The OECD’s most recent Employment Outlook (September 1986) refers to the increasing incidence and importance of “concealed activities, linked to the emergence of new forms of working arrangements.”53 It highlights a number of policy concerns that stem from the existence of varying degrees of concealed employment, such as the adverse effects on the public finances through misallocation of social benefits and, in general, the unintended distortions that the implementation of a given set of policies on such issues as contribution rates, labor market flexibility, and part-time employment may introduce in the presence of sizable concealed or irregular activity. It also refers to “the effect of concealed employment on public perceptions and on public acceptance of government policies and the legal framework.” The Spanish authorities have long been aware that substantial concealed employment may have introduced an upward bias on the official rate of unemployment.54 With the aim of gauging the extent of this bias and of obtaining important qualitative and quantitative information on overall working conditions in Spain, the authorities conducted in late 1985 a comprehensive survey of Spain’s employment situation.55
Perhaps one of the most interesting and novel features of the survey, which was based on a sample of some 63,000 people taken from every region of the country, is that it attempted to make inferences about working conditions in general, and the employment status of those interviewed in particular, through a study of the various ways in which those interviewed had used their time over a given period. This procedure largely preempted some of the biases that may have affected the official survey, in which employment status is self-determined. The rigorous sampling techniques used, the large sample size, and the meticulous way in which the survey was actually carried out in the field go a long way toward validating many of the study’s main conclusions.
At the outset the study underscores the difficulties that are sometimes encountered in attempting to capture in a single figure or set of figures such broad concepts as unemployment, employment, or the size of the labor force. It appears that a more accurate characterization of labor-market conditions in Spain is to say that within each of these broad categories—employed, unemployed—there is a clearly identifiable core or nucleus surrounded by a number of peripheral groups whose members, depending on the definition used, can be variously classified. Thus, for instance, a core of unemployed did not work at all during the period of reference (the quarter preceding the survey) and whose members actively sought employment; these would account for approximately 10 percent of the labor force over 14 years of age. If to this group are added all those individuals who, regardless of their contact with the labor market, classify themselves as unemployed,56 the rate of unemployment then rises to 18 percent. The estimated rate of unemployment is closer to 16 percent on exclusion of those who had some remunerated activity over the period of reference.
The notion of concealed or irregular employment is arrived at through an examination of the subject’s relation vis-à-vis the social security system. Three groups are identified: those who are employed and thus have a theoretical obligation to contribute to the system and do not (1,826,000); those who are employed and receive unemployment compensation (118,000); and those who contributed to the inappropriate regime within the social security system (314,000). These 2.3 million persons account for about 17 percent of the labor force. The index of irregularity—defined as the ratio of those employed under irregular conditions to total employment—was estimated to be 21.9 percent for the labor market as a whole and was particularly high for those 25 years and under (46.6 percent), those who work at home (43.8 percent), the part-time employed (47.6 percent), females (36 percent), and those with low incomes (36 percent).
The above figures highlight and substantiate claims made in a number of more limited studies that the Spanish labor market is greatly segmented, and that the burden of unemployment, while not as heavy as that suggested by the official rate of unemployment, is very unevenly distributed among the various social strata. They also suggest the need for further measures to foster labor market flexibility, such as those adopted in 1985, which, through a reduction of employers’ social security contributions for the young and the part-time employed, must have contributed to a reduction of concealed employment.
