The world economy is at a cross road: it can either widen and deepen international integration, within and between different areas, or be tempted by neo-protectionism. Which road should the international economy take? Which way will it take? The need to reform the present international monetary system has been almost continuously discussed since the collapse of the Bretton Woods System in August 1971, and even earlier, and it has found renewed interest since the Mexican financial crisis in early 1995. Despite the successful completion of the Uruguay Round in December 1993, many international trade problems remain: many sectors were not included in the agreement, antidumping action and safeguards are still possible, and many trade problems of developing and former communist countries have not been fully addressed. This book analyses this situation by first focusing on the problem of international financial stability and the relationship between national economic policies. It then focuses on the European monetary union within the context of the international monetary system. Finally, the development of international trade is examined within an endogenous growth framework.

The reforms initiated in 1991 have transformed India's economy and capital market. The book offers a comprehensive evaluation of developments in both sectors from an investor's viewpoint. The potential growth of India's stockmarket is examined as the country progresses with its economic liberalisation. The insights offered into investing in India can be profitably applied by seasoned investors as well as by non-professionals. This exclusive analysis of the Indian market will be of interest to students and policy makers as much as to anyone interested in investing in one of the major markets to have emerged from its seclusion and opened itself up to global investors.

Providing an empirical look at the Jamaican economy, this careful study examines the impact of the (International Monetary Fund) approach to economic management in the 1980s and compares it to the non-IMF policies of the 1970s. Opening with an overview of the structure of Jamaica's economy, the book discusses the results of the economic policies of the 1970s and 1980s. Demonstrating that Jamaica's income is among the most unequally distributed in the world, the author explores how the policies of various governments affected income distribution, focusing on whether non-IMF policies had a different effect than IMF policies. He concludes with a discussion of how inflation and fiscal policies influence particularly vulnerable groups, which include children, the elderly, and much of the labor force.

This report examines the causes of low productivity growth in Kazakhstan by combining an analysis of firm-level data and multiple policy drivers. It is the first work to analyze the micro-foundations of the total factor productivity in Kazakhstan and elaborating specific recommendations for boosting aggregate productivity growth.

This book studies the impact of different sources of external finance on growth and development in different country contexts. An important finding of the study is that 'success' or 'failure' in the productive use of external and domestic financial resources cannot be explained on the basis of single factors such as external shocks or 'bad' versus 'sound' policies. Rather, they are outcomes of complex interactions between changes in exogenous factors (such as fluctuations in external finance and trade shocks), existing economic structures and the responses to shocks by domestic public and private sector agents. This finding also implies that there are no recipes in economic policy-making which are generally applicable; the 'best' policy has to be designed specifically for each country.

Professor Graziano's study, the first attempt to investigate the impact of human cognitive processes on our understanding of money supply, promises to shake up the fiscal establishment and bring down a number of cherished shibboleths. Using the conceptual tools of cognitive psychology, Professor Graziano subjects our monetary beliefs, measurements, and communications to an incisive, original analysis that may overturn current ideas about the way money supply should be measured and reported and thus affect a broad range of financial/investment decisions.

The recession which many countries experienced in the early 1990s had certain unusual aspects. Most notably, and common to all countries, was the behaviour of asset prices relative to the general price level. In consequence, reasons were sought to explain the special characteristics of the recession and as a result of the behaviour of asset prices attention turned to 'Debt-Deflation Theories' associated in different forms with Keynes and Irving Fisher. The contributors to this volume discuss the significance of debt deflation. Their striking common feature is that, on the evidence presented here, the behaviour of asset prices should not be of great concern to policy makers, or to those attempting to understand economic behaviour. However, residual doubts remain over the Japanese case.

This book examines the reforms of banking in Eastern Europe, which are a key element of the transition to the market in those economies. Particular emphasis is placed on the "bad domestic bank debt" problem. The book also analyzes the development of capital markets in Eastern Europe, and their role in attracting foreign flows, with case-studies on the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland.;Contributions are from senior policy-makers and academics from Central and Eastern Europe who are involved in the reforms.

