Papers by David Rosenblatt
The terms and conditions indicated in the URL link must be met and the respective recognition mus... more The terms and conditions indicated in the URL link must be met and the respective recognition must be granted to the IDB. Further to section 8 of the above license, any mediation relating to disputes arising under such license shall be conducted in accordance with the WIPO Mediation Rules. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this license. Note that the URL link includes terms and conditions that are an integral part of this license. The opinions expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.
The underlying data for the average inflation rate are taken from national central bank sources. ... more The underlying data for the average inflation rate are taken from national central bank sources. July is the last month for which data were available for five of the six countries for which the average is calculated.
Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be s... more Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2003
The traditional theory of fiscal federalism assigns the role level most appropriate for macroecon... more The traditional theory of fiscal federalism assigns the role level most appropriate for macroeconomic stabilization of macroeconomic stabilization to the federal and often the level with superior access to credit. government. In addition to this long-standing theoretical Despite the logic of these rules, recent experience of result, there is empirical observation that federal the four countries reveals that these rules can be risky, governments in developing countries typically have particularly in the face of high GDP volatility. cheaper and more stable access to capital markets, Protection against falling revenues in the downturn relative to subnational governments. constitutes a contingent liability for the central Drawing on the recent experience of four large federal government. Argentina's stabilizing rule contributed to countries in Latin America-Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, fiscal and political tensions during its ongoing crisis. and Mexico-Gonzalez, Rosenblatt, and Webb examine Colombia is beginning to implement similar rules. how intergovernmental transfers affect the division of Meanwhile, Brazilian and Mexican transfers do not the burden of stabilization across the levels of implement such rules and fiscal and economic results do government, when the nation as a whole faces economic not appear to have fared any worse for this absence. The fluctuations. Imposing stabilizing rules on federal authors draw on the country experience to establish that transfers that protect subnational governments from certain conditions should be in place before establishing fluctuations in the business cycle can serve two purposes. a stabilization rule to federal-to-subnational fiscal During boom periods, stabilizing rules prevent transfers-in particular the elimination of long-term subnational governments' tendency to increase inflexible structural fiscal imbalances, either within levels of expenditures. And during downturns, stabilizing rules government or across levels of government.
Traditional theory of fiscal federalism assigns the role of macroeconomic stabilization to the fe... more Traditional theory of fiscal federalism assigns the role of macroeconomic stabilization to the federal government (Musgrave 1959; Oates 1972). One fundamental justification is that monetary control is exercised only at the federal level. Even if an economic disturbance is symmetric across regions, then there is the complication of coordinating fiscal responses by subnational jurisdictions. States or provinces represent economic areas with completely open trade and capital accounts within a monetary union.
nc-nd/3.0/igo/legalcode) and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commer... more nc-nd/3.0/igo/legalcode) and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose. No derivative work is allowed. Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license. Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent.
