Since 1991, the 15 countries under review - have to varying degrees, been pursuing reforms whose broad objectives have been to achieve market-based determination of interest rates and exchange rates, manage banking system liquidity through market operations with indirect instruments, and provide the institutional underpinnings for the design and implementation of macroeconomic stabilization and structural reform programs supported by the IMF. This study reviews the experience under these prog...

This is the first of a group of papers dealing with various aspects of Fund-supported adjustment programs. The other two, The Global Effects of Fund-supported Adjustment Programs by Morris Goldstein and Fund-Supported Programs, Fiscal Policy, and Income Distribution by the Fiscal Affairs Department, will also be published in the Fund's Occasional Paper Series.

In 1991, the Baltics, Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union set out on the road to establishing market economies by lieberalizing prices, dismantling the instruments of central planning, and initiating a process of fundamental structural reforms. Since then these 15 countries have taken substantial steps toward achieving macroeconomic stabilization, and are well advanced in many areas of the transformation to market economies. In particular, considerable progress has been made...