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On 23 September 2007, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was named the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In his speech on that day (as reported in Weisman, 2007), he summarized the challenges facing the IMF as ‘relevance and legitimacy’. Eighteen months later, the final communique of the Group of Twenty (G20) meeting of April 2009 (G20, 2009) voted to triple IMF lending capacity and authorized a substantial expansion in the stock of special drawing rights in circulation. By the end of 2010, the IMF had partnered with the European Union (EU) to design and administer financial relief packages for Greece and Ireland (IMF, 2011). The IMF went in short order from a supernumerary role to a central place on the world stage. What brought about this shift?

The book under review considers in some detail the role played by the British Library Research and Development Department (BLRDD) in pro moting and financing research in the library and information science field, over a 20 year period. The reviewer considers this particularly from the pub lic libraries perspective. Concludes that the brief of the book has generally been satisfied and the account of the BLRDD's activities is comprehensive. The book confirms the concern, felt by many commentators and practition ers for several years, that the need for research into public library issues has been neglected.

Participation in IMF programs has been an option that more and more developing countries have exercised in recent years. In this paper a detailed analysis of such participation over the period 1976–1986 provides a number of insights into the motivations for and the macroeconomic effects of such participation. Participation is driven by a combination of past performance, present external influences and sluggish adjustment of developing countries. The ability to predict which countries will participate in the IMF program is quite good, with nearly 90 percent of variation in such choices accounted for by the explanatory variables employed. Increased participation has as contemporaneous effects a reduction in economic growth and domestic investment and an improvement in the current account. Lagged effects of increased participation on economic growth and domestic investment are positive, and in most estimates quantitatively greater than the contemporaneous effects. There is also evidence of significantly lower public investment, an increased budget surplus and real depreciation of the exchange rate with increased participation. Results for domestic credit creation and government current expenditure, although they have a sign consistent with more austere policy, cannot be shown to be significantly different from those not participating.

Teaching Innovations in Economics presents findings from the Teaching Innovations Program (TIP) funded by the National Science Foundation. The six-year project engaged economics professors in the use of interactive teaching in undergraduate economics courses. Each chapter offers an insightful explanation of an innovative teaching strategy and provides a description and examples of its effective use in undergraduate economics courses. The book’s conclusion assesses the results from an evaluation of the program that reports detailed findings on how TIP fundamentals have contributed to faculty development and successful outcomes.

To categorize national medical expenditures into patient-centered categories.The 2007 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), a nationally representative annual survey of the civilian noninstitutionalized population.Descriptive statistics categorizing expenditures into seven patient-centered care categories: chronic conditions, acute illness, trauma/injury or poisoning, dental, pregnancy/birth-related, routine preventative health care, and other.MEPS cohort.Nearly half of expenditures were for chronic conditions. The remaining expenditures were as follows: acute illness (25 percent), trauma/poisoning (8 percent), dental (7 percent), routine preventative health care (6 percent), pregnancy/birth-related (4 percent), and other (3 percent). Hospital-based expenditures accounted for the majority for acute illness, trauma/injury, and pregnancy/birth and over a third for chronic conditions.This patient-centered viewpoint may complement other methods to examine health care expenditures and may better represent how patients interact with the health care system and expend resources.

LCOGT is currently building and deploying a world-wide network of at least twelve 1-meter and twenty-four 0.4-meter telescopes to as many as 4 sites in the Southern hemisphere (Chile, South Africa, Eastern Australia) and 4 in the Northern hemisphere (Hawaii, West Texas, Canary Islands). Our deployment and operations model emphasizes modularity and interchangeability of major components, maintenance and troubleshooting personnel who are local to the site, and autonomy of operation. We plan to ship, install, and spare large units (in many cases entire telescopes), with minimal assembly on site.

Azerbaijan has enjoyed a rapid run-up in government revenues from oil and natural-gas production in the period since 2005. Theory predicts that this run-up will trigger the Dutch Disease among Azerbaijani producers. In this paper, we report the initial findings of a survey of Azerbaijani producers designed to ascertain the importance of the symptoms of the Dutch Disease in Azerbaijan. The survey was administered in the summer of 2009. In structuring the questions for this survey, we thought it important to distinguish between any Dutch-Disease effects and any behavior caused by the international financial crisis. There are thus two sets of results to report – a first that chronicles the changes in microeconomic behavior due to the onset of the financial crisis, and a second that examines the differences in economic performance at the firm level that can be attributed to Dutch-Disease effects. As will be evident in our reporting of the results, there is substantial evidence of a shift in behavior at the firm level due to the financial crisis. There is less evidence that firm behavior in the sample can be distinguished as predicted in the Dutch Disease literature. The first section of this report provides some evidence of the scope of the oil and natural-gas windfall in Azerbaijan as well as the macroeconomic evidence of the financial crisis. The second outlines the theoretical predictions of the Dutch-Disease literature. The third section summarizes the responses of the survey questions and highlights the impact of the financial crisis on Azerbaijani firms. The fourth section examines the evidence of Dutch-Disease firm behavior in Azerbaijan. The fifth section concludes.