Brazilian Review of Econometrics, 1991
Macroeconomic Policy, Credibility and Politics is meant to serve . as a graduate textbook and lit... more Macroeconomic Policy, Credibility and Politics is meant to serve . as a graduate textbook and literature survey of the recent advances in modelling government economic policy making. It is extremely successful in achieving both goals, unifying many of the different ap proaches to endogenizing government policy, one of the most active areas of macroeconomic theorizing in recent years. In addition to summarizing this literature, the "monograph," as the authors call it, presents some new results. Before the emergence of this new literature, the policymaker was treated like "a machine," in the authors' words, that could be sim ply < l programmed." One would model how the economy would re spond to any exogenously determined values of the policy variables, and one would then calculate the optimal policy rules. The new ap proach assumes that the policymaker is a "rational and maximizing agent, or collection of agents, who respond to incentives and con straints just like the rest of the economy." The authors note that one can describe the new approach in terms of the principal-agent problem, where the many principals are the public, and the agent is the government. Some of the various articles in the literature analyze how the principals, acting in their "political role," impose political constraints on the government's policy decision, while other articles examine how the principals, acting in their "economic role," impose credibility constraints on the policy decision. The monograph is organized in two parts: the fi rst part analyzes monetary policy, and the second part looks at fi scal policy, more specifi cally the problems of wealth taxation and the accumulation of government debt. For economists unfamiliar with the literature who
Policy Research Working Papers, 2002
The traditional theory of fiscal federalism assigns the role level most appropriate for macroecon... more The traditional theory of fiscal federalism assigns the role level most appropriate for macroeconomic stabilization of macroeconomic stabilization to the federal and often the level with superior access to credit. government. In addition to this long-standing theoretical Despite the logic of these rules, recent experience of result, there is empirical observation that federal the four countries reveals that these rules can be risky, governments in developing countries typically have particularly in the face of high GDP volatility. cheaper and more stable access to capital markets, Protection against falling revenues in the downturn relative to subnational governments. constitutes a contingent liability for the central Drawing on the recent experience of four large federal government. Argentina's stabilizing rule contributed to countries in Latin America-Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, fiscal and political tensions during its ongoing crisis. and Mexico-Gonzalez, Rosenblatt, and Webb examine Colombia is beginning to implement similar rules. how intergovernmental transfers affect the division of Meanwhile, Brazilian and Mexican transfers do not the burden of stabilization across the levels of implement such rules and fiscal and economic results do government, when the nation as a whole faces economic not appear to have fared any worse for this absence. The fluctuations. Imposing stabilizing rules on federal authors draw on the country experience to establish that transfers that protect subnational governments from certain conditions should be in place before establishing fluctuations in the business cycle can serve two purposes. a stabilization rule to federal-to-subnational fiscal During boom periods, stabilizing rules prevent transfers-in particular the elimination of long-term subnational governments' tendency to increase inflexible structural fiscal imbalances, either within levels of expenditures. And during downturns, stabilizing rules government or across levels of government.
Measuring the Impact Simple numerical measures of the minimum wage may offer of Minimum Wages dec... more Measuring the Impact Simple numerical measures of the minimum wage may offer of Minimum Wages deceptive indications of its impact. Alternative measures, such as kernel density or Evidence from Latin America cumulative distribution plots, are more reliable, and
Policy Research Working Papers, 2013
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Policy Research Working Paper 6645 One of the two goals of the World Bank Group's new strategy is to promote shared prosperity, defined as the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population. The simple monitoring indicator then is the income per capita of the bottom 40 percent of the population. The growth of this indicator can be decomposed into two components: the change in the share of total income accruing to the bottom This paper is a product of the Operations and Strategy Unit, Development Economics Vice Presidency. It is part of a larger effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at [email protected]. 40 percent and the growth of the average income of the total population. This paper presents: (i) a brief discussion of the properties of the indicator; (ii) the simple decomposition in algebraic form; (iii) a graphical method for displaying the combinations of the two components of the decomposition; (iv) simulations of the decomposition for hypothetical countries; and (v) some illustrative data.
Policy Research Working Papers, 2013
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
In recent years, an ample literature has emerged on the evolution of global inequality during the... more In recent years, an ample literature has emerged on the evolution of global inequality during the last two decades. A few stylized facts emerge. If one weights countries by their population, then inequality across countries has declined. However, if one treats countries equally – as in the macroeconomic convergence (divergence) literature—then there has been increasing inequality. Which view is the correct one? In this paper, we use the 2004 version of the World Bank’s World Development Indicators to re-examine the evidence over the 1980-2002 period, and the data reaffirm the two trends described above. Even if inequality declined by most common aggregate inequality indices, there is neither full Lorenz dominance of 2002 over 1980 in population-weighted terms, nor first-order dominance. The aggregate inequality indices also mask the tremendous mobility of countries, and in particular, the impoverishment of about two dozen countries at the bottom of the distribution over the period i...
Policy Research Working Papers
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encoura... more The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.
