Alexandros Mourmouras

The Political Economy of IMF Conditionality: A Common Agency Model

The paper models the relationship between an aid-providing international financial institution (IFI) and an aid-receiving government whose economic policy choices are influenced by a domestic interest group. Two assistance schemes are evaluated: conditional aid in which the IFI makes assistance contingent on less- distorting economic policies and unconditional aid which is provided without such conditions. Conditional aid is shown to raise welfare of the receiving country and the world as a whole relative to unconditional aid. The paper also examines how conditional and unconditional aid schemes are influenced by the IFIs opportunity cost of providing assistance and the receiving governments political dependence on a domestic interest group. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005.

Fiscal Policy and Economic Development

This paper offers possible explanations for three generally observed facts about fiscal policy and development: (F1) The relative size of government increases as an economy develops, (F2) The rise in government and taxation are associated with rising or constant economic growth rates, and (F3) Todays developing countries have larger government sectors than did todays developed countries at similar stages of development. The explanations for these facts are based on the structural transformation from traditional (mostly agricultural) to modern (industrial and post-industrial) production, rising public infrastructure investment, and less representative governments in many of todays developing economies.

On the Viability of Conditional Assistance Programs

Economic adjustment and reform programs, including those supported by international financial institutions (IFIs), must cope with informational asymmetries and special interest politics. This presents a particularly serious issue when IFIs make structural economic reforms a condition for providing economic assistance. This paper examines what conditions must be satisfied to make conditional assistance programs viable; that is, to ensure that the assistancereceiving government not only takes the assistance but also implements reforms, without compromising the countrys political stability and the IFIs financial integrity. It is pointed out that tightly budgeted conditional assistance programs never bring about reforms, that the IFIs cost of viable programs rises with the dependence of the government on domestic interest groups, and that unconditional assistance might be viable when conditional assistance is not.

Smuggling, currency substitution and unofficial dollarization : a crime-theoretic approach

Large stocks of U.S. dollars and other hard currencies circulate in the transition economies, in Latin America, and in other countries that have experienced macroeconomic mismanagement. Using a monetary model that combines the legal restrictions and crime-theoretic traditions, this paper demonstrates how leaky exchange controls lead to currency substitution and progressive dollarization. The paper also analyzes the impact of dollarization on the ability of governments to earn seigniorage, the dynamics of dollarization in a growing economy, and the central role of expectations—specifically, confidence in the domestic currency—in determining the extent of dollarization and, potentially, in reversing it.

Wage and Fertility Gaps in Dual Economies

Virtually all developing economies, now and in the past, have large gaps in labor productivity across sectors. We argue the presence of a traditional sector of family-based production, where markets for land and labor are nonexistent or underdeveloped, is important in explaining the persistence of large wage gaps. In the absence of land markets, intergenerational links make it more likely that low-wage workers do not relocate because they are compensated by inheritance of the family “farm.” The use of family labor on relatively small plots of land reduces the incentive to work long hours further widening gaps in annual hours and wages. Greater fertility and larger families also serve to compensate low-wage workers in the traditional sector, another factor reducing the incentive to migrate.

Collection Lags and the Optimal Inflation Tax: A Reconsideration

The observation that inflation reduces real revenues when there are lags in tax collection has long been a strong argument against seigniorage. However, with the exception of Dixit, who used a general equilibrium model to reject this argument, the optimal taxation literature has not analyzed how collection lags affect desired tax structures. This paper reexamines the issue using an overlapping generations version of Dixits model. It is shown that depending on the size of the expenditure ratio and the specification of the collection cost function, lags may increase, leave unchanged, or reduce the desired rate of inflation.

Wage Gaps and Development : Lessons from U.S. History

During the course of development, wages and labor productivity are much higher in the nonfarm sectors of the economy than in agriculture. In this paper, we examine the sources and consequences of wage and productivity gaps in the U.S. from 1800 to 2000. We build a quantitative general equilibrium model that closely matches the two-century long paths of farm and non-farm labor productivity growth, schooling, and fertility in the U.S. The family farm emerges as an important institution that contributes to differences in wages and labor productivity. Income from farm ownership compensates farm workers for the relatively low labor productivity and wages earned in agriculture. Farm ownership, along with the higher cost of raising children off the farm, generated a two-fold gap in labor productivity across the farm and nonfarm sectors in the 19th century US. Consequently, the reallocation of labor from farming to industry raised the average annual growth rate of output per worker by about half a percentage point over the 19th century. The paper also draws some lessons from the quantitative analysis of U.S. economic history for currently developing countries.

INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE: A LOAN MECHANISM-DESIGN APPROACH

International Financial Institutions (IFIs) tie resource transfers to capital-scarce countries to improvements in their economic policies and institutions. The objective of this assistance is twofold: to augment the recipients capital base and to improve its allocation of resources. This paper offers a political-economy explanation for the limited success of some of these loan programs. In our model, governments select policies under the influence of interest groups. Their capacity to absorb IFI loans and their reform efforts are both unobservable to the IFI. An optimally designed loan mechanism must create sufficient incentives in the form of rewards and punishments to counter the influence of interest groups on economic policy choices. The loan mechanism is, however, constrained in two ways: it cannot punish a country so severely as to threaten its political stability and it must remain affordable to the IFI. Whenever reform incentives are inadequate, a government will accept the loan but cheat on the implementation of reforms. If, on the other hand, the mechanism design is optimal, it might be so costly to the IFI that a well-entrenched interest group can block the reform program. Nonetheless, the availability of properly designed loan mechanisms will push governments to implement partial reforms even if the optimal mechanism is too costly for the IFI.