This chapter presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of income distribution in 108 developing countries over the period 1988 to 1998. The data comes from the developing-country subset of those used by Milanovic (2005), augmented by information on the cumulative prior participation of the country in IMF programs over the preceding ten years. Just as in Li et al. (1998), the conclusion is that the majority of variation in income inequality is cross-country in nature: this component of income inequality will depend primarily upon the development characteristics of the countries, and not on participation in IMF programs. It follows the pattern observed in the Kuznets U hypothesis. The findings, however, also show that cumulative past participation in IMF programs has a positive effect on the change in share of income held by the lowest quintile of the population. This effect is robust to the inclusion of other developmental indicators.

Despite its adoption of a nominal-anchor exchange-rate policy during the period 1999-2005, Ukrainian financial markets were subject to substantial premia in interest rates on interbank markets relative to what is observed in Euro credit markets. In this paper I demonstrate that there were three independent premia, and that these sources had different causes. Estimation of a stochastic-discount-factor model using weekly data over the period 1999-2005 illustrates that the government’s “nominal anchor” policy vis a vis the US dollar was effective at eliminating the risk of currency depreciation. However, other risks related to convertibility and liquidity were either not addressed or exacerbated, and thus deviations from uncovered interest parity continued through the period. Future monetary and financial-sector policy should be calibrated to address all three.

Theoretical research has predicted three different effects of increased import competition on plant-level behavior: reduced domestic production and sales, improving average efficiency of plants, and increased exit of marginal firms. In empirical work, though, such effects are difficult to separate from the impact of exogenous technological progress (or regress). I use detailed plant-level information available in the US Census of Manufacturers and the Annual Survey of Manufacturers for the period 1983-2000 to decompose these effects. I derive the relative contribution of technology and import competition to the increase in productivity and the decline in employment in textiles production in the US in recent years. I then simulate the impact of removal of quota protection on the scale of operation of the average plant and the incentive to plant closure. The methodology employs a number of important innovations in examining the impact of falling import prices on the domestic production of an import-competing good. First, import competition is modeled directly through its impact on the relative prices of monopolistically competitive goods along the lines suggested by Melitz (2000). Second, the effect of technology is incorporated through structural estimation of plant-level production functions in four factors (capital, labor, energy and materials). Solutions to econometric difficulties related to missing capital data and unobserved productivity are incorporated into the estimation technique. The model is estimated for plants with primary product in SIC 2211 (broadwoven cotton cloth). Results validate modeling demand as for differentiated products. Technological coefficients are sensible, with exogenous technological progress playing a large role. In the simulations run, the effects of foreign price competition are orders of magnitude higher than those of technological progress for the period after quotas on imports are removed. The large-scale reduction in employment and output in the US is shown to be a combination of reduced employment and output at plants in continuous operation and of plant closures that exceed new entries.

Despite its adoption of a nominal-anchor exchange-rate policy during the period 1999-2005, Ukrainian financial markets were subject to substantial premia in interest rates on inter-bank markets relative to what is observed in Euro credit markets. In this paper I demonstrate that there were three sources of this risk premium, and that these sources had different causes. Estimation using weekly data over the period 1999-2005 illustrates that the government's nominal anchor policy vis a vis the US dollar was effective at eliminating the risk of currency depreciation. However, other risks of convertibility and liquidity were either not addressed or exacerbated. Future monetary and financial-sector policy should be calibrated to address all three to avoid the financial crises that have affected other emerging economies.

Ukraine has experienced both rapid growth and substantial price and financial volatility since its adoption of exchange-rate stability as the primary goal of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). The increased financial intermediation of the population is a primary reason for these. I demonstrate that, despite the fixed exchange rate, financial markets remain largely isolated from Eurodollar markets. Inflation has not been pinned down by the fixed exchange rate, as the nominal-anchor literature would suggest, nor has it been proportional to money growth. The reason: a rapidly rising but volatile demand for broad money by the population. I report econometric results that demonstrate the links from deposit formation to credit growth and then to economic growth. I also link this deposit boom to the phenomenon of "excess liquidity", and provide suggestions for credit policies to eliminate this while maintaining the fixed exchange rate.