Appendix II Some Determinants of Spanish Export Performance
It was argued in the text that a qualitative assessment of export performance over the 1980s underscored both the key role played by various indices of competitiveness and the differential impact of foreign and domestic demand, with increases in the latter usually associated with decelerations or actual drops in the volume of exports. The behavior of Spanish exports over the period 1970–85 is well described by the following equation.57
This regression, based on annual observations, explains export performance (EX), as measured by an index for the volume of merchandise exports, in terms of three variables: domestic demand (DDEM), an indicator of foreign demand (FDEM), and a lagged index of competitiveness (COMP). All variables are natural logarithms. The indicator of foreign demand used is a trade-weighted index for the volume of non-oil imports in Spain’s 27 most important trade partners. The index of competitiveness is given by the ratio of indices of nontradable to tradable goods’ prices as compiled by the Secretariat of State for Commerce. As can be observed in Chart 8, the time profile of this index after 1975 is not substantively different from the real effective exchange rate index shown in Table 4, which is a trade-weighted average ratio for Spain’s consumer price index to the consumer price indices of partner countries, multiplied by the nominal effective exchange rate. Both indices exhibit the same dynamic behavior, and there is a close correspondence between local maxima and minima. This is not the case before 1975, however. The index used for the real effective rate is based on 1980–82 average trade weights. To the extent that, over the sample period, there have been substantial changes in the commodity composition of Spanish trade and hence in the relative importance of individual trade partners, particularly as a result of the first oil crisis, the index will, over extended periods of time, tend to lose some of its reliability as an indicator of competitiveness. The Secretariat’s index was thus preferred because it incorporates an adjustment for the impact of the first oil price rise.
Various lag specifications were used for the index of competitiveness. Although the estimated equation uses annual data, the above index was available on a quarterly basis; this permitted the estimation of equations where the definition of the index is not constrained to be the average of the four quarters corresponding to a given calendar year but could, in principle, incorporate quarters from two different years. Thus, equation (1) may be interpreted as follows: export performance in 1984, for instance, depends on the contemporaneous values of the domestic and foreign demand variables and on the index of competitiveness corresponding to the average of the last two quarters of 1982 and the first two quarters of 1983, for a lagged response of six quarters. The results reported in equation (1) are not significantly altered if the length of the lag on the index of competitiveness is reduced to five quarters:
A further shortening of the lag to four quarters leads to unsatisfactory results; the estimated coefficient on the index of competitiveness is no longer significant. These results would suggest that the delayed response of exports to changes in competitiveness is no shorter than about 15 months.
All the coefficients in equation (1) have the expected signs. The elasticity of export performance with respect to foreign demand is estimated to be 1.65. The corresponding elasticity with respect to domestic demand is – 1.40. A 1 percent rise in the index of competitiveness (equivalent to a depreciation of the peseta) leads to a 0.17 percent rise in exports. All estimated coefficients are significant at the 1 percent level, while the Durbin-Watson test statistic for serial correlation does not reject the hypothesis of no serial correlation.
Although data for 1986 was available for the variables used in equations (1) and (2), the estimation period was truncated in 1985 on account of the many changes which took place during 1986 in Spain’s trading practices. The elimination of the export subsidies implied by the introduction of the value-added tax, the reduction of tariff protection vis-à-vis its EC partners, and the marked shifts in the composition of Spanish trade associated with EC membership are likely to have affected the nature of the relationship between export performance and the explanatory variables used. For this reason the above equations are unlikely to be useful for forecasting purposes. They do, however, provide useful insights into the relative impact of individual variables on export performance over 1970–85.
Appendix III Highlights of the Government’s “Programa Económico a Medio Plazo 1984/87”
A summary of the Government’s broad objectives for the evolution of the Spanish economy may be found in a series of White Papers issued at the outset of the adjustment program. The Programa Economico a Medio Plazo58, in particular, is a useful document which sets out clearly the Government’s economic aims in a medium-term perspective. It begins by recognizing that, to safeguard its sustainability, economic growth must be based on the establishment of internal and external macroeconomic balance. It acknowledges that expansionary demand policies can spur growth in the shortrun but that the eventual emergence of imbalances, sometimes requiring the imposition of restrictive measures, is likely to entail net welfare losses and lead to distortions in the allocation of resources.
Given the internal and external imbalances which have beset the Spanish economy during the early 1980s, the program establishes a series of intermediate objectives as necessary conditions for the attainment of sustained growth. These intermediate objectives include:
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a. a gradual reduction in the rate of inflation (to 5 percent by 1987) through, inter alia, a nonaccommodating stance of monetary policy, and an incomes policy based on wage moderation;
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b. a reduction of the deficit in the current account of the balance of payments through a realistic exchange rate policy and a firm commitment to export promotion;
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c. a reduction of the public sector deficit through expenditure restraint and a rise in the fiscal burden largely stemming from improved collection procedures.
