IMF Staff Papers articles

Recent articles from IMF Staff Papers

The dynamics of provincial growth in China: a nonparametric approach.
July 1, 2009... Since the start of economics reforms in 1978, China's growth record has been impressive, but the contribution of its provinces to per capita income growth has been highly uneven. (See, for example, Dayal-Gulati and Husain, 2002 and Aziz and Duenwald, 2003.) Although average annual growth of...

Central bank autonomy: lessons from global trends.
July 1, 2009... A large body of research has suggested that central bank autonomy (CBA) may have significant benefits for macroeconomic performance. (1) CBA may help countries achieve lower average inflation, cushion the impact of political cycles on economic cycles, enhance financial system stability, and...

Do unit value export, import, and terms-of-trade indices misrepresent price indices?
July 1, 2009... Export and import unit value indices (UVIs) are based on data from customs documentation and are so named because they take as their building blocks, for individual commodity groups, the ratio of the unit value in the current to the reference period. They measure, for individual commodity...

Why has the grass been greener on one side of Hispaniola? A comparative growth analysis of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.(Chronology)
July 1, 2009... The Dominican Republic and Haiti present a quasi-natural experiment; the two countries share the island of Hispaniola and are broadly similar in terms of geography and historical institutions, yet their growth performance has diverged remarkably since 1960, when the two countries had the same...

Special section: Global Reach? Perspectives on U.S. International Spillovers.
July 1, 2009... Introduction With its near universal membership, the International Monetary Fund is in a unique position to examine global interrelationships. Indeed, cross-country linkages lie at the heart of the Fund's role in the world economy. In particular, the central objective of the Fund's...