Unemployment is growing. Crime is on the increase. The currency has fallen. The initial euphoria following South Africa's transition to democracy is waning as people become disillusioned with the state of the economy and government's lack of delivery on polices and promises. Where does South Africa go from here? It is not all doom and gloom and there is hope for the future. Anthony Ginsberg offers solutions to the fundamental problem of rising unemployment, crime, homelessness and poverty, all excerbated by high taxes, draconian tariffs and stagnant foreign investment. He encourages us to become informed and aware before we criticise. This book is aimed at everyone interested in contributing to South Africa' s future as a prosperous nation in the benefit of all her citizens.

This volume provides a treatment of "endogenous money" and its relationship to finance. It compares American post-Keynesian and French circulation school as two ways of analyzing money in the economy.;In analyzing money, contemporary economics has focused its attention on money's function as a store of value, neglecting its role as medium of circulation. When circulation is put centre-stage, it becomes apparent that the supply of money does indeed adapt to the needs of trade - and does so in many different ways, often ways that are difficult for a central bank to control, because they reflect the responses of banks and other financial institutions to market incentives. But money's role in circulation must be co-ordinated with its store of value function, and both with finance. Failure here can lead to instability.;The essays in this volume cover these issues in contrasting analyses, presenting the American post-Keynesian perspective, on the one hand, and the point of view of the French circulation school, on the other.

There are many proposals for stimulating economic growth and lowering unemployment, and though they sometimes make full employment a goal, none of them except the plan highlighted in this well-researched book can make it a promise. John Pierson's Economic Performance Insurance (EPI) plan is the fruit of his lifelong campaign to tackle the New Deal's unsolved problem - involuntary unemployment. EPI avoids the pitfall of relying too heavily on government as the employer of last resort by guaranteeing a continuously adequate market for the products of private enterprise. The budget costs that may be incurred from insuring such a guarantee would be offset by the budget savings resulting from the drastic reduction in the burdensome social costs of welfare, drugs, and crime, which are directly linked to the problem of unemployment. Pierson cogently argues that EPI, or some similar plan, is not only desirable but necessary in the coming century. Eliminating unemployment is the key to tackling a host of other pressing issues, such as welfare reform, poverty, job discrimination, disarmament, and balancing our aid-and-trade relationship with Third World countries. EPI is not a utopian scheme but an eminently practical solution which, with political leadership and vision, could be enacted almost immediately.

Since World War II, America's economic landscape has undergone a profound transformation. The effects of this change can be seen in the decline of the traditional industrial heartland and the emergence of new high tech industrial complexes in California, Texas, Boston, and Florida. The Rise ofthe Gunbelt demonstrates that this economic restructuring is a direct result of the rise of the military industrial complex (MIC) and a wholly new industry based on defense spending and Pentagon contacts. Chronicling the dramatic growth of this vast complex, the authors analyze the roles played by the shift from land and sea warfare to aerial combat in World War II, the Cold War, the birth of aerospace and the consequent radical transformation of the airplane industry, and labor and major defense corporations such as Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell Douglas. Exploring the reasons for the shifts in defense spending--including the role of lobbyists and the Department of Defense in awarding contracts--and the effects on regional and national economic development, this comprehensive study reveals the complexities of the MIC.

The Marxist theory of capitalist growth and transformation has often been shrouded in obscurity, either by endless recapitulation of Marx's texts or by excessive use of mathematical formalism. This short book presents an integrated and rigorous view of capitalist development - technical change, class relations, trends in the profit rate and share, cyclical and long-term crisis - in a form that is accessible to serious readers with or without prior training in economics or familiarity with Marxist thought.

