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You are looking at 1 - 6 of 6 items for :

  • Economic theory and methods x
  • Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts x
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Cover Departmental Papers
Pension Reforms in Europe: How Far Have We Come and Gone?
Mr. Armand P Fouejieu, Mr. Alvar Kangur, Samuel Romero Martinez, and Mauricio Soto
In the past few decades, a myriad of reforms in Europe have had a significant impact on the way and extent to which public pensions provide retirement income. This departmental paper takes stock of where European pension systems stand and assesses their key characteristics. We present a novel measure of the balance between lifetime benefits and contributions—the Proportionality Measure—to examine pension systems’ long-term sustainability, fairness, and intergenerational equity
Keywords:
Pension and social policy; intergenerational fairness; sustainability; Europe
Cover IMF Working Papers
Overfitting in Judgment-based Economic Forecasts: The Case of IMF Growth Projections
Klaus-Peter Hellwig
I regress real GDP growth rates on the IMF’s growth forecasts and find that IMF forecasts behave similarly to those generated by overfitted models, placing too much weight on observable predictors and underestimating the forces of mean reversion. I identify several such variables that explain forecasts well but are not predictors of actual growth. I show that, at long horizons, IMF forecasts are little better than a forecasting rule that uses no information other than the historical global sample average growth rate (i.e., a constant). Given the large noise component in forecasts, particularly at longer horizons, the paper calls into question the usefulness of judgment-based medium and long-run forecasts for policy analysis, including for debt sustainability assessments, and points to statistical methods to improve forecast accuracy by taking into account the risk of overfitting.
Keywords:
WP; growth projection; WEO forecast; LASSO coefficient; bootstrapped sample; shrinkage coefficient; Forecasting; GDP growth; machine learning; Personal income; Real exchange rates; Emerging and frontier financial markets; Population growth; Global; inflation dynamics; IMF growth projection; Euro area inflation dynamics; copyright page; area inflation dynamics; Income
Cover IMF Working Papers
Trade Openness and Growth: Pursuing Empirical Glasnost
Mr. Andreas Billmeier and Tommaso Nannicini
Studies of the impact of trade openness on growth are based either on cross-country analysis-which lacks transparency-or case studies-which lack statistical rigor. We apply transparent econometric methods drawn from the treatment evaluation literature to make the comparison between treated (i.e., open) and control (i.e., closed) countries explicit while remaining within a unified statistical framework. First, matching estimators highlight the rather far-fetched country comparisons underlying common cross-country results. When appropriately restricting the sample, we confirm a positive and significant effect of openness on growth. Second, we apply synthetic control methods-which account for endogeneity due to unobservable heterogeneity-to countries that liberalized their trade regime and we show that trade liberalization has often had a positive effect on growth.
Keywords:
WP; control country; area dummy; country comparison; trade policy; trade openness; growth; matching estimators; synthetic control; country match; standard error; a lot of country; state monopoly; unobservable country heterogeneity; economic growth; MCD country; Latin American country; unobservable characteristic; Population growth; Trade liberalization; Public expenditure review; Middle East; Africa
Cover IMF Staff Papers
Threshold Effects in the Relationship Between Inflation and Growth
Mr. Mohsin S. Khan and Mr. Abdelhak S Senhadji

This paper re-examines the issue of the existence of threshold effects in the relationship between inflation and growth, using new econometric techniques that provide appropriate procedures for estimation and inference. The threshold level of inflation above which inflation significantly slows growth is estimated at 1-3 percent for industrial countries and 11-12 percent for developing countries. The negative and significant relationship between inflation and growth, for inflation rates above the threshold level, is quite robust with respect to the estimation method, perturbations in the location of the threshold level, the exclusion of high-inflation observations, data frequency, and alternative specifications.

Keywords:
SP; rate of inflation; growth rate; coefficient estimate; inflation threshold; panel estimation; Threshold analysis; Hyperinflation; Terms of trade; Population growth
Cover IMF Working Papers
Regional Trade Agreements Versus Broad Liberalization: Which Path Leads to Faster Growth? Time-Series Evidence
Mr. Athanasios Vamvakidis
Should a closed economy open its trade to all countries or limit itself to participation in regional trade agreements (RTAs)? Based on time-series evidence for a data set for 1950-92, this paper estimates and compares the growth performance of countries that liberalized broadly and those that joined an RTA. The comparisons show that economies grew faster after broad liberalization, both in the short and long run, but slower after participation in an RTA. Economies also had higher investment shares after broad liberalization, but lower ones after joining an RTA. The policy implications support broad liberalization.
Keywords:
WP; trade share; RTA dummy; Years before; open economy; Economic Growth of Open Economies; RTAs lead; investment share; liberalization case; Trade policy; Trade liberalization; Population growth; Trade barriers; Logit models; Global
Cover Finance & Development
World economy in transition: Trade shares and trends, 1950–81
International Monetary Fund. External Relations Dept.

This paper examines the policy of protectionism in world trade. It reviews alternatives to trade restrictions, factors influencing trade policies, and implications of protection for developing countries. The paper highlights that the rise in protectionist pressures is worrisome, because the likelihood of chain reactions toward more protectionism generated by individual restrictive actions is greatest in a setting of slow economic growth and highly interdependent economies. The paper also analyzes capital utilization in the manufacturing enterprises.

Keywords:
FD; F&D; exchange rate; price; country; trade share; capital utilization; world export; U.S. dollar value; Exports; Population growth; Financial statistics; Development assistance; Global