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International Monetary Fund. External Relations Dept.
Finances & Développement, septembre 2015
International Monetary Fund. External Relations Dept.
Finanzas y Desarrollo, septiembre de 2015
International Monetary Fund. External Relations Dept.
This chapter presents the point of view and ideas of Sabina Alkire, an economist. Alkire wants the Multidimensional Poverty Index to be part of a data revolution to guide the fight against poverty. According to Alkire, learning to meditate soothed away what she describes as the temper tantrums of her childhood. The chapter also highlights the fact that an index is only as good as its underlying data, and in emerging market economies that quality is often inadequate. The quest for better poverty metrics coincides with growing doubts about the ability of conventional statistics, especially GDP, to gauge economic growth in the digital economy, let alone well-being, welfare, and environmental sustainability.
Mr. Andy M. Wolfe
and
Rafael Romeu
This study measures the impact of changing economic conditions in OECD countries on tourist arrivals to countries/destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean. A model of utility maximization across labor, consumption of goods and services at home, and consumption of tourism services across monopolistically competitive destinations abroad is presented. The model yields estimable equations arrivals as a function of OECD economic conditions and the elasticity of substitution across tourist destinations. Estimates suggest median tourism arrivals decline by at least three to five percent in response to a one percent increase in OECD unemployment, even after controlling for declines in OECD consumption and output gaps. Arrivals to individual destination are driven by differing exposure to OECD country groups sharing similar business cycle characteristics. Estimates of the elasticity of substitution suggest that tourism demand is highly price sensitive, and that a variety of costs to delivering tourism services drive market share losses in uncompetitive destinations. One recent cost change, the 2009 easing of restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba, supported a small (countercyclical) boost to Cuba’s arrivals of U.S. non-family travel, as well as a pre-existing surge in family travel (of Cuban origin). Despite the US becoming Cuba’s second highest arrival source, Cuban policymakers have significant scope for lowering the relatively high costs of family travel from the United States.
International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
This paper discusses impact of purchasing power on deferred payments. The importance of the economic consequences for the economy of the adoption of purchasing power guarantees would, of course, depend on the range within which these guarantees were applied. Any practical proposals are therefore predicated on the assumption that, for the country in question, there is uncertainty about future general price movements. The problem which purchasing power guarantees are intended to solve is shown in its simplest form in the settlement of a private debt. In countries suffering from inflation, the improvement in the lender–borrower relationship would also be strengthened, since, with a purchasing power clause in the contract, the stigma of usury that would attach to any attempt to insist on high nominal rates of interest in order to ensure a proper real return would be avoided. The legal and social sanctions against usury in money terms give rise to a paradox in discussing the use of a purchasing power clause. The analytical discussion seems to show that, if anything, the borrower would gain more than the lender from the use of the clause—simply because interest payments are likely to be larger relative to his net income, and to have their real value stabilized would have a greater stabilizing effect on real income.