This Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper for Nigeria highlights the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS). NEEDS gives special support to agriculture, industry, small and medium-scale enterprises, and oil and gas. Under the plan, the government will seek long-term capital...

The central challenges facing the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia as they work to catch up to advanced European Union (EU) income levels are discussed in this new book. Focusing on the region’s growth performance, and outlining two...

In this paper we develop a two-country dynamic general equilibrium model by means of which we seek to explain the long-run paths of a converging emerging market economy. We borrow a paradigm from the New Open Economy Macroeconomics literature and amend it to address specific features such as...

This paper studies, in the context of a New Open Economy Macroeconomics (NOEM) model, the effects of "public competition policies" aimed at improving the efficiency of public spending. Such measures are modeled as an increase in the price elasticity of public consumption. The paper finds that...

This paper uses a variant of the IMF's Global Economy Model (GEM) to estimate the macroeconomic effects of Yemen's full accession into the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). After calibrating the model to Yemen and the GCC countries, several simulations were carried out to estimate the potential...

This paper studies Mongolia's experience of growth and recovery during the first decade of its transition to a market-based system and compares it with those of other transition economies. Mongolia, like most other transition economies, experienced a painful, initial "transformational recession"...

The paper examines the implications of lower trade barriers for sectoral diversification and macroeconomic stability in developing economies with a large primary goods sector. It shows that lower trade barriers can have ambiguous effects on macroeconomic stability. It shows also that...

This paper assesses competitiveness in the case of the Central African Republic, a postconflict country. The paper presents several conventional techniques for assessing competitiveness, namely the real exchange rate and recent trade performance. Several other measures are considered, in...

This paper focuses on the trade-off faced by governments in deciding the allocation of public expenditures between productivity-enhancing public infrastructures and utility-enhancing public consumption. From the modeling point of view, the paper augments a standard New Open Economy...

This paper examines whether decisions about the appropriate exchange rate regime in six Central American countries were based on longer-run economic fundamentals or on the confluence of historical and political circumstances. To uncover any actual relationship both across countries and across...