Archived Series > World Economic and Financial Surveys
Abstract
These studies provide supporting material for the analysis and scenarios in the World Economic Outlook.
Abstract
These studies, prepared by the staff of the International Monetary Fund, comprise supporting material for the analyses and scenarios in the World Economic Outlook and provide a more detailed examination of the theory and evidence on some major issues affecting the global economy, commodity prices, and individual countries.
Abstract
This paper focuses on the private nonfinancial sectors of the affected economies, financial liberalization provided households and businesses with greater access to credit markets. This contributed to the long period of expansion during the 1980s. Partly as a result of major changes to the financial systems, several industrial countries had a boom in asset markets associated with a period of asset accumulation, an unprecedented buildup of debt, a sharp increase in relative asset prices, and related increases in household wealth. The expansion in household financial activity in the United Kingdom during the 1980s was paralleled by a sizable boom in investment spending and an increase in corporate debt. The structure of balance sheets was also affected by mergers and acquisitions that led to a further expansion in corporate debt. New types of bank loans and accounts have prevented even greater disintermediation but have also reduced net interest margins because more deposits now earn market-related rates of return.
Abstract
This paper describes the functioning of labor markets and to eliminate other structural obstacles to noninflationary growth. The decline in the price level in the home country will involve a rise in the real money supply and, if output is sluggish, this will result in an excess supply of money. This, in turn, will lead to a drop in the domestic interest rate and, given foreign interest rates, to a temporary depreciation of the exchange rate. Structural measures could also affect investment and the current account by raising the rate of return on capital in the home country. If capital is internationally mobile, a higher rate of return on capital would result in a rise in investment and a temporary deterioration in the home country’s current account, which will be financed by an inflow of foreign capital. The quantitative impact of financial market deregulation on the economy is rather uncertain.
Abstract
This paper reviews the long-term growth performance of the major industrial countries and discusses some of the many factors that have been identified as possible sources of the marked slowdown in growth since the early 1970s. According to the view of different demographic developments across countries, it is useful to break the growth of output down into changes in tabor input and changes in labor productivity in order to obtain a basis for cross-country comparisons. Wage behavior in the face of energy price shocks appears to have differed considerably among the major industrial countries. Increased uncertainty, reflecting, in particular, changes in the international economic environment and the stop-go financial policies of several of the major countries during the 1970s, and is frequently cited as a possible reason for the slowdown in growth, mainly through its impact on private investment. Views on the contribution of slower net capital accumulation to the deceleration in growth depend upon assessments of whether the efficiency of investment declined significantly after 1973 and on assumptions made about technological change and the embodiment of technical progress.
Abstract
This paper reviews recent analytical and empirical research on the determination of employment, to provide a framework for evaluating the merits of alternative policies to cope with unemployment. Particular emphasis is placed on the mechanisms of employment and wage determination described in recent studies. The lack of any systematic relationship between countries' long-run growth and employment performances reflects the fact that output per person employed (labor productivity) or, conversely, the labor intensity of production, has developed quite differently across countries. The main mechanism through which the rise in real wages has prevented greater employment gains in Europe over the past ten to fifteen years seems to have been a substitution of capital for labor which has lowered the labor intensity of production significantly more than in the United States. There are a number of important caveats with respect to the apparent relationship between differences in employment and labor cost developments across countries.