IMF Staff Papers articles from April 2004

IMF Staff Papers archives from April 2004

The persistence of corruption and slow economic growth.
April 1, 2004... A consensus seems to have emerged that corruption and other aspects of poor governance and weak institutions have substantial, adverse effects on economic growth. Nevertheless, many countries seem to be unable to improve their institutions and...

In finance, size matters: the "systemic scale economies" hypothesis.
April 1, 2004... In this study we formulate and test empirically what we call the "systemic scale economies" (SSE) hypothesis, whereby the production of financial intermediation services shows increasing returns in the scale of the system where it takes place....

Editor's comment.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Jacques J. Polak began his IMF work as part of the Dutch delegation to the Bretton Woods conference in July 1944. Mr. Polak has served as Director of Research, Economic Counselor, and Advisor to the Managing Director. He was also Executive...

International liquidity and the role of the SDR in the international system.(Special Drawing Right)
April 1, 2004... The introduction in 1969 of the special drawing right (SDR), the reserve asset issued by the International Monetary Fund, was prompted by the desire to establish a mechanism for the deliberate creation of international reserves that would...

What happened to Asian exports during the crisis?
April 1, 2004... During the financial crisis in 1997-98, export revenues of many East Asian countries did not increase in spite of massive depreciation by the afflicted economies. (1) The depreciations led to sharp declines in dollar-denominated export prices...

Financial reforms and interest rate spreads in the commercial banking system in Malawi.(Reserve Bank of Malawi Act)
April 1, 2004... Financial reforms have been a major component of structural adjustment programs in developing countries. Following the McKinnon (1973)-Shaw (1973) hypothesis, the conventional wisdom is that flexibility and efficiency of the financial system...

High inflation and real wages.
April 1, 2004... High inflation is a powerful agent of redistribution. It can reduce the real value of debt and tax revenues. In addition, it can impoverish large segments of the population by eroding their earnings. Figure 1 shows four recent examples:...

A Brazilian-type debt crisis: simple analytics.
April 1, 2004... Brazil's public finances appeared to have been in a shambles prior to the election in October 2002. The September 2002 stand-by credit gave Brazil a critical boost, providing the central bank with an additional $16 billion in international...

Special section on data issues: preface.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... In this issue, IMF Staff Papers begins an occasional section on data problems. We normally publish papers providing primarily analysis of preassembled data. With this special section we break with that tradition and indicate to researchers that...

Export and import price indices.
April 1, 2004... Foreign trade price indices are important indicators for analyzing growth and inflation in an open economy. The price and volume factors comprising the relative changes in exports and imports are required for understanding developments in the...