This paper presents a stylized general equilibrium model of the Venezuelan economy. The model explains how the recent sharp fall in oil revenue combines with foreign exchange rationing to produce a steep rise in inflation. Counterintuitively, a devaluation of the official exchange rate could temporarily reduce inflation. The model also explains how the hyper-depreciation of the black market exchange rate reflects prices in the most distorted goods markets.

The wide variation in transition economies raises questions about differences in economic growth, the applicability of transition policies, and the advantages of economic reform. This report seeks to answer these questions.

With the global economy gaining some momentum, economies of Latin America and the Caribbean are recovering from a recession at the regional level in 2016. This gradual improvement can be understood as tale of two adjustments, external and fiscal, that are ongoing in response to earlier shocks. But headwinds from commodity terms-of-trade shocks and country-specific domestic factors are fading, paving the way for real GDP to grow by about 1 percent in 2017. Regional activity is expected to pick up further momentum in 2018, but at a slower pace than previously anticipated, while medium-term growth is projected to remain modest at about 2.6 percent. The outlook is shaped by key shifts in the global economic and policy landscape—where slow growth, low productivity, and high income inequality are creating pressure for a shift toward inward- looking policies in some advanced economies. Domestic fundamentals and developments, however, will continue to play a significant role in determining growth for the region. At the same time, risks to the outlook have widened in a setting of higher global uncertainty. In this challenging external context, countries should aim for completing fiscal and external adjustments to preserve or rebuild policy buffers. Charting a course toward higher, sustainable, and more equitable growth will also require strengthening structural reforms. Specifically, closing infrastructure gaps, improving the business environment, governance, and education outcomes, and encouraging female labor participation are necessary to boost medium-term growth and foster income convergence. Chapters in this report examine the ongoing external adjustment to terms-of-trade shifts, drivers of capital flows to the region, the role of the investor base, and macroeconomic impact of migration and remittances.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the main factors that affected the course of the countries of South-Eastern Europe during transition, contributing, as a result, to their disappointing economic performance. Thus, the role of initial conditions and issues concerning the effectiveness of macroeconomic stabilization and structural reforms are at the centre of the analysis. Furthermore, this volume focuses on developments and issues concerning international trade patterns, foreign direct investment and the impact of the Euro on the exchange rate policies of the countries in the region.

This useful volume features surveys of 10 of the 12 members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the successor organisation to the USSR. . . I heartily recommend this book for all economists interested in the economic transition of the CIS. Roy Gardner, Comparative Economic Studies The country studies (and the editors introduction) contain a wealth of statistical information that will be appreciated by many readers. . . Those interested in a broad overview will focus on the introduction and the conclusion, where the editors offer their synthesis of the ten country studies. This synthesis in itself is an important achievement that summarizes the wealth of country findings in a compact and easily readable format. Those who need more detail will greatly benefit from the in-depth treatment of the ten countries in the core chapters. The high level of scholarship of this volume ensures its usefulness, not only to academics and researchers specializing in transition, but also to development and comparative economists working on issues of economic growth. The specific country studies will be of value to economists assigned to the region by international organizations or to local economists interested to have a western perspective on developments in their countries. In summary, this is an important addition to the literature that summarizes the record of transition during the decade of the 1990s. Zvi Lerman, Slavic Review [This] book is to be commended for several reasons. First of all, it makes predominantly native research available to English speakers. Secondly, it has managed to provide separate chapters for as many as ten of the twelve members of the Commonwealth of Independent States and has not allowed its treatment of Russia to dominate the discussion. Thirdly, its approach to the theme of economic prospects is both country-oriented and comparative. And finally, it fulfills its remit in considering the future as well as the present. W.V. Wallace, Slavonic and East European Review Professors Gur Ofer and Richard Pomfret have created a volume in which timely and lucid combination of analyses, extensive information and clear-cut knowledge of what went wide of the mark during the 1990s in the Soviet bloc are all well presented. They offer economic and institutional analyses to help understand alternative routes to economic growth in the CIS. Bruno S. Sergi, Economics of Transition This first comprehensive application of the new growth accounting to systemic transition in ten ex-Soviet republics puts weak governance public and corporate and capital paucity as the key retardants to market-led dynamism today. The country-specific analyses, embedded in a rich description of resource, demographic and political environments, shows that these economies, as yet little touched by globalisation, need to build institutions qualitatively attractive to FDI and to technology transfer if their catch-up rate is to satisfy the aspirations of their still poverty-racked peoples. Michael Kaser, St Antony s College, Oxford, UK This book brings together ten original studies on the transition and growth experience and the foundations for long-term growth of the newly independent states created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Beginning with an overview of the common pre-1992 background and comparative information on the post-1992 performance of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, the authors continue by reviewing the Soviet background and post-independence experience. They then emphasise both the uniformity and diversity of the twelve CIS countries recent history. The problem of explaining economic growth in transition economies is also explored, and individual in-depth country studies are presented. The contributors to the book are a combination of in-country researchers with in-depth local knowledge and access to data, and international economists with technical expertise and experience of long-ter

