IMF Staff Papers articles from July 2009

IMF Staff Papers archives from July 2009

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Foreign entanglements: estimating the source and size of spillovers across industrial countries.
July 1, 2009... The extent of spillovers across industrial regions remains an area of considerable interest and uncertainty. The importance of common or global factors in national output fluctuations is widely recognized, given the long history of substantial...

Yen carry trade and the subprime crisis.
July 1, 2009... The tightening of credit conditions that started in the subprime sector of the U.S. mortgage credit market in the summer of 2007 has implications for external adjustment for the United States. As the credit crisis unfolded over the ensuing...

Rhyme or reason: what explains the easy financing of the U.S. current account deficit?
July 1, 2009... Notwithstanding the shrinking of the U.S. current account deficit in 2007-08, global imbalances remain one of the most striking trends in the international economy. The substantial rise in the U.S. current account deficit as a ratio to GDP over...