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Optimal management of the public debt is explored in a context where economic policy is continuously revised because, when the public debt is non—indexed, policy—makers are tempted to use inflation in order to reduce the real value of the public debt. The model’s implications are explored following two approaches. First, the effects of various exogenous disturbances are examined by means of numerical simulations. Secondly, the analysis explores—for Italy, Ireland, and the United States—if the model’s implications concerning the maturity structure of government debt are consistent with actual experience.
The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and national and international economic developments.
This study discusses the evolution of domestic public debt in several indebted countries and its relationship with their external debt and underlying fiscal developments. It examines the links between domestic and external debt, taxes, subsidies, and government spending, and reviews strategies for managing domestic public debt.
A brief survey of the literature on speculative attacks is provided. The nature and causes of balance-of-payments crises, the implications for the behavior of the current account and the real exchange rate are discussed. Also, potential areas for future research on balance-of-payments crises are suggested.
This paper examines the relationship between the degree of wage indexation chosen by private agents and the degree of indexation of the public debt. It is shown that the government is likely to respond to an increase in the degree of wage indexation by increasing the portion of the public debt that is indexed. By contrast, the effect of an increase in public debt indexation on the degree of wage indexation is ambiguous. In equilibrium, depending on the sources of shocks to the economy, the degree of wage indexation may be positively or negatively related to that of debt indexation. This relationship is analyzed both in situations where the policymakers are able to precommit policies and in those where precommitment is not possible.
In exchange rate-based stabilization programs, credibility often follows a distinct time pattern. At first it rises as the highly visible nominal anchor provides a sense of stability and hopes run high for a permanent solution to the fiscal problems. Later, as the domestic currency appreciates in real terms and the fiscal problems are not fully resolved, the credibility of the program falls, sometimes precipitously. This paper develops a political-economy model that focuses on the evolution of credibility over time, and is consistent with the pattern just described. Inflation inertia and costly budget negotiations play a key role in the model.
This paper examines the empirical relationship between long–run growth and the degree of financial development, proxied by the ratio of bank credit to the private sector as a fraction of GDP. We find that this proxy enters significantly and with a positive sign in growth regressions on a large cross–country sample, but with a negative sign using panel data for Latin America. Our findings suggest that the main channel of transmission from financial development to growth is the efficiency of investment, rather than its volume. We also present a model where the negative correlation between financial intermediation and growth results from financial liberalization in a poor regulatory environment.
This paper builds a multiperiod, general equilibrium framework for analyzing the macroeconomic effects of financial reforms in developing countries and the costs of maintaining official safety nets under the financial system during such reforms. While a financial liberalization yields efficiency gains, adverse macroeconomic effects can arise if the creditworthiness of the nonfinancial sector is weak. In this situation, financial liberalization may also increase the authorities’ expected deposit insurance funding obligations even with strong prudential supervision. Moreover, given the distortions in a repressed financial system, an increase in the required bank capital-asset ratio may increase the funding obligations associated with deposit insurance, particularly when the debt-servicing capacity of nonfinancial firms is low.
We contribute to the intense debate on the real effects of fiscal stimuli by showing that the impact of government expenditure shocks depends crucially on key country characteristics, such as the level of development, exchange rate regime, openness to trade, and public indebtedness. Based on a novel quarterly dataset of government expenditure in 44 countries, we find that (i) the output effect of an increase in government consumption is larger in industrial than in developing countries, (ii) the fisscal multiplier is relatively large in economies operating under predetermined exchange rate but zero in economies operating under flexible exchange rates; (iii) fiscal multipliers in open economies are lower than in closed economies and (iv) fiscal multipliers in high-debt countries are also zero.