Panel data on Ghanaian manufacturing firms are used to test predictions from models of irreversible investment under uncertainty. Information on the entrepreneur's subjective probability distribution over future demand for the firm's products is used to construct the expected variance of demand,...

During the 1990s a number of African central banks succeeded in bringing inflation to relatively low levels while maintaining a market-determined exchange rate. These central banks were generally reluctant to fully subordinate exchange rate targets to monetary targets, however, particularly in...

This paper develops a cost–benefit analysis of monetary integration and applies it to the currency unions being actively pursued in Africa. While many related studies have highlighted the problems associated with shock asymmetries, very few analyses have attempted to weigh these against...

Financial globalization has made monetary policy formulation in emerging market economies increasingly complicated. This timely set of studies looks at the turmoil in global financial markets, which coupled with volatile inflation poses serious challenges for central banks in these countries....

This paper examines whether there is a relationship between the commodity terms of trade (the price of primary commodities relative to the price of manufactures) and the net barter terms of trade of 42 Sub-Saharan African countries. For most countries, there is little evidence of a stable,...

We develop a model in which governments' financing needs exceed the socially optimal level because public resources are diverted to serve the narrow interests of the group in power. From a social welfare perspective, this results in undue pressure on the central bank to extract seigniorage....

We focus on the management of highly persistent shocks to aid flows in the presence of currency substitution by the domestic private sector. Such shocks have beneficent long-run effects, but when currency substitution is high they can produce dramatic macroeconomic management problems in the...