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A Case of Successful Adjustment
This paper was prepared by Bijan B. Aghevli, Division Chief in the international Monetary Fund's Asian Department, and Jorge Marquez-Ruarte, Senior Economist in the Asian Department. In preparing the paper, the authors have relied extensively on the analysis and information provided by the Korean authorities as well as on the work of the Fund staff on Korea during the period under study.
A Case of Successful Adjustment
This paper was prepared by Bijan B. Aghevli, Division Chief in the international Monetary Fund's Asian Department, and Jorge Marquez-Ruarte, Senior Economist in the Asian Department. In preparing the paper, the authors have relied extensively on the analysis and information provided by the Korean authorities as well as on the work of the Fund staff on Korea during the period under study.
Disinflation in Transition Economies
In light of the persistence of moderate inflation in many transition economies, this paper analyzes whether inflation resulted from insufficiently tight financial policies and wage pressures or from the protracted adjustment of relative prices. Using a new database for 21 countries, the effect of relative price variability on inflation is estimated within a framework controlling for nominal and real shocks. Money and wage growth were the most important determinants of inflation; relative price variability had a sizable effect at high inflation during initial liberalization and a small effect at moderate inflation. Cost recovery may contribute to variability, particularly in the advanced stages of the transition.
Are Prices Countercyclical? Evidence From the G-7
This paper re-examines the cyclical behavior of prices using postwar quarterly data for the G-7. We confirm recent evidence that the price level is countercyclical. However, we find strong evidence that the inflation rate is procyclical in our sample. Our results show the importance of making a clear distinction between inflation and the cyclical component of the price level when reporting and interpreting stylized facts regarding business cycles.
Strengthening the International Monetary System
This report comprises three papers written by staff members of the Fund's Research Department on issues arising out of the reports on the international monetary system prepared in 1985 by the Group of Ten (representing the industrial countries participating in the General Arrangements to Borrow) and the intergovernmental Group of Twenty-Four on International Monetary Affairs. These two reports, which appear as appendices to this volume, were transmitted to the Interim Committee of the Fund's Board of Governors and were subsequently discussed by the Fund's Executive Board in early 1986.
External Borrowing in the Baltics, Russia, and Other States of the Former Soviet Union
The external debt of many countries of the Baltics, Russia, and the former Soviet Union has been growing rapidly in recent years and has played an important part in the transition process. However, it is vital to strike a balance between financing transition and ensuring that the external debt is not used to finance wasteful expenditures or delay the transition process. This is especially important since the rising stock of external debt makes the borrowing countries increasingly vulnerable to changes in perceived creditworthiness. Accordingly, countries must adopt policies, including pressing ahead with structural reforms, to ensure that the borrowing is used to promote sound growth.
Towards a Market Economy
This paper proposes an operational interpretation of the concept of economic governance. It argues that the capacity of governments to credibly ensure a secure economic environment provides an important benchmark against which governance can be evaluated. Such an environment—which is essential for sustained growth in a market economy—can be established through a rules–based system which ensures freedom of entry into the market, access to information, and sanctity of contracts. Since creating a secure economic environment involves profound, far–reaching social change, it has historically been a complex and lengthy process in most societies. However, basing policy prescriptions on this benchmark helps avoid possible conflicts between different social and moral values.
Changes in the Relationship Between the Long-Term Interest Rate and its Determinants
This paper assesses the relative importance of alternative explanations for the rise in long-term interest rates in the United States from October 1993 to April 1994. Standard econometric models of the term structure are shown to have a structural break in the early 1980s. An important reason for this change in the traditional term structure relationship appears to be an increase in the responsiveness of long-term rates to changes in the stance of monetary policy. Augmented term structure models that explicitly incorporate the role of monetary policy in determining the level of long-term rates are then constructed. These models track variations in the long-term rate better than traditional term structure models, but still leave a significant fraction of the recent increase in long-term rates unexplained.
The Relation Between Skill Levels and the Cyclical Variability of Employment, Hours, and Wages
This paper uses micro panel data to examine differences in the cyclical variability of employment, hours, and real wages for skilled and unskilled workers. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that, at the aggregate level, skilled and unskilled workers are subject to essentially the same degree of cyclical variation in wages. However, important differences emerge in the patterns of employment and hours variation for skilled versus unskilled workers, especially when a college degree is used as a proxy for skills. We find that the quality of labor input per manhour tends to rise in recessions, thereby inducing a countercyclical bias in aggregate measures of the real wage. We also find substantial differences across industries in the cyclical variation of employment, hours, and wage differentials, which we interpret as indicative of important inter-industry differences in labor contracting.
Are Prices Countercyclical?
This paper examines the comovement of prices with the cyclical component of output. It argues that determining the cyclical behavior of prices by applying the same stationarity-inducing transformation to the levels of both output and prices, and examining the correlations of the resulting series, can be misleading. A more appropriate procedure is to examine the correlations between the rate of inflation and the level of the cyclical component of output. In post-war U.S. data the correlations between similarly transformed price and output data are consistently and often strongly negative, as reported recently by a number of authors as evidence of countercyclical price behavior. The rate of inflation, however, is consistently and usually strongly positively correlated with various measures of the cyclical component of output.