The September 2016 issue of the IMF Research Bulletin includes the following two Research Summaries: “A New Look at Bank Capital” (by Jihad Dagher, Giovanni Dell’Ariccia, Luc Laeven, Lev Ratnovski, and Hui Tong) and “Does Growth Create Jobs?: Evidence for Advance and Developing Economies (by Zidong An, Nathalie Gonzalez Prieto, Prakash Loungani, and Saurabh Mishra). The Q&A article by Rabah Arezki discusses “Seven Questions on Rethinking the Oil Market in the Aftermath of the 2014-16 Price Slump.” A listing of recent IMF Working Papers, Staff Discussion Notes, and Recommended Readings from IMF Publications are also included. Readers can also find an announcement on the 2016 Annual Research Conference and links to top cited 2015 articles in the IMF Economic Review.

Read this book to trace the events that shape the history of Vietnams economy. Beginning with the economic reforms under Doi Moi in 1986, the country did well in agriculture and industry, but this progress was marred by the Asian financial and economic cr

Celebrating twenty years of transition from socialism to capitalism, this book is designed to be the core textbook for undergraduate courses in transition economics and comparative economic systems. Given the passage of time, Transition Economics: Two Decades On reviews and accounts for the outcomes in the so-called transition economies and, from an academic perspective, takes the reader through developments and issues in the twenty years of transition from plan to market. Treating its subject matter thematically, the book incorporates much of the transition economics literature and evidence that have evolved over the past two decades. In particular, the authors focus on the most important aspects of economic transition, including: The initial conditions at the outset of transition Paradigms and patterns of transition The main transition policies and economic reforms The performance of transition countries and firms The lessons from transition The textbook covers a wide range of both contemporary microeconomic and macroeconomic issues, in over thirty ex-socialist European and Asian countries, including Russia and China. Transition Economics: Two Decades On is more than just a book about a particular part of the world or the transformation that was experienced at a particular time in history. The authors believe that the study of the economics of transition gives the reader an insight into theories, policies, reforms, legacies, institutions, processes and lessons that have application and relevance, beyond the specific transition from plan to market, to other parts of the world and to other times in history.

This book, the first of two volumes, brings together the work of Domenico Mario Nuti to highlight his significant and varied contribution to economics. Bringing together works from across Nuti’s career, his distinctive intellectual framework is exemplified in relation to discussions on the drivers of economic growth and development, the most efficient economic system, the organisation of firms, and how economies should be managed. This volume gives particular attention to socialist economic systems, and the transition of former socialist countries to market economies. This book, through the inclusion of an introduction, aims to contextualise his ideas and illustrate their continued relevance. It will be of wide interest to students and researchers.

The centrally planned economies (CPEs) of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe have experienced severe imbalances in domestic and external markets over the past several decades. As a result, they have been chronically afflicted by problems such as excess demand, repressed inflation, deficits of commodities, queues, waiting lists, and forced savings. Economists have responded to these phenomena by developing appropriate theoretical and empirical models of CPEs. Of particular note have been the pioneering studies of Richard Portes on disequilibrium econometric models and Janos Kornai on the shortage economy. Each approach has attracted followers who have produced numerous, innovative macro- and microeconomic models of Poland, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, and the USSR. These models have proved to be of considerable value in the analysis of the causes, consequences and remedies of disequilibrium phenomena. Inevitably, the new research has also generated controversies both between and within the schools of shortage and disequilibrium modelling, concerning the fundamental nature of the socialist economy, theoretical concepts and definitions, the specification of models, estimation techniques, interpretation of empirical findings, and policy recommend ations. Furthermore, the research effort has been energetic but incomplete, so many gaps exist in the field.