Important as the attainment of these objectives is to achieve sustained growth and to foster a recovery of employment, the program recognizes that a number of structural reforms are necessary to improve the supply response of the economy and to facilitate the modernization of key productive sectors. It identifies the need for such reforms in:
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a. the industrial sector, through a retrenchment of those subsectors affected by excess capacity and a reorientation of industrial activity toward areas with better medium- and long-term prospects;
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b. the social security system, with the aim of redressing the underlying financial imbalances;
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c. the labor market, with the aim of alleviating the unemployment problem through a series of flexibilization measures (e.g., part-time employment and fixed-term contracts);
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d. the management of public enterprises, with particular emphasis on the need to lighten their burden on the budget;
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e. the energy sector, through a new National Energy Plan based on a series of demand and supply measures intended to bring the sector’s productive capacity in line with potential demand and to foster the development of domestic energy sources;
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f. the financial system, with the aim of removing a number of rigidities hampering the efficient allocation of financial resources.
Such stabilization measures and structural reforms were judged to be essential for the attainment of the program’s ultimate objective: an annual average rate of real GDP growth of 3 percent over the program period.
References
Aghevli, Bijan B. and Jorge R. Marquez-Ruarte A Case of Successful Adjustment: Korea’s Experience During 1980–84, International Monetary Fund Occasional Paper No. 39 Washington: International Monetary Fund, 1985.
Artus, Jacques “The Disequilibrium Real Wage Rate Hypothesis: An Empirical Evaluation,” Staff Papers, International Monetary Fund (Washington), Vol. 31 June 1984, pp. 249–302.
Bank of Spain, Annual Report (Madrid), various years.
Bank of Spain, Economic Bulletin (Madrid), various issues.
Bank of Spain, Statistical Bulletin (Madrid), various issues.
Beckerman, Wilfred Wage Rigidity and Unemployment London: Duckworth, 1986.
Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Condiciones de Vida y Trabajo en Espaha (Madrid), September 1986.
Coe, David T., “Nominal Wages, the NAIRU and Wage Flexibility,” OECD Economic Studies Paris, No. 5 Autumn 1985, pp. 87–126.
Dolado, Juan José and José Luis, Malo de Molina “Desempleo y Rigidez del Mercado de Trabajo en Espana,” Boletin Economico, Bank of Spain (Madrid), September 1985, pp. 22–40.
Dolado, Juan José and José Luis Malo de Molina, and Antonio Zabalza, “Spanish Industrial Unemployment: Some Explanatory Factors,” Economica (London), Vol. 53, No. 210(S), 1986, pp. 313–34.
Gamir, Luis, Politica Economica de Espana (Madrid: Alianza Universidad Textos, 1986).
Graham, Robert, Spain: Change of a Nation (London: Michael Joseph, 1984).
Grubb, Dennis, Richard Jackman, and Richard Layard, “Wage Rigidity and Unemployment in OECD Countries,” European Economic Review Amsterdam, Vol. 21 June 1983, pp. 11–39.
Guitian, Manuel, “Adjustment and Economic Growth: Their Fundamental Complementarity,” in Growth-Oriented Adjustment Programs, ed. by Vittorio Corbo, Morris Goldstein, and Mohsin Khan Washington: International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, 1987.
Harrison, Joseph, The Spanish Economy in the Twentieth Century (London: Croom Helm, 1985).
International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics (Washington), various issues.
International Monetary Fund, International Financial Statistics (Washington), 1986 Year Book.
International Monetary Fund, IMF Survey (Washington), March 9, 1987.
Khan, Mohsin S., and Roberto Zahler, “Trade and Financial Liberalization Given External Shocks and Inconsistent Domestic Policies,” Staff Papers, International Monetary Fund (Washington), Vol. 32 (March 1985), pp. 22–55.
Kopits, George, Structural Reform, Stabilization, and Growth in Turkey, International Monetary Fund Occasional Paper No. 52 Washington: International Monetary Fund, 1987.