EMU - A Swedish Perspective provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the EMU project. The main advantages and disadvantages of a single currency are evaluated. A key feature of the analysis is the attempt to integrate economic and political aspects. The book is a revised version of the report by the Swedish Government Commission on the EMU. Although the analysis focuses on the consequences for Sweden of joining versus not joining the monetary union, it is highly relevant for the discussion in all EU countries. The book provides an in-depth analysis of how the demands on economic policy will be affected by the monetary union. Various chapters discuss monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, unemployment and labour markets, the transition to monetary union, and the exchange-rate arrangements between participants and non-participants. Other chapters analyse the importance of the EMU for European political integration, democratic aspects, and how membership in the monetary union will affect the possibilities for an individual member state to exert influence within the EU. EMU - A Swedish Perspective should be of interest to professional economists and political scientists, students, and all others who want to form an opinion about the monetary union on the basis of a balanced assessment of the consequences. EMU - A Swedish Perspective provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the EMU project. The main advantages and disadvantages of a single currency are evaluated. A key feature of the analysis is the attempt to integrate economic and political aspects. The book is a revised version of the report by the Swedish Government Commission on the EMU. Although the analysis focuses on the consequences for Sweden of joining versus not joining the monetary union, it is highly relevant for the discussion in all EU countries.

After the transition to free economy, governments of the former Soviet republics realized that in spite of becoming a part of the shaky international economic order, their individual economic success can be assured by rational national economic policies that in addition to the fundamental law of supply and demand govern the economic mechanism sensitive to both external and internal phenomena. Originally published in Russian and now translated in English, this book by Dr. A. Ashimov and his colleagues offers a novel theory providing a numerically-justifiable approach to the solution of major economy control problems that are faced by virtually every government in the world. First, they developed and validated numerous mathematical models describing complex interactions between economic and social factors thus enabling the decision makers to foresee the outcomes of their decisions. Second, on the basis of these models the authors formulated the appropriate control problems that could be interpreted as achieving the transition to the desirable economic regimes and maintaining these regimes in spite of initial conditions and both external and internal perturbations. It should be noted that due to the inherent uncertainty introduced by the use of statistical models, the nonlinearity of the underlying phenomena and the intention to obtain the optimal solutions, the solution process becomes quite intricate and calls for the application of the most sophisticated techniques offered in advanced control theory. The authors utilized the most instrumental statistical model validation techniques; they established sufficient conditions for the existence of optimal solutions of the relevant control problems; and they skillfully combined the applications of the phase space formalism, system stability analysis, and the methods of functional analysis. Finally, they developed algorithms resulting in the optimal problem solutions, thus offering economic policy makers a dependable decision support tool. Macroeconomic Analysis and Economic Policy Based on Parametric Control offers a novel, highly mathematical approach to the solution of very realistic economy control problems. It presents a good example of the application of mathematical modeling, advanced control theory, and model-based decision making that could be adopted by researchers and graduate students specializing in economics, control, and relevant areas of research, addressing their own research problems.

A collective effort by American and North African scholars, this volume provides a comprehensive analysis of recent economic, social, and political events in North Africa. It shows how the Maghrebi states and societies are currently at a very important junction as they try to adjust to different ways of doing things in new regional and international orders. Using a political economy approach, the book focuses on a series of issues raised by the interaction between economic crisis and reform on the one hand, and political change or stagnation on the other. The author and his contributors provide a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of particular value to scholars and researchers of the Arab world in general and North Africa in particular.

This book examines the numerous aspects of exchange rates and the dynamics of macroeconomics, focusing on the PPP puzzle, volatility, levels, with an exploration of the real exchange rate misalignment of the Central European countries single equation approach, an examination of the real equilibrium exchange rate in China, exchange rate dynamics and pass-through effects in Russia and Hungary, and structural shocks on economies.

This book traces the growth of capitalism in South East Asia between 1870 and 1941, a crucial element in understanding contemporary economic and political developments in the region. It focuses on three questions. Why was indigenous capitalism so weak in colonial South East Asia? What were the institutional weaknesses in an otherwise dominant Chinese capitalist class, and why did it fail to transform itself into a modern industrial elite? What was the impact of western colonialism and Japanese economic penetration on South East Asia's prospects for achieving sustainable economic growth?

This book presents a theoretically-based comprehensive analysis of macroeconomic consequences of fiscal policy using a popular economic model: the overlapping generations growth model. A wide range of essential public finance issues is analyzed, including the effects of tax reform on dynamic efficiency, positive and normative effects of public spending, considerations of taxes on fixed assets and monetary holdings, and sustainability of deficits. A unique approach is applied in the study of public finance: one expected to generate substantial interest among current graduate students and active researchers.

