Monetary policy in developing countries is largely based on a system introduced in the 1960s. Emancipating the Banking System and Developing Markets for Government Debt illustrates how this outdated system has led to financial repression and suggests some alternatives. Maxwell Fry is one of the leading experts in this area. His book will provide a

Monetary policy in developing countries is largely based on a system introduced in the 1960s. This book illustrates how this outdated system has led to financial repression and suggests some alternatives.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This handbook is a comprehensive and authoritative reference for both senior policymakers—those responsible for the development of government bond markets in their own countries—and all individuals responsible for guiding the market development process at the operational level—those who have a substantial need to understand the policy issues involved.

Determinants of economic growth: An overview Thijs de Ruyter van Steveninck, Nico van der Windt, and Maaike Oosterbaan Netherlands Economic Institute What causes economic growth? Why have some countries grown much faster than others? Why do some countries not grow at all, or even experience negative (per capita) growth rates? What can governments do to raise the growth rates of their country? These questions were discussed at a conference on March 23 and 24, 1998, organized by the Netherlands Economic Institute (NEI) on behalf of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This book contains the proceedings of the conference. Economic growth is widely considered as a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for poverty alleviation. During the past two decades, scholars and researchers have found a renewed interest in thinking about economic growth, and advances in the understanding of economic growth have taken place. On the one hand, the theoretical understanding of growth has progressed on various fronts, including endogenous technological innovation and increasing returns to scale; the interaction of population, fertility, human capital, and growth; international spill-overs in technology and capital accumulation; and the role of institutions. On the other hand, the increasing availability and use of data sets has given a large incentive to empirical research on cross-country growth, following the path-breaking work ofBarro (1991).

Do highly indebted countries suffer from a debt overhang? Can debt relief foster their growth rates? To answer these important questions, this article looks at how the debt-growth relation varies with indebtedness levels, as well as with the quality of policies and institutions, in a panel of developing countries. The main findings are that, in countries with good policies and institutions, there is evidence of debt overhang when the net present value of debt rises above 20–25 percent of GDP; however, debt becomes irrelevant above 70–80 percent. In countries with bad policies and institutions, thresholds appear to be lower, but the evidence of debt overhang is weaker and we cannot rule out that debt is always irrelevant. Indeed, in such countries, as well as in countries with high indebtedness levels, investment does not depend on debt levels. The analysis suggests that not all countries are likely to profit from debt relief, and thus that a one-size-fits-all debt relief approach might not be the most appropriate one.

the adaptation of the institutional settings of monetary policy to deal with an emerging market economy had to be carried out in the midst of an unprecedented stabilization effort and, therefore, was particularly urgent and complicated. In many of the transition countries, the transformation effort implied not just changes in procedures but the establishment of a central bank from scratch, a process that involved an important effort, precisely at a time when the whole system was in serious turmoil. While the process of reforms is not yet completed in all the transition countries, an immense amount of progress has been achieved, and many of the transition countries face today monetary and central banking conditions that are close to those of Western economies. In this volume, we collect a number of important contributions that discuss the most burning aspects of the current debates on central banking and monetary policy and draw implications for the postsocialist transition economies. The various papers included in the volume deal with a broad set of related issues, which are highly relevant not just for transition economies but for other emerging markets and for advanced economies as well. The subjects covered in the book are divided into seven major categories (Sections II to VIII), some of which overlap.