Lopez-Claros, Augusto, “The European Community: On the Road to Integration,” Finance and Development Washington, September 1987, pp. 35–39.
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Muns, Joaquin, Historia de las Relaciones entre Espaha y el Fondo Monetario Internacional: 1958–1982 Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1986.
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National Institute of Statistics, Economic Outlook (Paris), December 1986.
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Sachs, Jeffrey, “Real Wages and Unemployment in the OECD Countries,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity Washington, No. 1 1983, pp. 255–303.
Sachs, Jeffrey, “Trade and Exchange Rate Policies in Growth-Oriented Adjustment Programs,” in Growth-Oriented Adjustment Pro-grams, ed. by Vittorio Corbo, Morris Goldstein, and Mohsin Khan Washington: International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, 1987.
Salisbury, William T. and James D. Theberge, Spain in the 1970s: Economics, Social Structure, Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1976).
Schultze, C.L., “Real Wages, Real Wage Aspirations and Unemployment in Europe,” Unpublished paper prepared for the Brookings Institution’s Conference on Impediments to European Economic Growth, October 1986.
Wright, Alison, The Spanish Economy: 1959–1976 (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1977).
It is estimated that between 1973 and 1980 labor costs in Spain rose more rapidly than the price of energy products as these, being subject to Government control, were not fully adjusted to reflect higher import costs.
Spain joined the Fund and the World Bank in the autumn of 1958. A comprehensive history of the relations between the Fund and Spain is provided by Muns (1986).
Public enterprises were required to purchase supplies and equipment on the Spanish market. State authorization was required to expand industrial capacity—and hence output—and to undertake any type of industrial investment. Preferential treatment was granted to certain industries whose development was deemed, to be in the “national interest.”
Wright (1977), p. 28.
The requirement for prior administrative authorization for foreign investments involving less than 50 percent ownership of a given Spanish enterprise was eliminated in 1959.
Tourist activity in Spain accounts for slightly more than 9 percent of GDP, a figure not substantially lower than the contribution made by the construction sector. Its influence on employment is no less important: more than 1.1 million people are directly or indirectly employed in the tourist sector, a figure that accounts for more than 11 percent of the labor force. Spain ranks first in most international comparisons of tourist-industry indicators. Specifically, it accounts for more than 10 percent of the total volume of world tourism and 8 percent of the total foreign exchange generated.
All European OECD members with the exception of France, the Federal Republic of Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy.
In the event, actual consumption that year stood at 8 million tons.
Graham (1984), p. 86.
At the end of 1984 the stock of domestic public debt in Spain stood at 19 percent of GDP. The issue of the growing claims on public sector resources made by debt servicing is examined more fully in the section on fiscal policy.
The monetary program has been based on real growth and inflation objectives from which a target for total liquidity has been derived. Conflicts with other policy objectives, such as the desired evolution of the exchange rate or of interest rates, have often led to temporary deviations from the projected targets. The anticipated behavior of the balance of payments and the borrowing requirements of the public sector have determined the permissible expansion of credit to the private sector.
ALP consists of currency in circulation, sight, savings, and time deposits, banks’ nonmonetary liabilities, and money market liabilities.
Because the ALP figures used by the authorities for the purpose of monetary control/targeting are seasonally adjusted monthly averages of daily data, the rates of growth quoted in the text for the end-of-year outturn differ slightly from those given in the monetary survey (Table 4), which are based on end-of-period stocks.
The demand for treasury bills was expected to increase substantially as a result of a reallocation of assets within ALP (at the expense of bank deposits) and as treasury bills were substituted for other short-term assets not included in ALP, such as the “pagares de empresa.” At the same time, however, a general movement away from short-term instruments toward medium- and long-term financial assets and real assets could be expected as a result of the new tax legislation and its impact on the relative rates of return of alternative assets.
A fuller discussion of some of these reforms is contained in Section IV.
Relatively high (low) in relation to what the rates would be if the above reserve and investment ratios were lower.
In the extreme case of central bank financing without recourse to sterilization the result will be inflation, which is also a form of taxation.