The creation of the EMU and the introduction of the Euro is a historic event for the EU countries. The debates on the desirability of the EMU provoked a vast economic literature dealing with the theory of the optimum currency area, costs and benefits of the EMU, symmetric versus asymmetric shocks, alternative mechanisms of adjustment in a monetary union and so forth. Until recently, for the Central European candidate countries for a full membership in the EU, these issues seemed to be too far away, as they concentrated on devising their own monetary and exchange rate systems suitable for their transition period. The challenges of the EMU for the Central European countries have scarcely been dealt with in both Western and Eastern economic literature. Inclusion of Central European Countries in the European Monetary Union aims to fill this gap, by focusing on the most direct issue of relevance for the Central European countries with respect to the EMU - why, how and when these countries are expected to join the EMU. The papers included in this volume study the relationship between the EU accession process of the Central European candidate countries and their involvement in the process of European monetary integration. The book focuses on two main issues. First, are these countries - now or possibly later - a part of the European optimum currency area so that they should belong to the Euro area in the near future? Second, if so, how and when should they undertake necessary adjustments in their monetary and exchange rate policies and join the ERM 2 and the EMU?

This text brings together a number of research studies, all of which examine the behaviour of foreign exchange rates. The main focus of the collection is on empirical characterization of high-frequency exchange rate data. The pioneering studies demonstrate and explain, amongst other things, the regular patterns in intra-day foreign exchange rate activity, the effects of macroeconomic news of rates and analyze the profitability of technical trading rules in these markets. The collection should be of use to students, academics and practitioners who are interested in exchange rate dynamics.

On an unprecedented scale, nations at all income levels and across the political spectrum have initiated privatization programs over the past twenty years. In the course of this privatization movement, microeconomic efficiency arguments have become the standard justification for the divestment of public assets. This book presents an alternate view and argues that short-term macroeconomic considerations are often the true motive behind privatization programs. Why Do Government Divest? The Macroeconomics of Privatization is a comprehensive treatment of the macroeconomic issues of privatization. In addition to reviewing topics in economic growth and efficiency, this book explores the fiscal, monetary, balance-of-payments, and employment aspects of privatization. Several diverse case studies illustrate how the pursuit of such short-term political objectives can reduce the benefits of privatization.

The Bundesbank is one of the world's most powerful and successful central banks, outstanding for its independence in the conduct of monetary policy and for its success in the achievement of relative price stability virtually throughout the post-war era. This collection of essays by the President of the Bundesbank, by former and present Board members and by Heads of Department within the Bundesbank offer a rare inside insight into its operations. The individual contributions to this volume explain the historical, legal and institutional basis of German internal and external monetary policy and highlight the goals of the German central bank and its role in the economy as a whole. The role of the Deutschmark as one of the leading international transaction, reserve and investment currencies is discussed in detail. Students of monetary management and the banking community throughout the world will benefit greatly from a study of this unique volume.

The primary objective of this book is to advance the state of the art in specifying and ?tting to data structural multi-sector dynamic macroeconomic models, and empirically implementing them. The fundamental construct upon which we build is the Ramsey model. A most attractive feature of this model is the insights it provides into the dynamics of an economy in tr- sition to long-run equilibrium. With some exceptions, Ramsey models are highly aggregated - typically single sector models. However, interest often lies in understanding the forces of e- nomic growth across multiple sectors of an economy and on how policy impacts likely play out over time. Such analyses call for moredisaggregatedmodelsthatcanbe?ttocountryorregional data.Thisbookshowshowto: (i)extendthebasicmodeltom- tiple sectors, (ii) how to adapt the basic model to account for policy instruments, and (iii) 't the model to data, and obtain equilibrium values both forward and backward in time from the data points to which the model is initially 't

"Managing the World Economy," while recognizing how much has been achieved since the start of the Industrial Revolution, challenges the view that much better results could not have been attained. It argues that faster economic growth and much better use of the available human talent could have been in the past, and should be in the future, achievable targets. The reasons for the performance of the world economy over the past 200 years being well below the achievable optimum stem mainly from misconceptions about macroeconomic policy, which the book sets out to explain and correct.