The current paper demonstrates a dochotomy of the growth response to changes in the barter terms of trade (TOT), employing as case studies the following two African countries: Botswana and Nigeria.  Using distributed-lag analysis, the paper finds that the effect of TOT on output is positive and...

Recent decades have seen a considerable expansion of global trade and a simultaneous decline in inflation volatility. This paper investigates whether greater openness to trade helps achieve inflation stability. Using panel data for a sample of developing and industrial countries over the period...

Millennium development goal (MDG) of poverty reduction aims for halving of the head-count ratio over the period 1990-2015. Available studies draw attention to the gap between observed and required growth rates, the difficulties of sustaining the latter over time, and whether the policy stance of...

This paper examines the impact of mass media and information and communications technologies (ICT) as knowledge-based infrastructures on economic development. The results strongly suggest that both mass media and ICT penetration are negatively associated with corruption. This result holds across...

A windfall of natural resource revenue (or foreign aid) faces government with choices of how to manage public debt, investment, and the distribution of funds for consumption, particularly if the windfall is both anticipated and temporary.  Standard policy advice follows the permanent income...

This paper studies how capital-scarce countries should manage volatile resource income.  Existing literature recommends that capital-scarce countries invest domestically, but that volatile resource income should be saved in a foreign sovereign wealth fund.  I reconcile these by combining a...

This paper presents a principal-agent model of IMF conditional lending, in the aftermath of a capital-account liquidity crisis. We show that traditional ex-post conditionality can be effective in safeguarding the Funds resources, allowing for the provision of efficient emergency lending and...

Analyses of the Asian crisis have focused excessively on the financial sector, especially the banks. The role of the real sector in exposing the financial system to stress has been under-emphasized. This paper provides a real-sector explanation for the Thai crisis of 1997, demonstrating the role...

We review two proposals for debt forgiveness; the Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC) and the Jubilee 2000 Coalition Initiative (J2K). We then consider the workhorse model of debt forgiveness (Krugman 1988). We show that the workhorse model solution is a sub-optimal contract, where...

Conditionality is the most controversial aspect of the IMF`s policies. It has been said to be intrusive and coercive and considered to disregard effects on growth, employment and income distribution. In the 1990s, following a sharp increase in the number of conditions required by programs, Fund...