This process may be aggravated if the economy is characterized by relatively high rates of inflation. A recent study on the impact of inflation on the fiscal deficit concludes that while the outcome depends on the type of debt instrument issued by the government, when the bulk of the debt is held in the form of floating interest securities denominated in domestic currency, the impact of inflation on interest rates will increase the fiscal deficit in real terms. The fiscal deficit thus becomes a function of both, the initial stock of public debt and the level of inflation.
Noninterest expenditure rose from over 36 percent of GDP in 1984 to 38 percent of GDP in 1985. The rate of growth of this type of expenditure–15 percent—exceeded by 3½ percentage points the rate of growth of nominal GDP, a marked reversal with respect to 1984 when noninterest expenditure expanded by 9 percent, or about 5 percentage points below the rate of GDP growth.
The introduction of the VAT in 1986 permitted the fiscal authorities to discover a large number of potential contributors.
Empirical studies carried out at the Secretariat of State for Commerce suggest that the relationship between the rate of growth of domestic demand and export performance may have been weakened in recent years as a result of the increasing relative importance of other factors, particularly the competitiveness of the peseta. This is borne out by the data for 1985–86, although in light of the radical changes which took place in the course of 1986 in Spain’s external sector, such as the changes in the commodity composition of imports stemming from the decline in the price of oil products or the implementation of a number of trade liberalization measures stemming from Spain’s entry into the EC, there may have been substantial variations in the relative importance of the variables affecting export performance, and comparisons with previous years may be somewhat misleading.
These zones are Asturias, Barcelona, the Basque country, Cadiz, Galicia, and Madrid.
Except shipbuilding, where the improvement was marginal on account of weak sales.
Prices of petroleum products in Spain are administered. Over time they have tended to adjust more slowly to changes in market conditions.
Nearly 90 percent of total domestic migration during this period was to Spain’s four most industrialized centers: Madrid, Barcelona, the Basque country, and Valencia.
The net migratory outflow throughout the 1960s and early 1970s is estimated at about½ million people.
The rate of female participation in the labor force in Spain is so low by European standards as to be puzzling. That it cannot solely be explained by the possibly discouraging effect that the deterioration of labor market conditions after 1974 might have had on women wishing to enter the labor force is made clear by the fact that the rate was already the lowest then and has not fallen since. That it is not an Iberian phenomenon—to be explained in terms of certain social differences vis-à-vis the rest of Europe—is made clear by the fact that the Portuguese female participation rate is actually higher than the European average. Some authors have suggested that it may partly reflect some degree of Spanish self-imposed economic isolation over the 1950s and 1960s, which slowed the dissemination of rapidly changing attitudes as regards the role of women in society seen elsewhere in Europe.
In 1974, the share of Spanish exports plus imports to GDP stood at 29.2 percent, or drastically below that of the Federal Republic of Germany (48.2 percent), Italy (43.6 percent), Portugal (73.0 percent), Belgium (118.7 percent), or even Greece (42.3 percent).
With the exception of females aged over 70, the two age strata with the proportionally highest number of males and females in 1984 corresponded to those aged 16-to-19 and 20-to-24 years.
According to the OECD, the ratio of employers’ to employees’ social security contributions in Spain is probably the highest among OECD members.
Save for Spain, where there was no adjustment of real labor costs to the first oil price rise, in all other countries the adjustment took place in 1976. But even then the adjustment path was not through a reduction of real wages but rather through improvements in productivity, sometimes associated with lower levels of employment.
The adverse impact of persistent real wage growth on Spanish employment has been amply confirmed by empirical studies, the relative scarcity of reliable data notwithstanding. A recent attempt by the OECD to explain the evolution of employment in the Spanish industrial sector over the period 1965–85 found the long-run elasticity with respect to real average labor costs, productivity and energy prices to be –0.7, 1.0, and –0.3, respectively, suggesting that the dominant factor behind the decline in industrial employment was the “failure of real labor costs to adjust in a period of very slow growth of output and of underlying productivity and rising energy prices since 1975.” (OECD, Economic Survey, April 1986.) The rapid adjustment of nominal wages to prices and their increasing insensitivity to the rate of unemployment suggests that the Spanish labor market—or its industrial sector in any event—functions so as to maintain real wages, even at the expense of rising unemployment. The OECD goes on to suggest that this “points to the existence of a wage-price spiral, the unwinding of which has been extremely slow,” despite the sharper deterioration of labor market conditions with respect to other European countries.