The large and widening gap between economic performance in Eastern European transition economies and those of the former Soviet Union has been dubbed "the Great Divide" by Berglof and Bolton (2002). This paper provides a rationale for the gap based upon the concept of financial repression. The magnified effects of transition to the market can be attributed to the government manipulation of financial markets in these countries, with the divide defined by the length of time that governments relied upon financial-market manipulation to finance government fiscal policy. Policies undertaken to assist in financing government expenditures caused financial repression and financial fragmentation, to use the terms introduced by McKinnon (1973). After an introductory section, I introduce a theoretical model of real and financial sectors in transition. The dynamic path to equilibrium from transition is derived. It is shown to have a tendency toward output contraction and hyperinflation when government policies promote financial repression. In the third section this hypothesis is examined with macroeconomic data from Ukraine for the period 1992 - 2001. This data is consistent with the hypothesis, although other factors (e.g., recession in trading partners) are also shown to be important.

e14550 Background: In locally advanced rectal cancer, neoadjuvant long-course chemoradiotherapy (CRT) is associated with improved local control and superior surgical outcome. In the era of total me...

To explain the poor macroeconomic performance of the transition economies, particularly in terms of economic growth and inflation, it is necessary first to understand the economic principles governing the individual’s choice to save. These economic principles will serve as a structure for the subsequent investigations of the volume

Policy-makers in most countries, if offered the opportunity to have zero economic growth and 100 percent annual inflation on average for the next three years, would quickly turn down the opportunity. For the transition economies, however, this record during the period 1995–1997 was cause for satisfaction. As documented in the earlier chapters, these countries were coming out of one of the most devastating periods in any country’s economic history. The results in the period 1995–1997 suggested hope for the future

The preceding chapters provided an overview of economic growth and inflation experience in the transition economies in the years since independence and a detailed look at saving in those economies. In this chapter the linkages among growth, inflation and saving behavior are specified more precisely and are examined through statistical analysis

This volume has put forward a simple hypothesis: that the availability of saving in financial instruments that can be issued by the government, enterprises and investors is a critical requirement for positive economic growth and the absence of inflation. In the stabilization period, as noted in earlier chapters, the availability of saving was assured through attraction of foreign saving in the stocks and bonds of the transition economies. This was a successful strategy so long as the supply of foreign saving was sufficient to meet the transition economies’ demands. However, the shortcomings of this approach were made evident in the period surrounding the Russian financial crisis of August 1998

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, fifteen nations emerged to join the international economy. The Soviet Union had been a military power and one of the major producers of the world economy, and the successor states were expected to follow in its geopolitical footsteps. Four of the new nations (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine) were nuclear powers. Each nation inherited the trained labor and production facilities left on its territory by the Soviet Union’s demise. While a transition period was expected before the sum of the parts once again equaled -- and then surpassed -- the whole, this period was expected to be short

In the transition economies the period from independence through 1994 was identified with crisis in earlier chapters, and those who lived through it will certainly agree. The crisis period was characterized by extreme economic collapse throughout the former Soviet Union. Table V.1) provides annual economic growth figures for the period 1991–1994, and highlights the message of chapter I: while there is variation across countries, every one of the transition economies experienced a significant fall in production that persisted and intensified through this period

Georgia’s economic course since independence has been tumultuous. During an initial period, the government used the aforementioned directed-credits mechanism in an effort to sustain the pre-independence status quo in production and employment, but brought about hyperinflation and massive financial fragmentation. Once stabilization policies were introduced that reflected the post-independence economic realities of the country, these financial imbalances were gradually righted. With the introduction of a new currency in September 1995, the financial sector developed rapidly and in positive directions. The collapse of Russian financial markets in 1998 had a de-stabilizing effect, however, that the policy-makers faced in a return to crisis

Belarus stands out among the former constituent nations of the Soviet Union in two dimensions. First, its economic collapse was less pronounced in the crisis period, while its economic recovery in the stabilization period has been below average for these states. Second, it has been a relatively high-inflation economy during both periods. The former suggests an economy relatively slow to introduce market reforms; the latter suggests an economy with larger-than-average excess demands for saving ex ante. Surprisingly, the government of Belarus ranks among the least deficitary when general government budget balances are measured as a percent of GDP, with only the Baltic states rivalling the near-balance reported by Belarus. This is documented in Tabele III.1 and Figuga V.2

