that were undertaken in the mid- to late 1970s by some developing countries, particularly those located in the Southern Cone of Latin America (Argentina, Chile, and...

The behavior of private investment in developing countries has obvious implications, both for long-term development and for the design of shorter-term stabilization programs. What determines the rate of private investment and how this rate responds to changes in government policies are questions...