OECD, Economic Survey, April 1986.
Although cross-country comparisons demand caution on account of differences in the types of samples used, this number is much higher than the corresponding estimates for Japan (11 years), the United Kingdom (8½ years), Canada (7 years), Australia and the United States (6½ years). For these same countries, the share of employees with less than 5 years’ seniority exceeds 57 percent in Canada, Australia, and the United States, is around 47 percent in the United Kingdom, 33 percent in Japan but nearer 11 percent in Spain. At the other end of the distribution, the share of employees with 15 or more years is well below 20 percent in all countries save Japan, where it is 28 percent; the corresponding share in Spain exceeds 40 percent. Even making allowances for the fact that by concentrating on large enterprises the Spanish figures probably have an upward bias, it is clear that the duration of employment in Spain is high indeed.
The corresponding ratio for 1985 is 24 percent, but the increase is largely the result of the new employment schemes implemented by the Government as part of its efforts to foster greater labor market flexibility.
Spain’s compliance with the terms of the EC’s preferential agreements with these countries induced a certain amount of trade diversion, as in the case of imports of coffee and cocoa, which had traditionally been supplied by a number of countries in Latin America but which would henceforth be supplied by the ACP. The Common Agricultural Policy’s (CAP) requirement that cereals be purchased from EC member countries at higher than “world” prices, or from nonmembers at the so-called “threshold” price, which is also higher than the world price, also resulted in some trade diversion (see IMF Survey, March 9, 1987). Nevertheless the overall impact of the process of trade liberalization resulting from accession will be to further open up the Spanish economy to its trade partners both within and outside the EC.
Certain strategic sectors, such as defense, public services, mass media, and air transport, were excepted, and prior authorization will still be required.
The Bank of Spain announced in October 1987 that the buying of foreign notes and travellers checks against pesetas was completely liberalized. Henceforth, any Spanish resident, individual or corporation, would be allowed to undertake such purchases without further limitation other than the obligation of being property registered.
The steel sector, in particular, found itself in the midst of a crisis in 1986–it is estimated that the reduction in effective protection was of the order of 15 percent—aggravated by the appreciation of the peseta against the U.S. dollar and the continued slackness in demand in a number of traditional importers of Spanish steel in the Third World.
Namely, the possibility of writing off new investments in fixed capital for projects initiated in 1985 if at least 10 percent of planned expenditures were carried out during the year and the widening and increasing of the tax deduction for investment in residential construction.
Foreign direct investment in 1986 accounted for about 16 percent of total gross domestic investment; the corresponding figure in 1985 had been 9 percent and the average for the previous four-year period had been closer to 4 percent.
Although the relative importance of the various cost components has undoubtedly changed in recent years, in 1975, the most recent year for which such cost distribution is available, labor costs accounted for 61 percent of total costs, followed by agricultural products’ prices (20 percent) and imported inputs’ prices (16 percent).
At the end of 1986, the share of the basket subject to some form of control stood at 13 percent.
The monetary authorities felt that some appreciation of the peseta was perhaps inevitable in light of the rapid accumulation of international reserves (stemming from a better than expected current account performance), which could have put in jeopardy the overall objectives of monetary policy as regards the rates of growth of the monetary aggregates.
These wage and cost developments notwithstanding, the gain in the terms of trade during 1986 was sufficiently large to lead to a GDP deflator of about 11½ percent and a further improvement in firms’ profit shares.
