Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) are prepared by member countries in broad consultation with stakeholders and development partners, including the staffs of the World Bank and the IMF. Updated every three years with annual progress reports, they describe the country’s...

Robust GDP growth, declining unemployment, low and stable inflation, and a string of fiscal and current account surpluses -- it's a record to be envied. These outcomes in Canada owe much to sound macroeconomic policies, as well as to a favorable external environment. This book focuses on these...

This paper argues that the emergence of knowledge hierarchies in the modern U.S. firms since the late 19th century, expedited by huge progress in communication technology, played a significant role in the expansion of mass secondary education called the high school movement in the U.S. in the...

This paper examines the role of financial development and financial structure in explaining cross-country diffusion of information communication technology (ICT). Using panel data for 76 emerging and advanced countries for the period 1990-2003, the paper finds that credit and stock market...

This Selected Issues paper on Euro Area Policies underlies global rebalancing of accounts. From a growth-accounting perspective, slower growth in the capital-labor ratio seems to be the main driver behind the deceleration in labor productivity. The increase in bilateral trade was accompanied by...

This paper analyzes the impact of product and labor market policies on technological diffusion and multi-factor productivity (MFP) in a panel of industries in 15 OECD countries over the period 1980 to 2003, with a special focus on Australia. We use a simple convergence empirical framework to...