Policy Research Working Papers
This paper explores the hypothesis that the credibility of economic policy making in Argentina (o... more This paper explores the hypothesis that the credibility of economic policy making in Argentina (or lack thereof ) has impacted the volatility of economic performance. To establish the link, a historical review of economic policy making and economic outcomes over the quarter century is presented, informed by a survey of the literature on credibility and the political economy of reforms. A more fundamental question is why policy shifts are so frequent, and this necessarily relates to the political institutions underlying policy making. A recent literature on citizen engagement and accountability, combined with international experience, is then used to consider policy options that could help reestablish credibility during the new administration.
One of the two goals of the World Bank Group’s new
strategy is to promote shared prosperity, defi... more One of the two goals of the World Bank Group’s new
strategy is to promote shared prosperity, defined as
the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the
population. The simple monitoring indicator then
is the income per capita of the bottom 40 percent
of the population. The growth of this indicator can
be decomposed into two components: the change
in the share of total income accruing to the bottom
This paper is a product of the Operations and Strategy Unit, Development Economics Vice Presidency. It is part of a larger
effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions
around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author
may be contacted at [email protected].
40 percent and the growth of the average income of
the total population. This paper presents: (i) a brief
discussion of the properties of the indicator; (ii) the
simple decomposition in algebraic form; (iii) a graphical
method for displaying the combinations of the two
components of the decomposition; (iv) simulations of the
decomposition for hypothetical countries; and (v) some
illustrative data.
The term " middle-income trap " has entered common parlance in the development policy community, ... more The term " middle-income trap " has entered common parlance in the development policy community, despite the lack of a precise definition. This paper discusses in more detail the definitional issues associated with the term. It also provides evidence on whether the growth performance of middle-income countries (MICs) has been different from other income categories, including historical transition phases in the inter-country distribution of income. A transition matrix analysis and an exploration of crosscountry growth patterns provide little support for the existence of a middle-income trap.
Policy Research Working Paper Series, 2006
The actual distribution of world income across countries is extremely unequal, much higher than t... more The actual distribution of world income across countries is extremely unequal, much higher than the within country inequality faced by most countries. The question studied in this paper is: how do international policies on aid, trade and factor movements affect the international distribution of income?
Thesis (Ph. D. in Economics)--University of California, Berkeley, Dec. 1992. Includes bibliograph... more Thesis (Ph. D. in Economics)--University of California, Berkeley, Dec. 1992. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-140).
Revista Brasileira de Economia
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Papers by David Rosenblatt
strategy is to promote shared prosperity, defined as
the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the
population. The simple monitoring indicator then
is the income per capita of the bottom 40 percent
of the population. The growth of this indicator can
be decomposed into two components: the change
in the share of total income accruing to the bottom
This paper is a product of the Operations and Strategy Unit, Development Economics Vice Presidency. It is part of a larger
effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions
around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author
may be contacted at [email protected].
40 percent and the growth of the average income of
the total population. This paper presents: (i) a brief
discussion of the properties of the indicator; (ii) the
simple decomposition in algebraic form; (iii) a graphical
method for displaying the combinations of the two
components of the decomposition; (iv) simulations of the
decomposition for hypothetical countries; and (v) some
illustrative data.
strategy is to promote shared prosperity, defined as
the income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the
population. The simple monitoring indicator then
is the income per capita of the bottom 40 percent
of the population. The growth of this indicator can
be decomposed into two components: the change
in the share of total income accruing to the bottom
This paper is a product of the Operations and Strategy Unit, Development Economics Vice Presidency. It is part of a larger
effort by the World Bank to provide open access to its research and make a contribution to development policy discussions
around the world. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted on the Web at http://econ.worldbank.org. The author
may be contacted at [email protected].
40 percent and the growth of the average income of
the total population. This paper presents: (i) a brief
discussion of the properties of the indicator; (ii) the
simple decomposition in algebraic form; (iii) a graphical
method for displaying the combinations of the two
components of the decomposition; (iv) simulations of the
decomposition for hypothetical countries; and (v) some
illustrative data.