The evolution of the capital account in 1987 was also affected by monetary developments. Liquidity was boosted in the first few months of 1987 by a pronounced shift in the sources of financing of the budget deficit. Recourse to monetary-base financing was precipitated by a fall forced by the Treasury in the rate of return on treasury bills and the resulting lack of interest by the banks and the nonbank public. At the same time credit to the private sector rose sharply in response to strong demand. The overshooting of the targets for monetary expansion forced the Bank of Spain to raise its intervention rates in the interbank market as well as the reserve requirement; bank rates quickly followed suit. The emergence of a substantial interest rate differential in favor of Spain and the authorities’ determination to prevent too pronounced a real appreciation of the peseta with respect to the currencies of Spain’s EC partners led to central bank intervention in the foreign exchange markets and the imposition of certain temporary measures to stem short-term speculative capital inflows while continuing the liberalization of outward medium- and long-term capital movements. The widening of the interest rate differential brought to a halt the process of prepayment of external debt seen over the previous two-year period. By mid-year the Treasury began to issue a new type of treasury bill (letras del Tesoro) which is exempt from any fiscal advantage and which should facilitate the control of bank liquidity.
Issues that will also have to be confronted by most governments in the OECD.
The 1986 budget, for instance, envisioned a 15 percent cutback in public investment expenditure.
At present the signing of the Agreement has only one important operational implication: Spain has made available to the European Fund for Monetary Cooperation 20 percent of its gold and foreign exchange reserves in return for the equivalent amount in ECUs.
The completion of the internal market is an attempt by the EC to eliminate, by 1992, all remaining barriers to the free flow of goods, services, labor, and capital across member states.
For a fuller discussion of this issue see Lopez-Claros (1987).
The OECD defines concealed employment as “employment which, while not illegal in itself, has not been declared to one or more administrative authorities to whom it should be made known, thereby leading to the evasion of legal regulations, the evasion of taxes, or the evasion of a reduction of social security entitlements.”
The official labor survey (EPA), for instance, has repeatedly shown very high rates of unemployment in key labor-intensive export sectors—shoes, leather goods, certain textiles—while other indicators showed an unprecedented degree of productive activity.
The EPA’s first question asks the subject if he/she is unemployed. In contrast, following a series of questions on the use of their time the present survey ends with the same question. This change in methodology leads to an estimated reduction of 490,000 in the number of unemployed with respect to the EPA.
Standard errors of the coefficients are in parentheses.
Secretariat for Economy and Planning, Programa Economico a Medio Plazo 1984/87: Evolution General y Proyecciones de la Economia Espanola (Madrid: Ministry of Economics and Finance, 1984).
Occasional Papers of the International Monetary Fund
2. Economic Stabilization and Growth in Portugal, by Hans O. Schmitt. 1981.
5. Trade Policy Developments in Industrial Countries, by S.J. Anjaria, Z. Iqbal, L.L. Perez, and W.S. Tseng. 1981.
6. The Multilateral System of Payments: Keynes, Convertibility, and the International Monetary Fund’s Articles of Agreement, by Joseph Gold. 1981.
8. Taxation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Part I: Tax Policy and Administration in Sub-Saharan Africa, by Carlos A. Aguirre, Peter S. Griffith, and M. Zühtü Yücelik. Part II: A Statistical Evaluation of Taxation in Sub-Saharan Africa, by Vito Tanzi. 1981.
10. International Comparisons of Government Expenditure, by Alan A. Tait and Peter S. Heller. 1982.
11. Payments Arrangements and the Expansion of Trade in Eastern and Southern Africa, by Shailendra J. Anjaria, Sena Eken, and John F. Laker. 1982.
12. Effects of Slowdown in Industrial Countries on Growth in Non-Oil Developing Countries, by Morris Goldstein and Mohsin S. Khan. 1982.
13. Currency Convertibility in the Economic Community of West African States, by John B. McLenaghan, Saleh M. Nsouli, and Klaus-Walter Riechel. 1982.
14. International Capital Markets: Developments and Prospects, 1982, by a Staff Team Headed by Richard C. Williams, with G.G. Johnson. 1982.