The Ukrainian economy survived a difficult crisis period with output reductions and hyperinflation that rivalled, and in most cases exceeded, those observed elsewhere. Its success in curbing inflation during the stabilization period is evident, but the output record remained mediocre. The model of chapter III provides a theoretical structure within which the determinants of this economic performance can be investigated. This chapter presents empirical evidence for Ukraine based upon the predictions of that model

The stimulation of private saving is essential to both stabilization and structural adjustment in the transition economies. Private saving in these countries has declined sharply since independence, and this decline has been a factor in the onset of extreme inflation because governments have resorted to an inflation tax to finance deficit spending. The author examines evidence on spending in Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. He examines decisions about whether to save,and in which specific financial or real instruments. He summarizes the evolution of financial sectors in these countries to provide a history of the success or failure of financial institutions to intermediate between private savers and the government as borrower. He concludes that private saving has indeed declined since independence, but less than is indicated by banking system statistics. Concurrent with this downturn has been a shifting of financial assets from bank deposits to alternative financial instruments, including foreign currency,"trust company"shares, and private loans. The financial sector has reacted slowly to this change, but the most successful commercial banks have recognized the change in demand for financial instruments and have accommodated the savers. The state commercial banks - especially the successor to the Soviet Saving Bank - have been slow to adjust to the new environment. As a result, the near-monopoly that banks once held deposits has been rapidly eroded. Government methods for mobilizing funds must change, contends the author. Governments are not typically prepared to borrow savings from the these new instruments, since they are denominated in foreign currency or are offered only at positive real interest rates. That attitude must change if governments are to make needed investments in infrastructure and to avoid creating inflationary credit.

Globalization has become a center of attention and a focus of both fears and hopes. Various disputes remain over the essence of globalization or whether the world today is more “globalized” than a century ago. To unlock this conundrum we suggest to make the critical distinction between globalization as a process, as an outcome and as a perception. The contributions of this volume provide a rejection of what we take as the core of the globalization argument, the withering away of the social effects of location and spatial settings. Territorial differences are likely to continue to create differences in cultural, political and economic activity. The “failure” of globalization as a predictive theory stems from a confiision of potential with actual and perceived homogeneity.

Cash shortages were a persistent and recurrent phenomenon in many of the economies of the former Soviet Union during the two-year period after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. These were largely, but not exclusively, shortages of ruble bank notes and were coincident with a period of rapid commodity price increases. The shortages exacerbated the difficulties of economic transition in the productive sectors, caused a decline in the faith of citizens in their governments’ ability to manage the economies, and greatly increased political tensions among these economies.

Economists and policymakers in the Soviet Union before its dissolution were concerned about the growth of the"ruble overhang."The concern was that the rationing of consumer goods evident in prior years had led to an excess of purchasing power in households. Price liberalization was expected to lead to a jump in consumer prices as households tried to exercise their purchasing power. But after the Soviet Union dissolved, a new concern emerged: a ruble shortage. Throughout the ruble currency area, governments and state enterprises could not get enough rubles to pay wages and pensions. As a result, households were unable to make the purchases they wanted to make. Ruble shortages contributed greatly to the progressive deterioration of the ruble area, from its beginning with fifteen members to its present membership of two. The names given to these two episodes - the"ruble overhang"and the"ruble shortage"- are misleading, because they are both manifestations of the same phenomenon. In both cases, forced savings led to a reduction in purchasing power and downward pressure on inflation. The difference was in the mechanism that induced forced saving. For the ruble overhang, the government maintained price rigidity; there was nonprice rationing of output that was insufficient to satisfy demand at those rigid prices. For the ruble shortage, the government - through the de facto inconvertibility of deposits to currency. The result was the same: a rationed household sector unable to trade financial assets for commodities.

Turkey since 1980 has been immersed in an extensive price-driven restructuring of its economy. Structural adjustment to improve economic efficiency and increase trade surpluses has been stimulated by adjustments in real interest and exchange rates. Given that the stimulus to the restructuring was the severe international debt crisis of 1978–80, the yardstick of short-term success has naturally been the improvement in export performance; this has in fact been striking. As the Turkish economy consolidates its gains from this strategy and settles into a sustainable pattern of economic growth, however, the volume and pattern of private investment becomes central to long-term success.

. . manufacturing activities are subject of increasing returns to scale-both of a static and a dynamic kind-and under these conditions the presumption derived from Ricardo's doctrine of comparative costs-the presumption that free trade secures the best allocation of resources to each and every participant, and that there must be net gain from trade all round-no longer holds. For under these conditions it can be demonstrated that free trade may lead to stunted growth, or even impoverishment of some regions (or countries) to the greater benefit of others.

