Imf Staff Papers Volume 43 No 3

This paper examines the volatility and predictability of emerging stock markets. A range of measures suggests that, despite perceptions to the contrary, the volatility of emerging markets may have fallen rather than risen on average. Also, although the autocorrelations in emerging market returns appear to turn negative at horizons of a year or more, the magnitude of these return reversals is not that much larger than reversals in some mature markets. One interpretation of the results would be that emerging markets have not consistently been subject to fads or bubbles, or at least no more so than in some industrial countries.

This paper extends a standard growth model and obtains consistent panel data estimates of the growth retarding effects of military spending via its adverse impact on capital formation and resource allocation. Simulation experiments suggest that a substantial long-term “peace dividend”—in the form of higher capacity output—may result from markedly lower military expenditure levels achieved in most regions during the late 1980s, and the further military spending cuts that would be possible if global peace could be secured.

This paper explores wage-price link in a prolonged inflation. A fixed tie between wages and prices must have significant effects in any economy. A wage-price link of the type discussed in this paper assumes that wages will be adjusted for any rise in consumer prices, subject to certain safeguards. This will protect wage earners against any significant fall in real wages arising from investment inflation. For a free economy, in which economic adjustments are induced by changes in prices and wages, the imposition of the degree of rigidity implied by this association is of far-reaching importance. in several countries, the use of wage-price links is a consequence of the fear of labor that real wages will be adversely affected by inflation. Although the basic causes of inflation vary widely in different countries and at different times, the process of inflation always shows similar characteristics. In an economy which is functioning properly, the distribution and use of the gross national product should result in an aggregate demand for goods and services that tend to equal the available supply of goods and services at approximately stable prices.

This issue features a timely paper by Vladimir Klyuev and Paul Mills on the role of personal wealth and home equity withdrawal in the decline in the U.S. saving rate. Lusine Lusinyan and Leo Bonato explain how work absence in 18 European countries affects labor supply and demand. And a paper by Paolo Manasse (University of Bologna) entitled "Deficit Limits and Fiscal Rules for Dummies" examines fiscal frameworks.

This paper tests uncovered interest parity (UIP) using interest rates on longer maturity bonds for the Group of Seven countries. These long-horizon regressions yield much more support for UIP—all of the coefficients on interest differentials are of the correct sign, and almost all are closer to the UIP value of unity than to zero. The paper also analyzes the decision by a government facing electoral uncertainty to implement structural reforms in the presence of fiscal restraints similar to the Stability and Growth Pact.

This last issue for 2005 comprises seven new papers, including a contribution to the journal's occasional Special Data Section about domestic debt markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, and also an in-depth look at the internal job market for entry-level economists at the IMF. The remaining articles cover toics as diverse as: modeling of asset markets, exchange rates in developing countries, international bank claims on Latin America, the effectiveness of "early warning" systems, and the use (by emerging market countries) of the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS).

Although accommodative policies and widespread indexation may account for the persistence of high inflation, they cannot explain changes in the inflation rate. The causes of such changes for the high-inflation episodes immediately preceding the recent “heterodox” attempts at stabilization in Argentina, Brazil, and Israel are examined by computing historical decompositions of these episodes based on vector autoregressions, distinguishing between the “fiscal” and “balance of payments” views of their causes. In all three cases, nominal exchange rate shocks played the dominant role in triggering an acceleration of inflation. [JEL 134]

This paper discusses the causes of the imbalance of international payments. Under the forces of supply and demand, gold came to have a certain value in relation to goods, which enabled it to function smoothly as a medium of reserve and settlement. This value varied somewhat from time to time under the influence of new discoveries or the exhaustion of existing sources. Of all the particular imbalances in the international payments pattern, that between the dollar and other currencies is the greatest. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to measure the amount of imbalance existing. Europe has made considerable and, to some extent, successful efforts to expand direct sales to the United States. It is in the sphere of finished manufactures principally that one could hope for an expansion of exports by an organized export drive or currency devaluation, other categories of goods depending more on the level of US production and national income.

This paper presents a study on economic development with stability in India. While the Five-Year Plan occupies the central position as the means through which the Government of India proposes to deal with the basic economic problem, it must be implemented by many specific economic and social measures. It is of the utmost importance that the measures taken in various fields should not only contribute to the fulfilment of the Five-Year Plan but that they should form part of a consistent economic and social policy. Apart from the change in total foreign investment, the composition of foreign investment in India now includes a larger proportion of direct and a smaller proportion of fixed interest obligations than before the war. While India's official sterling debt has been practically wiped out, the Government of India has incurred new obligations in dollars. If India could meet its pre-war obligations on foreign investment without any great strain on its balance of payments, it should be able to meet future obligations, resulting from any new debts, provided its balance of payments position in the future is not materially worse than in the past.

China’s growth performance since the start of economic reforms in 1978 has been impressive, but the gains have not been distributed equally across provinces. We use a nonparametric approach to analyze the variation in labor productivity growth across China’s provinces. This approach imposes less structure on the data than the standard growth accounting framework and allows for a breakdown of labor productivity into efficiency gains, technological progress, and capital deepening. We have the following results. First, we find that on average capital deepening accounts for about 75 percent of total labor productivity growth, while efficiency and technological improvements account for about 7 and 18 percent, respectively. Second, technical change is not neutral. Third, whereas improvement in efficiency contributes to convergence in labor productivity between provinces, technical change contributes to productivity disparity across provinces. Finally, we find that foreign direct investment has a positive and significant effect on efficiency growth and technical progress.