IMF Staff Papers articles from March 2002

IMF Staff Papers archives from March 2002

Symposium on forecasting performance: an introduction.
March 1, 2002... The three papers that follow are part of a symposium on forecasting performance I organized under the auspices of IMF Staff Papers. These are interesting papers that deal with forecast evaluation in real-world situations, ones that can often be...

Copycats and common swings: the impact of the use of forecasts in information sets.
March 1, 2002... The standard theory of time series forecasting involves a variety of components including the choice of an information set, the choice of a cost function, and the evaluation of forecasts in terms of the average costs of the forecast errors. It...

Comparing projections and outcomes of IMF-supported programs.
March 1, 2002... Associated with every economic program supported by IMF resources is a set of projections, a quantitative framework setting out a particular scenario of outcomes for policy and other variables. Such a scenario should provide a basis for...

Further cross-country evidence on the accuracy of the private sector's output forecasts.
March 1, 2002... "... the ability to produce accurate predictions of the course of the economy in the near-term is probably the main criterion by which the public judges the usefulness of our entire profession." Victor Zarnowitz (1986, p. 1) This paper...

Purchasing power parity and the real exchange rate.
March 1, 2002... The purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rate is the exchange rate between two currencies that would equate the two relevant national price levels if expressed in a common currency at that rate, so that the purchasing power of a unit of one...

Tax policy, the macroeconomy, and intergenerational distribution.
March 1, 2002... Taxation has an immediate impact on resource allocation--via its effect on labor supply and goods consumption--as well as an intertemporal effect through, among others, its effect on investment decisions of firms and savings decisions of...

Money demand in Mongolia: a panel data analysis.
March 1, 2002... Until 1990 the Mongolian economy was based on a centrally planned model that had been adopted more than six decades earlier. Almost all production activities were carried out by the state and organized in large monopolistic enterprises....

The distribution of fixed capital in the multinational firm.
March 1, 2002... Despite the high share of foreign direct investment (FDI) in private capital flows to developing countries--on average about 53 percent over the years 1995-2000--the uneven distribution of FDI across developing countries is still only poorly...