1,721,007 research outputs found
The Role of the IMF in Well-Performing Low-Income Countries
Full text linkThe IMF began to play a prominent role in low-income countries in the late 1970s and 1980s when many countries faced overvalued exchange rates, growing budget deficits, high inflation, and low reserves. But times have changed, and many low-income countries no longer face these problems and do not need classic IMF programs. This paper explores options for the role of the IMF in well-performing low-income countries that no longer require IMF financing. It argues that in these countries the IMF should use more non-funded programs, and it should play a much less dominant role in overall conditionality. These countries should be able to focus more on achieving high-priority development goals that are outside the expertise of the IMF, such as in health, water, education, private sector development, and agriculture. While playing a less prominent role, the Fund should continue to be engaged in helping countries to maintain an appropriate macroeconomic framework. For some countries, a non-funded program like the new Policy Support Instrument (PSI) would be appropriate, while others could shift further to a program of surveillance and monitoring. In well-performing countries the Fund should provide public ratings on macroeconomic policy, ideally fully incorporated into the World Bank’s CPIA rating system.IMF, exchange rate, budget deficit, inflation, reserves, conditionality
When Does Legal Origin Matter?
Full text linkA vast literature documents better economic institutions in common law compared with civil law countries. The present paper argues that legal origin alone is insufficient to explain differences in the quality of economic institutions across countries. Rather, it is the interaction between legal origin and the quality of political institutions that is important. Empirical evidence from a cross-section of 90 countries on entry regulation, a measure of how business friendly economic institutions are towards firms, strongly supports our claim. For example, we find that the number of procedures required to start a business are lower in common law compared with civil law countries by 2.5 procedures or 24.3% of the sample mean. However, this difference varies sharply across the sample of countries with high and low levels of political accountability. It equals a large 3.4 procedures (37% of the sample mean) for the former and a mere 1.1 procedures (9.7% of the sample mean) for the latter. We conclude that legal origin matters for the quality of economic institutions but only when political accountability is high. We provide a plausible explanation for this phenomenon based on recent findings in the literature on political economy.Legal origin; Regulation,; Political institutions
Why is ?The Dutch disease? always a disease? the macroeconomic consequences of scaling up ODA
Full text linkThis working paper examines the validity of the claim that ?scaling up? ODA in developing countries will cause ?Dutch Disease? effects that slow growth and human development. The most common concerns are increased inflation and exchange-rate appreciation. Consistent with a recent IMF re-appraisal, the paper maintains that such problems can be mitigated if ODA is properly ?spent? and ?absorbed?. However, many governments either do not spend ODA (because of the fear of inflation) or do not ?absorb? it (because of the fear of appreciation). The paper argues that the critical issues are whether 1) increased government spending is focused on public investment and 2) increased imports are focused on capital goods. A central point is that in many developing countries, under-utilized productive capacities can readily respond to rising government demand for domestic goods and services. The paper ends with the warning that although the short-run macroeconomic impact of ODA can be managed, its longer-term impact could, indeed, be adverse if it reduces efforts to mobilize domestic resources, such as public revenue and national savings.Dutch Disease, Official Development Assistance, Macroeconomic policies, Poverty, Africa
Inflation Targeting, Sudden Stops and the Cost of Fear of Floating
Full text linkSudden stops seem to create the perfect environment for disinflation, especially when central banks defend the exchange rate by increasing interest rates. We propose a variation of the output gap model that incorporates the sudden stop shock. The use of the model in policy analysis shows that fear of floating is pro-cyclical and inflation targeting, counter-cyclical. The model is run for Brazil, Colombia, Korea and Thailand, the inflation targeting countries that have recently had sudden stops. The three policy implications direct attention to the medium and long run. First,the central banks that are targeting inflation should focus on inflation, not during but after the sudden stop. Second, they could complement this medium term view by monitoring a measure of inflation of non traded goods. Third, the monetary authorities could eventually introduce an escape clause to the CPI inflation target under a sharp depreciation.
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Poverty and Social Impact Analysis in PRGF-Supported Programs
No full textThis paper aims to inform on the status of Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) in IMF-supported programs, detailing the results presented in the recent review of PRGF-supported programs. The review showed that more needs to be done, both in undertaking PSIA when necessary, and in reporting the policy tradeoffs in program documents. Policy design should be continuously informed by the results of PSIA.Poverty;impact analysis, social impact analysis, international trade, social safety nets, transition economies, trade shocks, international trade policy, terms of trade, social safety net, terms of trade shocks, poverty reduction strategy, domestic prices, qualitative analysis, exogenous shock, domestic price, oil prices, macroeconomic framework, capacity constraints, ex ante analysis, impact of policies, poverty line, tariff increases, compensation packages, terms-of-trade shocks, ante analysis, income groups, social implications, social insurance, impact of reforms, incidence of implementation of reform, impact of policy, poverty reduction strategy paper, transition countries, participatory poverty assessments, tariff rates, external tariff, world market, imported inputs, household surveys, impact of policy changes, poverty alleviation, international trade policies, country programs, poverty assessments, vertical integration, trade policies
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
