Introduction

News

IMF Staff Papers will have 6% more pages in 2009.

Volume 55, Issue 4 of IMF Staff Papers is now published

In this issue, John T. Cuddington and Daniel Jerrett from the Colorado School of Mines examine whether metals prices are in a “super cycle” upswing driven by intensive economic growth in China, in particular. Using evidence from U.S. Social Security records, James E. Duggan, Robert Gillingham, and John S. Greenlees look at the empirical relationship between mortality and lifetime income. Pär Österholm and Jeromin Zettelmeyer analyze the effect of external conditions on growth in Latin America, while Junko Koeda presents a debt overhang model for low-income countries. The issue also includes a comprehensive index for Volume 55 (2008) by author, subject, and title.

Advance Online Publication (AOP)

IMF Staff Papers is now utilising our industry leading Advance Online Publication (AOP) service. This service enables us to publish online the final version of a paper, fully citeable and exactly as it will be published in the printed edition. In some instances papers are published AOP a significant number of months before appearing in print.
View Advance Online Publication.

Call for Papers

Conference on “Structural Reforms Without Prejudice”

The International Monetary Fund, Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research will sponsor a conference on “Structural Reforms Without Prejudice” in Milan, Italy on March 2, 2009. The conference will provide a forum for researchers and policymakers to discuss theoretical and empirical research on the causes and consequences of structural reforms, and to examine innovative research on the impact of structural reforms on economic performance.

Those interested in submitting papers for the conference must complete a Call for Papers Reply Form by December 15, 2008. Those forms are available at http://www.cepr.org/R19728168849-2089821184344. Final versions of the papers selected for the conference will then be due by February 1, 2009.

Submissions should shed light on aspects of how structural reforms operate in practice, and how they interact with each other as well as with macroeconomic policies and political institutions. The conference aims to advance understanding of these issues, especially in relation to the following topics:

• New datasets for measuring financial, labor, product, trade, and public sector reforms
• Political institutions and structural reforms
• Impact of structural reforms on economic growth and welfare
• Timing and sequencing of structural reforms
• Interactions between structural reforms and macroeconomic policies.

Submissions that do not fit into these categories but are related to the main theme of the conference are also welcome.