Preface Introduction: Latin American Debt and the Transfer Problem The Transmission of External Shocks to Latin America Debt, Depression and Real Rates of Interest in Latin America Lessons of the Past: The Role of External Shocks in Chilean Recessions, 1926-1982 The Transmission of Terms-of-Trade Shocks Fiscal Constraints and the Adjustment Process Fiscal Lags and the Problem of Stabilization: Argentina's Austral Plan Adjustment to Interest Rate Shocks in Latin America and the Caribbean Financial Market Instability and External Shocks Macroeconomic Instability and Moral Hazard in Banking in a Liberalizing Economy The Chilean Financial Collapse Labor Market Disequilibrium and Adjustment Labor Market Adjustment with Wage Indexation: The Case of Chile Between 1974-1980 Monetary and Exchange Rate Policies Debt and Adjustment in the Dominican Republic: The Second Time Around Exchange Controls and the Breakdown of Central American Trade in the 1980s The Equilibrium Exchange Rate of the Mexican Peso: A Monetary Approach The Political Economy of Stabilization Programs Debt, Stabilization, and Liberalization in Costa Rica: Political Economy Responses to a Fiscal Crisis Recession and Adjustment in the Dominican Republic: 1983-1985 Long-Run Trade Strategies for Latin America International Commodity Trade and Latin American Exports: An Empirical Investigation Bibliography Index

When proposals for reform of tariff or subsidy policies are made, attempts to predict the effect on incentives are frequently hampered by the need for input-output technical data. This article develops and illustrates the use of a methodology for approximating effective protection coefficients (EPCs) when such data are unavailable or outdated. It derives the equations which approximate the EPC from statistical analysis of a cross section of existing EPC studies for four agricultural commodities : corn, cotton, rice, and wheat. Informational requirements for computing approximations include the nominal protection coefficients on output and tradable inputs and readily available macroeconomic data. These approximation equations perform well in an out-of-sample test.

Exchange-rate devaluation is a central component of stabilization programs proposed for debt-burdened developing countries. It has also become a key component of trade liberalization and export promotion strategies undertaken by these countries to enhance their products' "competitiveness" on world markets. A number of countries, most notably Turkey, have taken this policy to extreme lengths. In this paper, the author argues that the effectiveness of this policy will be diminished through consistent application. The borrowing constraint is then eased, but is replaced by insufficient domestic demand for tradables. Total domestic expenditure, and thus domestically-generated economic growth, is slowed.

The Algerian macroeconomic response to oil windfalls, which differs from that expected of a neoclassical economy, is examined through application of ‘fix-price’ equilibrium analysis. A model of the aggregate macroeconomy is specified and its response decomposed into behavioral and involuntary spillover elements. The implications of Classical unemployment are derived. Econometric estimation of the model for the period 1966–1984 supports the importance of involuntary spillovers as an explanation of Algeria's unusual pattern of demand and money balance accumulation; rationing is shown to have been considerable relative to observed consumption in recent years. Two major conclusions are drawn. (1) Fix-price modeling captures an important feature of the Algerian economy during this period; analyses ignoring spillovers will provide biased results. (2) Conventional neoclassical estimation will in general confound behavioral parameters and spillover effects for countries where the price mechanism is not permitted to operate freely. This will lead to biased behavioral estimates and inaccurate policy advice.

Persistent trade deficits in developing countries have followed the increases in crude oil prices of the 1970s. This paper examines through econometric estimation and shock decomposition analysis this persistence for the Turkish economy. Results highlight the primary role played in trade deficit creation by government tariff and exchange rate policies; also of interest is the measured responsiveness of the private economy to price incentives offered both by changing international conditions and government policy. The Turkish economy provides an empirical example of contractionary devaluation; the importance of devaluation cum liberalization for deficit reduction and economic growth is established.

The relative merits of preferential trading agreements and unilateral tariff reduction are investigated, yielding the conclusion that preferential agreements are superior for plausible specifications of tastes and endowments. The attractiveness of agreements, however, depends crucially on general-equilibrium effects on intraunion and external terms of trade. Game-theoretic differences between the alternative policy strategies are emphasized: agreements are cooperative equilibria while unilateral action defines a noncooperative Stackelberg equilibrium. The analytical framework is a three-country variant of the Dornbusch-Fischer-Samuelson classical trade model. Numerical simulations also illustrate that agreements may enhance government revenue and "learning-by-doing." Copyright 1989 by Economics Department of the University of Pennsylvania and the Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association.