15. Hungary: An Economic Survey, by a Staff Team Headed by Patrick de Fontenay. 1982.
16. Developments in International Trade Policy, by S.J. Anjaria, Z. Iqbal, N. Kirmani, and L.L. Perez. 1982.
17. Aspects of the International Banking Safety Net, by G.G. Johnson, with Richard K. Abrams. 1983.
18. Oil Exporters’ Economic Development in an Interdependent World, by Jahangir Amuzegar. 1983.
19. The European Monetary System: The Experience, 1979–82, by Horst Ungerer, with Owen Evans and Peter Nyberg. 1983.
20. Alternatives to the Central Bank in the Developing World, by Charles Collyns. 1983.
22. Interest Rate Policies in Developing Countries: A Study by the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. 1983.
24. Government Employment and Pay: Some International Comparisons, by Peter S. Heller and Alan A. Tait. 1983. Revised 1984.
26. The Fund, Commercial Banks, and Member Countries, by Paul Mentre. 1984.
28. Exchange Rate Volatility and World Trade: A Study by the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. 1984.
29. Issues in the Assessment of the Exchange Rates of Industrial Countries: A Study by the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. 1984.
30. The Exchange Rate System—Lessons of the Past and Options for the Future: A Study by the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. 1984.
33. Foreign Private Investment in Developing Countries: A Study by the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. 1985.
34. Adjustment Programs in Africa: The Recent Experience, by Justin B. Zulu and Saleh M. Nsouli. 1985.
35. The West African Monetary Union: An Analytical Review, by Rattan J. Bhatia. 1985.
36. Formulation of Exchange Rate Policies in Adjustment Programs, by a Staff Team Headed by G.G. Johnson. 1985.
38. Trade Policy Issues and Developments, by Shailendra J. Anjaria, Naheed Kirmani, and Arne B. Petersen. 1985.
39. A Case of Successful Adjustment: Korea’s Experience During 1980–84, by Bijan B. Aghevli and Jorge Márquez-Ruarte. 1985.
41. Fund-Supported Adjustment Programs and Economic Growth, by Mohsin S. Khan and Malcolm D. Knight. 1985.
42. Global Effects of Fund-Supported Adjustment Programs, by Morris Goldstein. 1986.
44. A Review of the Fiscal Impulse Measure, by Peter S. Heller, Richard D. Haas, and Ahsan H. Mansur. 1986.
45. Switzerland’s Role as an International Financial Center, by Benedicte Vibe Christensen. 1986.
46. Fund-Supported Programs, Fiscal Policy, and Income Distribution: A Study by the Fiscal Affairs Department of the International Monetary Fund. 1986.
47. Aging and Social Expenditure in the Major Industrial Countries, 1980–2025, by Peter S. Heller, Richard Hemming, Peter W. Kohnert, and a Staff Team from the Fiscal Affairs Department. 1986.
48. The European Monetary System: Recent Developments, by Horst Ungerer, Owen Evans, Thomas Mayer, and Philip Young. 1986.
49. Islamic Banking, by Zubair Iqbal and Abbas Mirakhor. 1987.
50. Strengthening the International Monetary System: Exchange Rates, Surveillance, and Objective Indicators, by Andrew Crockett and Morris Goldstein. 1987.
51. The Role of the SDR in the International Monetary System, by the Research and Treasurer’s Departments of the International Monetary Fund. 1987.
52. Structural Reform, Stabilization, and Growth in Turkey, by George Kopits. 1987.
53. Floating Exchange Rates in Developing Countries: Experience with Auction and Interbank Markets, by Peter J. Quirk, Benedicte Vibe Christensen, Kyung-Mo Huh, and Toshihiko Sasaki. 1987.
54. Protection and Liberalization: A Review of Analytical Issues, by W. Max Corden. 1987.
55. Theoretical Aspects of the Design of Fund-Supported Adjustment Programs: A Study by the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. 1987.
56. Privatization and Public Enterprises, by Richard Hemming and Ali M. Mansoor. 1988.
57. The Search for Efficiency in the Adjustment Process: Spain in the 1980s, by Augusto Lopez-Claros. 1988.
Note: Excludes those titles that are now out of print or that are now included in the series “World Economic and Financial Surveys.”