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The R script and the database associated with the 2019 Merged model for Madagascar.

In this paper we have analyzed the main macroeconomic parameters and provided projections of their movements in the Republic of Serbia for the period 2015-2017. Projections of the main macroeconomic aggregates are based on the use of a tailored financial programming model (MEP1) that represents a set of statistical and econometric methods with a view to correlating the endogenous and exogenous variables of the entire macroeconomic system. The task of the applied financial programming model was to describe two scenarios of economic development of Republic of Serbia until 2017. As the main conclusion of this paper, the stance that there is no long-term and sustainable development of Serbia without a significantly higher share of domestic savings in the distribution of GDP as well as changes in its structure in terms of strengthening dinar savings can be stated. Main contribution of the Paper should be argumentation that development model of Serbia from the first decade of XXI Century, based on substantially increased aggregate demand financed from privatization revenues and rising indebtedness of country has to be changed in favor of higher domestic savings, investments and on that ground improved competitiveness of national economy.

Since the advent of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, a debate has ensued on whether the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should be reformed, abolished, or left as is because it is performing a good and useful job. In this paper, it is argued that the IMF should be abolished because its work, particularly in developing countries, has been useless at best and harmful at worst. Several reasons, as well as examples of how IMF operations have been detrimental to the welfare of people living in countries that the IMF is supposed to help, are presented to support this proposition.

After several years of perseverant implementation, the reform policies we have been pursuing have led to significant and identifiable results. Romania’s economy has continued to perform strongly, although growth is expected to moderate to 6 percent in 2007 on account of prolonged drought effects on agricultural production. Taking into account the annual inflation rate increasing to 6.03 percent (mainly due to a steep increase in food prices and an adverse impact of recent turbulences on world financial markets), National Bank of Romania (NBR) revised the inflation target by 0.7 pp to 5.7% for current year. The general government recorded a small cash surplus during the first nine months of 2007 (0.19% of GDP), largely on account of slow execution of the capital budget. Regarding the economy’s external situation, the already large current account deficit has continued to widen. In 2007, the current account deficit is possible to attain about 14 percent of GDP, with a similarly high level projected for 2008. There are mixed results, which show there are strong risks of macroeconomic instability in the short and medium term, threaths which have analysed in this paper.

This paper reviews the experiences of intergovernmental fiscal systems (IGFS) to look for possible lessons for how Official Development Assistance (ODA) is delivered. Specifically, it compares IGFS and ODA in two specific respects. The first is the proportion of public resources that central governments make available to sub-national governments on a conditional basis, and how that compares with the proportion of non-earmarked ODA given to low income countries. The second is the role of performance outcome in resource allocation to sub-national governments and how that compares with the role of performance in ODA, particularly multilateral ODA allocation. The comparisons show that: (i) the share of earmarked ODA is more than three times higher than that of conditional grants in intergovernmental systems, suggesting that donors in ODA rely more on earmarking to influence the spending decisions of the recipient countries than their federal governments do on conditional grants to induce policy changes in their own sub-national governments; and (ii) none of the OECD countries currently use outcome measures in determining resource allocation to their sub-national governments for a variety of good reasons, and the recent debate as to whether multilateral ODA allocation should be based on development outcomes seems to ignore this experience.

