Changing population age structures are shaping the trajectories of development in many countries, bringing opportunities and challenges. While aging has been a matter of concern for upper-middle and high-income economies, rapid population growth is set to continue in the poorest countries over...

As governments around the world struggle to piece together the most effective fiscal response to counter the economic and social impact of the COVID-19 outbreak, some are facing constraints imposed by fiscal rules enacted in the past to ensure fiscal discipline. The outbreak has revealedthe...

The expansionary fiscal contraction (EFC) hypothesis states that fiscal austerity can increase output or consumption when a country is under heavy debt burdens because it sends positive signal about the country's solvency situation and long-term economic wellbeing. Empirical tests of this...

An open economy structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model is developed for Belize with the objective of identifying the main factors behind the volatility in output growth. A MarkovSwitching VAR (MS-VAR) model is also employed to explore whether the response to shocks is the similar across...

A large and growing literature has argued that industrialized and developing countries behave very differently in relation to their fiscal policy stances over the business cycle. In this paper, the authors provide new evidence on the cyclicality of fiscal policy across industrialized and...

The many and varied crises in the world economy since 2007 seem to have different origins and iverse manifestations. This paper contends that there is however a structural shift beneath the global economy that is now reaching a critical mass, and that accounts for many of these crises, despite...

This paper assesses the impact of the rise of China on the trade of Latin American and Caribbean economies. The study proposes an index to measure the impact on trade, which suggests sizable effects, especially in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Hondu

This paper explores the determinants of public employment across the world and finds that it is negatively associated with country size (by population) and positively associated with the income level. The findings show that a country's openness to trade is positively associated with public...

Rapidly changing labor markets are affecting the service delivery model of Pubic Employment Agencies (PEAs). PEAs in Europe and beyond have come to adopt more comprehensive and client-centric services to satisfy the increasing needs of jobseekers and firms. In addition to expanding their range...