Search

4190 results found

• 

  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 70

  Physician Incentives In Managed Care Organizations

  This brief considers the interaction between physician incentive systems and product market competition in the delivery of medical services via managed care organizations. At the center of the analysis is the process by which health maintenance organizations (HMOs) assemble physician networks and the role these networks play in the competition for customers. The authors find […]
• 

  Public Policy Brief Highlight No. 69

  Should Banks Be “Narrowed”?

  In this brief, Biagio Bossone of the International Monetary Fund evaluates narrow banking from the perspective of modern theories of financial intermediation. These theories portray the status quo banking system as a solution to otherwise intractable problems of imperfect information, risk, and even moral hazard. The system’s characteristic coupling of liquid liabilities with illiquid assets—seen […]
• 

  Public Policy Brief No. 70

  Physician Incentives In Managed Care Organizations

  This brief considers the interaction between physician incentive systems and product market competition in the delivery of medical services via managed care organizations. At the center of the analysis is the process by which health maintenance organizations (HMOs) assemble physician networks and the role these networks play in the competition for customers. The authors find […]
• 

  Public Policy Brief No. 69

  Should Banks Be “Narrowed”?

  In this brief, Biagio Bossone of the International Monetary Fund evaluates narrow banking from the perspective of modern theories of financial intermediation. These theories portray the status quo banking system as a solution to otherwise intractable problems of imperfect information, risk, and even moral hazard. The system’s characteristic coupling of liquid liabilities with illiquid assets—seen […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 362

  Financial Policies and the Aggregate Productivity of the Capital Stock

  We collect data on a number of financial restraints, including restrictions on interest rates and capital flows and reserve and liquidity requirements, and capital adequacy requirements from central banks of 14 countries. We estimate the effects of these policies on the aggregate productivity of the capital stock, controlling for the effects of inputs and financial […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 361

  Credibility of EMS Interest Rate Policies

  The primary objective of this paper is to use the Markov regime-switching modeling framework to study the credibility of monetary policy in five member countries of the European Monetary System (EMS) during the period 1979 to 1998. The five countries examined for this purpose are Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. The major innovation […]
• 

  Strategic Analysis

  Is Personal Debt Sustainable?

  The long economic expansion was fueled by an unprecedented rise in private expenditure relative to income, financed by a growing flow of net credit to the private. On the surface, it seemed that the growing burden of the household sector’s debt was counterbalanced by a spectacular rise in the relative value of its financial assets, […]
• 

  Book Series

  The Mind of Wall Street

  As stock prices and investor confidence have collapsed in the wake of Enron, WorldCom, and the dot-com crash, people want to know how this happened and how to make sense of the uncertain times to come. Into the breach comes one of Wall Street’s legendary investors, Leon Levy, to explain why the market so often […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 360

  Financial Globalization

  In recent years free movement of financial capital following financial liberalization has given the impression that financial markets are truly globalized. In this paper we argue that free movement of financial capital alone does not constitute financial globalization. To achieve true financial globalization, an important requirement is the creation of a worldwide single currency, managed […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 359

  Is There a Trade-Off between Inflation Variability and Output-gap Variability in the EMU Countries?

  This paper examines two issues. First, we compare, based on the ratio of output-gap variability to inflation variability, the monetary policy performance of eleven EMU countries for the whole period of the EMS. Second, we examine whether the introduction of an implicit inflation-targeting by the EMU member countries after the Maastricht Treaty changed the trade-off […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 358

  Threshold Effects in the US Budget Deficit

  This paper contributes to the debate on whether the United States’ large federal budget deficits are sustainable in the long run. The authors model the government deficit per capita as a threshold autoregressive process, finding evidence that the deficit is sustainable in the long run and that economic policymakers will intervene to reduce the per […]
• 

  Working Paper No. 357

  The Euro, Public Expenditure, and Taxation

  This paper explores the probable consequences for public expenditure in the United Kingdom if Britain were to join the euro. It focuses on the effects of sterling joining the euro (and the associated implications, such as monetary policy being governed by the European Central Bank). It does not consider any broader questions of the effects […]