We investigate to what extent estimated relationships of the IMF's monetary model and their policy implications are sample dependent. This model constitutes the core of the IMF's financial programming models for developing and emerging economies. We observe that estimates of the model's key parameters and model-based measures of macroeconomic disequilibria are highly dependent on data vintage employed. Changes in parameter estimates solely due to data revisions are found to be much smaller than those owing to parameter instability, which may be due to model misspecification. Moreover, instability in parameter estimates contributes to more uncertainty in evaluations of macroeconomic excesses than data revisions. It is shown that analyses based on a version of the model in difference form are more robust across data vintages than those based on the model with variables in levels. Well specified models that take into account known data revisions may also have relatively stable parameter estimates and hence more robust policy implications.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) provided support to the MOF to formulate a user-friendly and easily transferable computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to reflect the effect of changes in various public policies and forecast changes of fiscal policy on different sectors of the economy. However, given the difficulties posed by institutionalization of the CGE model and the priorities of the Finance Division, it was agreed that the modeling exercise should be compatible with the financial programming framework. Furthermore, it was agreed that the consultant team would improve the existing macro-economic framework maintained by the Finance Division. In accordance to their recommendation, the following features are added to the existing framework. • Introduce behavioral specifications for some key variables — namely production behavior, revenue functions, capital formation, private investment functions, private consumption etc. • Improve the interdependence between variables of different blocks namely between real side and government budget; government budget, money and BOP; money and real side. • Introduce policy instruments to expand the simulation possibility. The range of instruments may include direct and indirect tax rates, tax base, subsidy, exchange rates etc. • It is argued that the transfer of technology to run the proposed model partly depends on the simplicity and user’s friendly feature. Although, the simplification limits the simulation capability of the model, considering the important objective of technology internalization the model will be constructed in an ‘Excel’ spread sheet. • The following provides specifications of the macro-economic framework. In accordance to the existing practice, the macro-economic framework contains blocks: Real side; Government Budget; Money; and Balance of Payment. In addition to these blocks, a debt block is appended to capture debt dynamics. Data period considered in this framework is 2002 to 2007. Almost all data used in the macro-economic framework has been provided by the Finance Division and the FMRP project. Breakdown of value added (i.e. GDP) by labor value added and capital value added was obtained from the updated social accounting for Bangladesh for 2005. World Economic Outlook forecasts were reviewed to get parameters for external sector (e.g. world price of imports and exports, world inflation rate etc.). It is important to note from the objective and purpose of the ‘financing programming’ that, it is essentially a framework to assess the financing options in accordance to a targeted economic growth and inflation rate. In contrast to the simulation feature of a CGE model, it is primarily an accounting framework limiting the scope to conduct policy simulations. Moreover, it is specified at the macro level restricting the scope of sectoral impacts analysis and output generation. Despite its’ limitation as a simulation framework, a number of scenario generation capabilities are incorporated. A possible list of policy simulations available in the framework is given below: • Altering indirect tax bases (both domestic and external) various types of indirect tax bases. For instance, these may include bases of VAT, excise duty, import duties, supplementary duty, and all other taxes. • Altering indirect tax rates. For instance, these may include VAT rates, excise rates, import duties, supplementary duty and other rates. • Expanding direct tax bases by raising the threshold, reducing the exemption and deduction levels. • Changing the direct tax rates. For instance, these may include personal income tax rates, and corporate tax rates. • Expanding non-tax revenue sources. • Expanding the coverage of the government expenditure program both re-current and capital. For instance, full or partial indexing of pay-allowance item to CPI. • Re-setting world price of imports. • Re-setting the growth rates of various components of money and credit. They include private credit growth; net other asset growth etc. Variations in them affect net domestic assets leading to changes in money supply. • Re-setting the growth rates of various balance of payment. For example, they include current transfer; loan disbursement, grant disbursement. Variations in them affect current account balance and resources for deficit-financing implicating the requirement for bank borrowing. The projection outcomes cover period 2008 to 2015. Outcomes coverage include: (i) incomes and prices; (ii) government income, expenditures, budget deficit and their financing sources; (iii) money supply and usage by components; and (iv) receipts from and payments to the external sectors and balances of current and capital accounts. An indicator table is always available for each simulation.

We examine the implications of high degrees of dollarization for the choice of exchange rate regime and the information content of various monetary aggregates in developing countries. We conclude that a high degree of currency substitution argues for a more fixed exchange rate regime, while asset substitution may imply that either more rigid or more flexible regimes may be appropriate. We also ask whether the most informative monetary aggregates include dollar assets. Based on an analysis of five countries, we conclude inter alia that broader aggregates that include dollar assets perform better than those that do not.

Περιέχει το πλήρες κείμενο As the economics of libraries become more and more complicated the libraries’ interest in economic and financial analysis is never been more crucial. This paper examines the difficulties associated with the application of financial analysis. Financial programming and financial planning models for libraries are also been discussed. The library’s state of the art and its economic relations are mentioned along with the peculiarities of the product “information” and some principles on its cost measurement. The Decision support systems can provide the forms, which decisions could take in order to be considered as alternative solutions of the settled problems, relatively to the criteria, which are chosen and the weights that every criterion takes. The proposed method is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) that aids to non-qualitative criteria to be quantified and measured.